2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
That's entirely up to you. I also have a great deal of respect for DNA's input. That doesn't mean that I'm always going to be a "yes man". Meaning, if there are aspects I disagree with, I'm going to verbalize that. Everyone has ideas and views. That's what we're here to discuss.
That’s pretty much an outright lie. 99.9% of the time you will yes man anything Kabam claims
That's entirely up to you. I also have a great deal of respect for DNA's input. That doesn't mean that I'm always going to be a "yes man". Meaning, if there are aspects I disagree with, I'm going to verbalize that. Everyone has ideas and views. That's what we're here to discuss.
Actually, this thread was started (and revived) to discuss concrete suggestions, not vague ideas and views; neither was it created for a couple of individuals to turn it into an argumentative back and forth.
That's entirely up to you. I also have a great deal of respect for DNA's input. That doesn't mean that I'm always going to be a "yes man". Meaning, if there are aspects I disagree with, I'm going to verbalize that. Everyone has ideas and views. That's what we're here to discuss.
Actually, this thread was started (and revived) to discuss concrete suggestions, not vague ideas and views; neither was it created for a couple of individuals to turn it into an argumentative back and forth.
Dr. Zola
Weren't you the one who asked me to provide a suggestion? Either that was a genuine request, or that was bait. Pretty sure that's equally as unproductive.
That's entirely up to you. I also have a great deal of respect for DNA's input. That doesn't mean that I'm always going to be a "yes man". Meaning, if there are aspects I disagree with, I'm going to verbalize that. Everyone has ideas and views. That's what we're here to discuss.
Actually, this thread was started (and revived) to discuss concrete suggestions, not vague ideas and views; neither was it created for a couple of individuals to turn it into an argumentative back and forth.
Dr. Zola
Weren't you the one who asked me to provide a suggestion? Either that was a genuine request, or that was bait. Pretty sure that's equally as unproductive.
Well, I am “the one” who asked the following:
I would emphasize the italicized phrase “specific and actionable” in that excerpt. You gave your reply. Now let’s keep the thread on track this time.
That's entirely up to you. I also have a great deal of respect for DNA's input. That doesn't mean that I'm always going to be a "yes man". Meaning, if there are aspects I disagree with, I'm going to verbalize that. Everyone has ideas and views. That's what we're here to discuss.
Actually, this thread was started (and revived) to discuss concrete suggestions, not vague ideas and views; neither was it created for a couple of individuals to turn it into an argumentative back and forth.
Dr. Zola
Weren't you the one who asked me to provide a suggestion? Either that was a genuine request, or that was bait. Pretty sure that's equally as unproductive.
Well, I am “the one” who asked the following:
I would emphasize the italicized phrase “specific and actionable” in that excerpt.
Dr. Zola
I provided both. You're free to disagree with the suggestion. You can't double-speak and say I didn't provide one.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
I like the trophy debt approach. In my view, penalties seem too temporary in MCoC and players circumvent them easily. That would be as close as you can come to “nuking from orbit.”
I included #2 mainly as one of my guiding principles—each of which was included to demonstrate how easy it is to say “things should be like this!”—all the while acknowledging how hard it is to make the system that reliably gets you there.
Again—I think you wanted to (and I’d like to) focus on specifics here if we can. This thread derailed a lot the past couple of weeks.
So one suggestion I have that may solve the issue is a combination of a Rating System, and what we have now. Obviously, we would start with Matches that are somewhat within our range of Rosters. Perhaps softer limits than exact Matches. Then, as Players accumulate a certain amount of Rating Points, they are Matched within their Rating Range. Now, this is where it gets complicated. You want higher Players to accelerate, but not so quickly that it gives a total catapult. At the same time, you want Players lower down to advance, but not so quickly they have an advantage within the system. Each Win awards Points. Each Loss reduces Points by half. For example, UC Players win 100 per Win, but lose 50 per Loss. Cav win 200, lose 100. TB win 300, lose 150. Paragon win 400, lose 200. Now, you also want to award skill for those winning above their "paygrade", so-to-speak. Which means Paragon won't benefit from this, but it actually closes the gap enough for it to be not as advantageous. If an UC Player wins against a Cav, they get an extra 50 Points. If they lose, no difference. If they win against a TB, they get an extra 100. If by chance they manage to win against a Paragon, it's 150. Something that would either be rare, or "artificial". Same goes for Cav against TB/Para, with 50 Points or 100 being the bonus. Now, the part that I haven't worked out is whether to have the Brackets a set number, or a continual system like War Tiers. That's one idea I was playing with, in as best terms I can articulate for now.
As stated there's a structural issue. UC players can almost never lose. Whenever they are matched against anyone higher than UC, which is almost everyone, they can only go up, they cannot go down. Meanwhile Paragons face the full brunt of losing in every match, because they will never get the benefit of these over matches.
This is also exploitable in a weird way. Just never promote. I have alts that could have arbitrarily strong rosters by virtue of alliance rewards, but they only progress upward if I choose to run the gateway content. The sweet spot is probably for Cavalier players. A player that simply never completes Act 6 does not have a strong upward ceiling if they are in a strong alliance. The rewards they are foregoing by not promoting could be significantly offset by gaining access to higher BG rewards. Even if this is only temporary and the player eventually outgrows this, it still represents a significant reward influx until they eventually decide to go for TB/Paragon.
The suggestion was to have a base level for intervened Matches, then at a certain Rating number point, random within the range. Whether that's 200, or 500, or what have you, is variable. I was asked to provide a suggestion, and it's just one idea I was playing around with. I'm open to anything that accommodates my main concern, which I have expressed. As long as there's a starting point that keeps people from being grossly overpowered before the results take over, I'm cool with it. I do have concerns about people trying to take advantage of the system with any suggestion, and that's something that's a priority. What I'm not invested in is the effort to keep Players from getting the Rewards they're earning at any progress level. Not that I necessarily think that's your aim. I've just felt the need to point out how some suggestions are about more than just Rewards. Ideally, we need a system that achieves a number of things. That it a) allows Players a reasonable start b) reflects their results and skills based on their performance c) rewards them for that appropriately as well as in tandem with their skill in the game mode d) prevents as much manipulation as possible, and e) motivates as many Players to participate as possible that are allowed to. It's the "c" aspect that seems to be the emphasized concern, but the other aspects are not arbitrary in my opinion. Obviously perfection doesn't exist and I understand your points about sacrifice. What I don't believe is a "fair" sacrifice is the motivation and appropriate Rewards for lower Players. There's been a great deal of minimizing and distorting the issue, and I agree. It shouldn't be an easy street for lower Players to get Rewards beyond their level. Conversely, it shouldn't be something that higher Players have a way of preventing them from getting Rewards at all, just because it's a competition. Those two sacrifices are not absolute in my opinion. It's reasonable enough to want something that everyone benefits from in the way that's appropriate to where they're at, as well as their performance. The defining factor for me is on Kabam's side on what's appropriate, not popular opinion here. Ask the majority to answer honestly, and they'd say give them as little as possible. That's not reasonable, and it doesn't mean the argument is only about the Rewards just because the point is made.
I'm curious what a reasonable start would be, and not just for low accounts. I also noticed that you made no mention of one's roster strength or diversity, or a player's skill and knowledge of their champs (you mention skill in the mode but id say that's a different thing). As far as "c" being the emphasized concern, it's really just a reference point for "d" since the problems to be addressed with most of the suggestions are geared towards those players who, whether or not they are aware, are taking advantage of a loophole.
Sorry, I didn't see this comment. I wasn't ignoring it. A reasonable start isn't that ambiguous. It means the variation in strength between Accounts doesn't exceed a certain point. That doesn't necessarily have to look like completely equal metrics, but it doesn't mean anyone can match with anyone. Reasonable, as in there's no logical reasoning behind having such extremes in sizes at the onset of the competition. Roster strength seems to be used in some arguments and tossed aside in others, but I won't digress. In the system I proposed, the results would be based on Win/Loss after a certain number was achieved. Which is what everyone has been saying they want. I suggested numbers because they accommodate for more situations than Coins, and they're more easily adjustable depending on the progress marker a Player is at. Basically, it allows for a competition based on results where Players can progress or fall, regardless of what Title they have, but it makes it more advantageous to be higher up. Now, while your question was not about my suggestion, I was demonstrating that I am aware that those are factors. However, skill in BGs pertains to the skill in the competition itself. Knowledge of their Champs, and diversity, is already baked into it, so-to-speak. We're making use of what we have, and using Bans, to maximize the Nodes-du-jour. We're not being rewarded for everything else we've done in the game. BG skill is skill in BGs.
Again—I think you wanted to (and I’d like to) focus on specifics here if we can. This thread derailed a lot the past couple of weeks.
The reason why I wanted to focus on specifics in this case is that a lot of times it can ironically be the case that a lot of people superficially agree that something is wrong, but be unable to agree on the right way forward (so they actually do not really agree) and conversely people can superficially disagree about what is wrong and yet still agree on what the right way forward is. As a result, sometimes discussion can get bogged down in the past, while failing to make progress on the future, when the discussion focuses on generalities.
Because consensus is so hard to actually achieve, and so fragile when it is formed, if we can all agree that a suggestion is reasonable and appropriate, whether we each individually agree on the specifics of why its reasonable given our diverse perspectives and goals is less important than whether we can coexist comfortably in something new and debate why its good after we get it.
This is also practice for when the devs do whatever they are going to do. The odds of them implementing my suggestions in full are not high. They might do better. They might do equally well but in a completely different way. And they might just fall flat on their faces. It is important for us to be prepared to give their changes a fair shot, but also to focus on what's wrong if we think it is wrong. If we spend the first four weeks after changes are released debating about whether its wrong because it gives too much assistance to too many Uncollected players or punishes too many Paragon players, the devs will simply presume there's no consensus at all about anything, and thus their changes are just as good as any other.
If we can focus on the key things most of us all seem to want in at least some measure, and target criticism in those key areas, there's a window of opportunity that will open when the devs decide to take action. If they release major changes to the game mode to try to address these issues - or the issues as they see them - that means they will also have allocated significant resources to working on the mode. That will be the moment when our feedback can have the largest potential impact. That window doesn't stay open for long. Probably weeks, not (many) months.
We've all seen how the discussion can get side tracked, and we've seen where those side tracks go. Maybe when it counts the most, we can all try to avoid those more and concentrate the majority of our discussion at the game mode, and what we want from it, and why it does or doesn't achieve those goals.
@DNA3000 100%. Substantive comments and ideas often get subsumed by petty infighting and posturing. None of that generates actionable suggestions for improving BGs.
I pretty much agree completely with the points you listed @DrZola, so much so that after typing a rambling incoherent reply to it I've decided to just wipe the lot and leave it at that.
I pretty much agree completely with the points you listed @DrZola, so much so that after typing a rambling incoherent reply to it I've decided to just wipe the lot and leave it at that.
I just hope the developers are listening.
Appreciate the plug. I posted elsewhere this morning about the “zero-sum” aspect of BGs, which is part of what keeps pushing me away.
I’m not nearly as steeped in development theory as @DNA3000 but this is an aspect that has struck me (and I suspect others) as a weakness with this game mode.
For me, the real prize in BGs is the store. Some make a big deal about GC being the end goal. Maybe, but for me it is because of what I get along the way—at the end, my season prizes are largely just icing on the cake.
I realize this won’t be the case for players who score at the very top of GC, but that’s not most players. In fact, it’s really anyone who’s not top 500. Starting at rank 501 through rank 50,000, season prizes are a matter of 10K 6* shards plus some amount of 6* sig stones.
Alliance rank prizes aren’t that dissimilar, with rewards beyond the top 20% comprised of items largely available elsewhere in game for veteran players.
So where does this all leave me? One thing I have come to believe is that the rewards for participation alone—not just winning—need to be enhanced, either by increasing their absolute amounts or the frequency with which they can be earned.
Now, before anyone accuses me of being part of “participation trophy culture” (in real life, I’m as far from that perspective as you could imagine), I will make these points:
1. BGs is a mode that absolutely requires participation in order to exist. 2. Lower participation can ultimately doom BGs. 3. The BG store is the absolute best value in game today precisely because participation is so important for the mode to exist. 4. As long as other modes are going to continue to offer lesser prizes relative to BGs, then players should have more opportunities to obtain the BG currency. 5. A rewards system that essentially fast tracks accounts that do BGs versus those who don’t isn’t good for MCoC.
Keeping with my request for specific proposals, I would suggest either (1) more frequent BG objectives and/or (2) additional objectives based on type of champs used or total fights (not matches) won or matches won against “larger/bigger” opponents or some other metric.
None of this would have anything to do with matchmaking—that thorny knot of a problem could continue just as it is today. And none of it would impact prizes won along the way by progressing through VT or season end prizes for the very top competitors through the scrubs. And it would be available to everyone.
Bottom line: I think it would make what is currently a zero-sum game mode seem more rewarding to play and encourage participation.
That’s my suggestion. I’m sure it’s riddled with problems (game economy, participation trophyism, etc.) that others will point out. I will go ahead and tag @DNA3000 here to show me the error of my thinking. But it is the simplest way I can think of to boost participation and shift the frustration a number of players feel about a game mode the team readily admits will likely be a losing experience for the vast majority of players.
Honestly… while I’ve been quietly following the conversation the 2 things that hurt the game the most are much more simple than the complex questions and proposals here, and there is golden suggestions in this thread on those complex issues. But as long as:
1.) Modding runs rampant and get rewards for it 2.) Bugs like immediate KOs or you finish a fight only to get the spinning wheel of death, just for that fight to start again exist in moderate frequency in this game mode
Players will continue to feel that this mode is broken. Especially when it’s been made very grindy and time consuming. So while I applaud the current conversation it does feel a bit like ignoring the forest for your favorite trees
Honestly… while I’ve been quietly following the conversation the 2 things that hurt the game the most are much more simple than the complex questions and proposals here, and there is golden suggestions in this thread on those complex issues. But as long as:
1.) Modding runs rampant and get rewards for it 2.) Bugs like immediate KOs or you finish a fight only to get the spinning wheel of death, just for that fight to start again exist in moderate frequency in this game mode
Players will continue to feel that this mode is broken. Especially when it’s been made very grindy and time consuming. So while I applaud the current conversation it does feel a bit like ignoring the forest for your favorite trees
I agree—but I also suspect these are harder fixes than we might think. I wonder whether the disconnect KO has issues similar to the force close exploits that players used in AQ and elsewhere before the CRS gave questing one free shutdown per half hour (or whatever it is). How to determine whether a DC was player or system initiated?
As for modders, you’d think the eye-test would be sufficient for 80% of the cases but apparently it isn’t. Who knows why?
Honestly… while I’ve been quietly following the conversation the 2 things that hurt the game the most are much more simple than the complex questions and proposals here, and there is golden suggestions in this thread on those complex issues. But as long as:
1.) Modding runs rampant and get rewards for it 2.) Bugs like immediate KOs or you finish a fight only to get the spinning wheel of death, just for that fight to start again exist in moderate frequency in this game mode
Players will continue to feel that this mode is broken. Especially when it’s been made very grindy and time consuming. So while I applaud the current conversation it does feel a bit like ignoring the forest for your favorite trees
I would argue that this thread proposes a way to solve many players' pain points. The bugs are a universal problem, but there's no point to proposing solutions to those - because the solution is obvious. The modding issue is an issue, but it is the most complex issue to solve and it affects only a small percentage of the playerbase by more than a marginal amount.
It is important to not miss the forest for the trees, but I would argue that if basic participatory pain points are not addressed, the top tier players won't have modding to worry about any more because the game mode will die. A competitive game mode must first and foremost be a reasonable competition or it is pointless, but a competitive game mode that relies upon player density to exist that fails to be tolerable to the wider playerbase simply won't exist at all.
This is the same dynamic we see with balancing the whales against the F2P players in a microtransaction supported game. Without the whales and other spenders, the game cannot exist. But without the 95% of F2P players that are going along for the ride, the game wouldn't exist.
It is possible to have a competition that caters only to the top competitors. But it is not possible to have a competitive game mode that must justify its existence in a monetized F2P game that caters only to the top competitors. The expense to manage it would be impossible to justify.
An irony here is that the most competitive players are also on average the most resilient. They will continue to compete and push for higher ranks even if the game mode is problematic. That doesn't mean they are willing to tolerate anything and that doesn't mean we won't lose a few, but history shows they are more likely to keep coming back over and over and over again no matter the pain, because that's how top competitors treat pain. It is everyone else that won't do that. Most players will not tolerate even relatively small amounts of game play pain before they decide to move on. That's true for game modes and entire games. Battlegrounds is especially sensitive to this, because of its turnstile. MCOC as a game can survive with 10% fewer players, and even 40% fewer players. But BG as a game mode cannot survive below a certain minimum density where matches become too hard to find. At that point, as other games have discovered, you can enter a death spiral where every player that quits makes the mode harder to maintain, causing other people to quit.
Others may disagree, but in my opinion these issues are the keystone issues for BG. They aren't targeted at my favorite trees, they are targeted at the minimum effort necessary to make sure the forest itself survives.
That’s my suggestion. I’m sure it’s riddled with problems (game economy, participation trophyism, etc.) that others will point out. I will go ahead and tag @DNA3000 here to show me the error of my thinking. But it is the simplest way I can think of to boost participation and shift the frustration a number of players feel about a game mode the team readily admits will likely be a losing experience for the vast majority of players.
In my opinion, I believe the issues I referenced are not the kind of issues we should be attempting to address by increasing rewards. While you would boost participation if you increased the VT rewards enough, the problem is that this is only a temporary solution. First of all, I think the rewards are already so high that they will compel compensating reward adjustments everywhere else in the game eventually. In other words, the situation that players feel that BG is the best source for rewards is unsustainable. As a result, no matter how high the rewards get, they will eventually not be so unusually high on a comparative basis forever. And if you're trying to convince players to play BG, it is not the absolute value of the rewards that is important, it is their relative value compared to other activities. The net value after opportunity cost, in other words. Other game modes will likely catch up, to at least some degree.
Related to this but separate from this, rewards are like a drug. Players get used to them. No matter how high you make the rewards, players will eventually normalize around them and their ability to incentivize participation will disappear. Some of this is due to game inflation, but a lot of it is due to player psychology. Once players know that a certain level of rewards is achievable, they ratched their expectations upward. If *that* is not impossible to get, then something *even higher* should be reasonable to expect.
In my opinion, you can incentivize content that is otherwise uncompelling with increased rewards. But when you try to incentivize content that is hostile with increased rewards you're playing with fire. What starts off as player bribery will eventually turn around and become developer extortion. And while you could say that about all in-game rewards, I think on a more nuanced level there's a difference between incentivizing and overwhelming reward bribery, even if it is difficult to quantify.
As we saw with Dungeons, this can also dramatically accelerate burn out. When a game mode is hostile to players but the rewards compel players to play it anyway, this can become a problem unto itself. Players begin to see the problems in the game mode as not things to avoid but as problems that are unavoidable. And I think that's also something we want to try to avoid to the best degree possible in BG. I suspect this is one factor explaining why BG objectives are every 48 hours not daily. The devs wanted the objectives to not be something players felt compelled to chase continuously.
That’s my suggestion. I’m sure it’s riddled with problems (game economy, participation trophyism, etc.) that others will point out. I will go ahead and tag @DNA3000 here to show me the error of my thinking. But it is the simplest way I can think of to boost participation and shift the frustration a number of players feel about a game mode the team readily admits will likely be a losing experience for the vast majority of players.
In my opinion, I believe the issues I referenced are not the kind of issues we should be attempting to address by increasing rewards. While you would boost participation if you increased the VT rewards enough, the problem is that this is only a temporary solution. First of all, I think the rewards are already so high that they will compel compensating reward adjustments everywhere else in the game eventually. In other words, the situation that players feel that BG is the best source for rewards is unsustainable. As a result, no matter how high the rewards get, they will eventually not be so unusually high on a comparative basis forever. And if you're trying to convince players to play BG, it is not the absolute value of the rewards that is important, it is their relative value compared to other activities. The net value after opportunity cost, in other words. Other game modes will likely catch up, to at least some degree.
Related to this but separate from this, rewards are like a drug. Players get used to them. No matter how high you make the rewards, players will eventually normalize around them and their ability to incentivize participation will disappear. Some of this is due to game inflation, but a lot of it is due to player psychology. Once players know that a certain level of rewards is achievable, they ratched their expectations upward. If *that* is not impossible to get, then something *even higher* should be reasonable to expect.
In my opinion, you can incentivize content that is otherwise uncompelling with increased rewards. But when you try to incentivize content that is hostile with increased rewards you're playing with fire. What starts off as player bribery will eventually turn around and become developer extortion. And while you could say that about all in-game rewards, I think on a more nuanced level there's a difference between incentivizing and overwhelming reward bribery, even if it is difficult to quantify.
As we saw with Dungeons, this can also dramatically accelerate burn out. When a game mode is hostile to players but the rewards compel players to play it anyway, this can become a problem unto itself. Players begin to see the problems in the game mode as not things to avoid but as problems that are unavoidable. And I think that's also something we want to try to avoid to the best degree possible in BG. I suspect this is one factor explaining why BG objectives are every 48 hours not daily. The devs wanted the objectives to not be something players felt compelled to chase continuously.
Appreciate your thoughts.
I think that’s why I would calibrate slowly, perhaps even by progression level.
Two complaints that are “popular” on forums today are (1) that people may delay rankups to stay in advantageous competitive silos and (2) that the mode feels punitive because it is literally a zero sum game and veterans smashing each other in the face in Bronze can be discouraging.
Why do Bronze BGs have fewer objectives? Likely because the team wanted to incentivize VT progression. But doesn’t the incentive structure at each tier do that already? What if Paragons (who, quite honestly, face the stiffest competition in BGs) had the full set of objectives starting at Bronze instead of adding more each nominal tier?
If overall rewards are the concern, rebalancing rewards between progression and participation could also an area to explore—by allocating more tokens to more participation and total win objectives at the lower tiers (Bronze/Silver) and away from actual VT tier progression at those same tiers.
Fixing matchmaking would be great. But it’s complex. Shifting rewards early on to favor participation more and relieve initial frustration is far easier and doable now.
Honestly… while I’ve been quietly following the conversation the 2 things that hurt the game the most are much more simple than the complex questions and proposals here, and there is golden suggestions in this thread on those complex issues. But as long as:
1.) Modding runs rampant and get rewards for it 2.) Bugs like immediate KOs or you finish a fight only to get the spinning wheel of death, just for that fight to start again exist in moderate frequency in this game mode
Players will continue to feel that this mode is broken. Especially when it’s been made very grindy and time consuming. So while I applaud the current conversation it does feel a bit like ignoring the forest for your favorite trees
I would argue that this thread proposes a way to solve many players' pain points. The bugs are a universal problem, but there's no point to proposing solutions to those - because the solution is obvious. The modding issue is an issue, but it is the most complex issue to solve and it affects only a small percentage of the playerbase by more than a marginal amount.
It is important to not miss the forest for the trees, but I would argue that if basic participatory pain points are not addressed, the top tier players won't have modding to worry about any more because the game mode will die. A competitive game mode must first and foremost be a reasonable competition or it is pointless, but a competitive game mode that relies upon player density to exist that fails to be tolerable to the wider playerbase simply won't exist at all.
This is the same dynamic we see with balancing the whales against the F2P players in a microtransaction supported game. Without the whales and other spenders, the game cannot exist. But without the 95% of F2P players that are going along for the ride, the game wouldn't exist.
It is possible to have a competition that caters only to the top competitors. But it is not possible to have a competitive game mode that must justify its existence in a monetized F2P game that caters only to the top competitors. The expense to manage it would be impossible to justify.
An irony here is that the most competitive players are also on average the most resilient. They will continue to compete and push for higher ranks even if the game mode is problematic. That doesn't mean they are willing to tolerate anything and that doesn't mean we won't lose a few, but history shows they are more likely to keep coming back over and over and over again no matter the pain, because that's how top competitors treat pain. It is everyone else that won't do that. Most players will not tolerate even relatively small amounts of game play pain before they decide to move on. That's true for game modes and entire games. Battlegrounds is especially sensitive to this, because of its turnstile. MCOC as a game can survive with 10% fewer players, and even 40% fewer players. But BG as a game mode cannot survive below a certain minimum density where matches become too hard to find. At that point, as other games have discovered, you can enter a death spiral where every player that quits makes the mode harder to maintain, causing other people to quit.
Others may disagree, but in my opinion these issues are the keystone issues for BG. They aren't targeted at my favorite trees, they are targeted at the minimum effort necessary to make sure the forest itself survives.
I think we will have to disagree on some the points you raise here as I feel you are grossly underestimating the number of modders and the impact they have on anyone’s experience. This isn’t a top tier problem, as many modders have Caviler account sizes witch no depth.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
You know what kabams only problem is with cheaters? They need to INVESTIGATE accounts that have legends title and 4 star champs in profile. Their INVESTIGATION is killing the game in terms of BG. While they INVESTIGATE 10 or maybe 100 more cheat accounts go unnoticed. Its like going to a bank wich successfully gets robbed every week. If i was a new player and i heard that the game devs cant keep cheaters from cheating in most competitive pvp mode it has i would NEVER trust this game with my time or money. Back in the day i thought there were VERY few cheaters in AW and i had no problem with someone exploring abyss and getting banned after. But this SOFT SOFT WEAK!!!! policy on cheating in BG is blowing my brain up. No need to INVESTIGATE the most obvious cheaters that a 10 year old can spot.
I agree with you i would NUKE them to orbit. One month ban on BG first time and SECOND TIME lifetime ban. FOREVER! Kabam underastimates the importance of a cheater cheating SECOND time. Thats not A LITTLE more than one timer. It shows intent and resolve that they got nothing to loose a.k.a they dont give a damn for the account because if my account got banned one time i would be CAREFUL BEYOND BELIEF cause its a huge stack of my money and time and emotions connected to journey.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
You know what kabams only problem is with cheaters? They need to INVESTIGATE accounts that have legends title and 4 star champs in profile. Their INVESTIGATION is killing the game in terms of BG. While they INVESTIGATE 10 or maybe 100 more cheat accounts go unnoticed. Its like going to a bank wich successfully gets robbed every week. If i was a new player and i heard that the game devs cant keep cheaters from cheating in most competitive pvp mode it has i would NEVER trust this game with my time or money. Back in the day i thought there were VERY few cheaters in AW and i had no problem with someone exploring abyss and getting banned after. But this SOFT SOFT WEAK!!!! policy on cheating in BG is blowing my brain up. No need to INVESTIGATE the most obvious cheaters that a 10 year old can spot.
I agree with you i would NUKE them to orbit. One month ban on BG first time and SECOND TIME lifetime ban. FOREVER! Kabam underastimates the importance of a cheater cheating SECOND time. Thats not A LITTLE more than one timer. It shows intent and resolve that they got nothing to loose a.k.a they dont give a damn for the account because if my account got banned one time i would be CAREFUL BEYOND BELIEF cause its a huge stack of my money and time and emotions connected to journey.
On paper, that might seem like retribution, but in practical terms, that's very dangerous. There's a reason for a process of investigation. Rarely have we seen these actions reversible. The last thing we need is a "Ban now, ask questions later." approach. I wouldn't want the off-chance that goes wrong.
In my opinion, you can incentivize content that is otherwise uncompelling with increased rewards. But when you try to incentivize content that is hostile with increased rewards you're playing with fire.
Without the whales and other spenders, the game cannot exist. But without the 95% of F2P players that are going along for the ride, the game wouldn't exist.
It is possible to have a competition that caters only to the top competitors. But it is not possible to have a competitive game mode that must justify its existence in a monetized F2P game that caters only to the top competitors. The expense to manage it would be impossible to justify.
An irony here is that the most competitive players are also on average the most resilient. They will continue to compete and push for higher ranks even if the game mode is problematic. That doesn't mean they are willing to tolerate anything and that doesn't mean we won't lose a few, but history shows they are more likely to keep coming back over and over and over again no matter the pain, because that's how top competitors treat pain. It is everyone else that won't do that. Most players will not tolerate even relatively small amounts of game play pain before they decide to move on.
First, an observation, any change to BGs (or no change) will be hostile to some players. In a zero-sum game mode like BG, improving the path to progress for one set of players will lead to slower progress for another. Someone has to take it on the chin and bear the losses. Unless, the system is changed so that everyone can progress faster (or at least no one will progress slower). Realistically, I would expect that there will be some player groups who will lose out.
Next, would it be possible to understand the distribution of competitors vs. casual player on a spenders / F2P grouping? I would think that the whales and heavy spenders are not the most affected by the BG set up. Its the heavy competitors who don't spend or spend minimally. They are high enough on the progression tier but are some way off from the top. Most of them, as you pointed out, will probably continue to participate because they are competitive. Whatever solution is implemented would look to keep casual players who are spenders happy and try to retain a reasonable proportion of casual F2P players. Increased hostility feels like a poor way to keep those players on.
This suggests that overall progression rates in BG would have to go up for BG to be a competition in the real sense. Without that casual players will reduce participation.
In my opinion, you can incentivize content that is otherwise uncompelling with increased rewards. But when you try to incentivize content that is hostile with increased rewards you're playing with fire.
Without the whales and other spenders, the game cannot exist. But without the 95% of F2P players that are going along for the ride, the game wouldn't exist.
It is possible to have a competition that caters only to the top competitors. But it is not possible to have a competitive game mode that must justify its existence in a monetized F2P game that caters only to the top competitors. The expense to manage it would be impossible to justify.
An irony here is that the most competitive players are also on average the most resilient. They will continue to compete and push for higher ranks even if the game mode is problematic. That doesn't mean they are willing to tolerate anything and that doesn't mean we won't lose a few, but history shows they are more likely to keep coming back over and over and over again no matter the pain, because that's how top competitors treat pain. It is everyone else that won't do that. Most players will not tolerate even relatively small amounts of game play pain before they decide to move on.
First, an observation, any change to BGs (or no change) will be hostile to some players. In a zero-sum game mode like BG, improving the path to progress for one set of players will lead to slower progress for another. Someone has to take it on the chin and bear the losses. Unless, the system is changed so that everyone can progress faster (or at least no one will progress slower). Realistically, I would expect that there will be some player groups who will lose out.
Next, would it be possible to understand the distribution of competitors vs. casual player on a spenders / F2P grouping? I would think that the whales and heavy spenders are not the most affected by the BG set up. Its the heavy competitors who don't spend or spend minimally. They are high enough on the progression tier but are some way off from the top. Most of them, as you pointed out, will probably continue to participate because they are competitive. Whatever solution is implemented would look to keep casual players who are spenders happy and try to retain a reasonable proportion of casual F2P players. Increased hostility feels like a poor way to keep those players on.
This suggests that overall progression rates in BG would have to go up for BG to be a competition in the real sense. Without that casual players will reduce participation.
That’s something that all people agree. The overall progression rates in BGs need to go up, else participation will drop and the mode will enter the death spiral. The mode won’t survive for long with the 65%+ win ratio needed to advance at VT (in a pace that makes time to rewards ratio reasonable). Kabam needs to rework the win/lose number of shields, or restructure VT at all, in order to ensure that percentage drops from 60%+ to ~40%. Also to help this way, they need to rework Victory Shields to persist until you actually lose a match, and lower their price so they will be more affordable, and an efficient solution for those who have very low win ratio. Battlegrounds participation has already start dropping, and that’s not an opinion, that’s data. People are getting tired of the zero sum game. Kabam needs to act fast, before BGs become Incursions 2.0.
It is, however, worth noting that there has not been a single suggestion that everyone has unanimously agreed with.
Challenge accepted.
In my opinion, the Battlegrounds game mode has three primary issues that I believe represent the majority of objections for the design of BG. Things like modding and other cheating are excluded from this, as this is a matter of managing the mode, not designing the mode. I call these three issues the three Fs (most people just call them one F): Frustration, Frivolousness, and Fairness. I'm going to tackle all three in one overarching set of suggestions. To keep things reasonably readable, I'm not going to overly justify every single suggestion, but I will say that I have discussed all three to at least some length elsewhere on the forums.
There is a TL;DR at the end, but I still think it is worth reviewing the why and the details of each suggestion in the TL;DR. Details matter.
Frustration
I think there are a lot of players who experience some degree of frustration due to a particular design decision: you can lose tropies. There are reasons why this decision exists, but the simplified version is: the intent was for players in VT to experience something similar to players who are competing in GC experience: eventually you rise to your level of competition and start winning at a 50% rate. The "win one lose one" trophy scoring system is intended to, in a sense, create a situation where a player will eventually stop climbing. This isn't strictly true but the *intent* was for players to climb quickly, winning and not losing trophies, when they were stronger than the competition, and then stop (or at least radically slow) progressing when they reach equal competition.
However, in practice this doesn't happen as gracefully. For one thing, BG seasons do not last long enough for competitors to "sort" themselves out. Most players don't reach this "equal competition" point. And players do not just alternate wins and losses. Sometimes they win a few, sometimes they lose a few. But regardless, there's a psychological impact to the way this works that goes beyond the math. Even when this is working as intended, it is psychologically crushing.
No one wants to play a game mode where they win one and lose one, when what they see is they gain a trophy then lose a trophy. Losing progress is awful for most players. Now, if you are one of the top 5% of players, you're going to lose one only every so often. It sucks, but it is not hard to shake it off and move on. When you're winning and losing back and forth often, you will be losing almost as many trophies as you are gaining. You are constantly backsliding, constantly losing progress. There is nothing more disheartening than finally winning two trophies after dozens of matches, only to lose two in a row and be back to square one.
Nothing can completely eliminate this, in fact in a competition you don't ever want to eliminate the pain of losing entirely. However, I believe there's a way to greatly soften the blow. We change how we award trophies. Right now we get one for a win, and we lose one for a loss. My recommendation:
If you win a match two wins to zero, you gain two trophies If you win a match two wins to one loss, you gain one trophy If you lose a match one win to two losses, you stay even If you lose a match zero wins to two losses, you lose one trophy
What does this do? Well, it does four separate things simultaneously:
1. Very strong players will advance faster than less strong players. This rewards competitively stronger players in VT.
2. By virtue of #1 above, this accelerates the sorting of players in VT. When the stronger players promote faster, the less strong players don't have to compete against them in the lower levels. There's fewer losses whose sole reason for happening is to allow the stronger players to climb over the rest to get to GC (or higher VT).
3. This reduces the pain of backsliding. Players who lose will backslide less, because 50% of their losses will not result in loss of trophies.
4. This decreases the sense of futility in matches that appear to be lost. Sometimes random chance will put you up against a player that just seems to have your number, or the draft will hand you a disadvantageous situation. It can be easy to just throw up your hands and give up, and blame the game for screwing you. But with this type of scoring, even in bad situations there's still something to play for. Instead of trying against hope to win the match and avoid losing a trophy, you could at least try to steal one win. Get one win, and at least you don't go backwards. Not only does this give you something to fight for, it also reduces the opportunity to psychologically blame all losses on the match system or random chance. It would be more likely that you had at least some chance to get one win and save the match, putting your fate at least nominally in your hands.
Because this scoring system also increases the speed of advance through VT, VT tiers will almost certainly require more trophies to advance. My tentative recommendation here is to increase Bronze from two to three, Silver and Gold from three to four, Platinum and Diamond from three to five, Diamond 1 from four to six, and Vibranium from five to seven. However, these numbers may need to be adjusted for player advancement rates.
Frivolousness
Many players believe that it doesn't make sense that a player spends time climbing all the way up to GC, then starts again at Bronze 3 the following season and has to do it all over again. The counter-argument is that just because they climbed that high, doesn't mean they should automatically bypass that requirement next season. But in fact, this requirement doesn't just impact the higher tier players. It also hurts everyone else, as the only way for those players to climb back to GC is to step all over the weaker players. Every time they win, another weaker player has to lose, and potentially lose trophies. Top tier players are not winning trophies, they are taking trophies away from lesser players. So the notion that allowing them to start higher is just handing them an advantage is false. It is not just letting them get to GC sooner, it is also letting everyone else keep more trophies in the process.
But if we allow players to start higher than Bronze 3, we are actually taking rewards away from them. A big chunk of rewards comes from the advancement through VT itself. If a player were to start at GC directly, for example, they'd be out a ton of rewards (something like 135900 tokens for one). They would need a way to earn those rewards.
I say earn. Some have suggested just handing them those rewards. That won't work for three reasons: first, if they are just handed those rewards, they wouldn't even need to play BG to get them. We'd be rewarding players over and over for something they did a while ago. Second, this would be exploitable. There would be ways for players to participate minimally and still get tons of rewards. And third, VT rewards only exist to promote participation. Kabam will not give participation rewards to players who don't participate, because that's just dumb.
The way we can allow players to start at higher tiers while still earning those rewards is to use the same objective system that is currently used to give VT players access to other participation rewards. We make one objective for each VT track, and if a player starts higher than that track they gain access to those objectives. So if a player starts at Silver 3, they get objectives for Bronze 2 and Bronze 1 (consecutively) that they can fulfill by actually playing BG. These objectives expire at the end of the season, so they can only earn them in the season they start higher.
Where should a player start? In my opinion, we can't start them where they left off. There should be some decay in the system. Otherwise once a player fights their way into GC, they get all the VT rewards forever without even needing to win a match in GC. That's too exploitable, and too tempting for players to try to game the system. A safer option is to start players one full tier lower. So if they end in Bronze or Silver, they start at the beginning again. If they end anywhere in Gold, they start at Silver 3 (the beginning of Silver). If they end in Platinum they start at Gold 3 (the beginning of Gold). Etc. Even GC players will have to start at Vibranium and fight their way back into GC. Also, this decay is per season. If you end at Vibranium you will start the next season in Diamond. But even if you don't play any matches, you will start the following season in Gold (because you "started" the last season in Platinum whether you played any matches or not). Idle players will eventually decay back to the start.
The net result is top tier players don't have to grind all the way through VT again, which not only helps them but it also helps everyone else who no longer has to lose to them (losing trophies in the process). And weaker players will not have to face stronger players, even in the VT, to the same degree they do now, particularly at the start of the season when everyone "resets."
Fairness
The big banana. Probably the most controversial issue in BG. Right now, observations strongly imply that when the devs eliminated deck-based matching they implement some form of roster strength matching instead. In other words, the game "measures" your roster strength and uses that to find "equal" matches. It is like prestige matching, but probably not actually prestige (it is probably something like prestige but calculated over your top 30 champs rather than top 5, but no one knows with absolute certainty). In any event, roster strength matching has basically all the same issues that prestige matching has. But to explain what those are, it is important to take a moment to explain how ELO matching works, and why it is used. In particular, it is used in Alliance War matching, and even in the GC of Battlegrounds itself.
ELO matching calculates a rating score for every competitor that is based on their wins and losses. Specifically, whenever you win or lose to another opponent, the game increases your rating if you win and decreases your rating if you lose (same for your opponent). Moreover, the stronger your opponent the larger the change. If you beat an opponent with higher rating your own rating goes up more than if you beat someone with lower rating. The math is complicated but explicitly designed to push all competitors to a "natural" rating which represents how strong they actually are, based on how well they do against everyone else. If two competitors have 1700 rating, they should win against each other about half the time. If one has 1800 and the other has 1700, you'd expect the 1800 to win more often (the percentage advantage is actually calculable).
The implicit assumption built into ELO matching is that all things being equal, players should have to face equally strong players. And ELO defines how strong they are. Roster strength does not define how strong a player is. A player with a large roster can be weaker than a player with a much smaller roster in actual gameplay. We don't match rosters, we match players. And ELO is self-correcting. We have no idea how strong a player is until we watch him play. But even if we assign a totally random rating to that player, their rating will move towards the correct one. If we give him a rating that is lower than his actual strength he will win more often (because he will be matching against players equal to his rating, which is lower than his actual strength), and his rating will go up. If we give him a rating that is higher than his actual strength he will lose more often and his rating will go down.
The mechanics of ELO mean that over time everyone will match closer to their actual playing strength, because their rating keeps changing to reflect their strength. Any other metric that is independent of win/loss record fails in this. If we match with any other criteria, be it prestige or roster strength or the height of the player, those metrics cannot possibly accurately measure the player's true battlegrounds strength. They will be "wrong." But for every player whose matching metric is wrong, it will basically be permanently wrong. If they are being matched against players weaker than they are, they will always match against the same weaker players, getting a free ride to GC. If they are being matched against stronger players, they will always match against those same stronger players and get screwed. And there's nothing they can do about it.
The discussion surrounding this problem has morphed into a discussion of whether it is fair for Paragons to face Uncollected players or if it is fair for Cavalier players to only fight other Cav players. But this actually misses the real problem. The real problem is not that the current roster strength system makes it easier for Cavs and harder for Paragons. Not all Paragons are hurt by the current system. Not all Uncollecteds are helped. Rather, the problem is for every roster strength from UC to Paragon, there are players who are matching against incorrect competition because we are using a metric that doesn't represent their true strength. And the game is currently ignoring everyone's win/loss record that is telling the game who is stronger and who is weaker.
Weaker players are getting matched against stronger players. Not just Paragons, not just Uncollecteds, but everyone across the entire game. Some players are getting an unfair advantage and some are getting an unfair disadvantage, and the system never self-corrects this. In Alliance War, even new alliances that start with zero rating quickly climb to higher ratings because they win. Because they win, their rating improves, until they are fighting the right competition. In Battlegrounds GC, the same thing happens. Winners climb the rating ladder and are forced to face other winners who are also climbing the rating ladder. Losers fall, but they then face other loses and have a chance to climb back up again.
(Almost) Everyone wants fair competition in general. Everyone says fair competition is where people face "equal" competition. But the problem is everyone defines "equal" differently. I believe the correct definition is: equal competition is when equally strong competitors face each other. Not when equal rosters face each other. Not when equal decks face each other. When equal competitors face each other.
This is probably the most controversial issue across all Battleground issues. I don't really expect to gain perfect consensus here. But I think even this most radioactive of disputes has at least some general consensus. The problem is that some people don't actually want perfectly fair competition, because there's another factor to consider: participation. Competitions are meant for competitors but not all players are equally interested and driven to compete. But the BG game mode needs participants. It needs to fill its turnstile. It needs players to match each other, in real time. Without that density of participants, the mode will fail.
The devs recognized this as well, which is why BG even has a VT and GC. The GC is the pure competition for the top competitors. The VT is intended to be a more balanced participation-driven and competition-driven mode. We want people to participate in VT, but we don't want to wreck the competitive elements completely. Some people feel that roster-matching is more appropriate to encourage participation. And I agree, to a point.
We already have two match systems: roster strength and ELO. They already exist. And I think most people would agree or at least accept that in the very early stages of VT, roster matching is not altogether wrong. In fact I would argue it makes perfect sense. ELO requires actual matches to "refine" its numbers. Until a player has played enough matches, won and lost enough fights against enough players, their ELO score is simply a guess. That guess gets better the more matches they play. So it is fair to say that there is at least some window of time where ELO is not actually as good as it nominally is. So if we know two things about a player, their roster strength and their ELO, but their ELO is shaky, there's no reason why we couldn't match on roster strength until we had enough confidence in ELO to start using ELO.
Ideally we would want a match system that started off looking like Roster matching and ended up looking like ELO matching. So what if instead of inventing a new match system we created a sliding scale of matching. We create a new metric, a "confidence metric" that tells us how much to "trust" ELO. This starts at zero. Every time the player enlists, we randomly pick Roster Match or ELO Match. The confidence score tells us how often to use ELO. When it is at zero, the player will always match Roster. But as confidence rises, the probability they will match according to their ELO also rises. When the confidence score is 50, the game will match them by Roster 50% of the time and ELO 50% of the time. Over time, the player will get "exposed" to more and more ELO-driven matches. If they were getting all weak matches and they were winning most of the time, their match ups will get stronger. Conversely if they were getting all strong matches and they were losing most of the time, their match ups will get weaker over time to a more appropriate level. And when confidence reaches 100, the player will be matching ELO all the time, and leave Roster matching behind.
We could simply set confidence to the number of matches played times ten. So after ten matches players were pure ELO. Or we could do this by tier: all Bronze tier players have confidence zero, all Silver players have confidence 25, and so on. My preference is for players to have confidence zero for their first five matches, then have confidence increase by 10 for every match lost and 15 for every match won.
Also, anyone who starts higher than Bronze due to #2 retains their ELO and confidence rating.
By the way, we have to TELL the players what's going on. The players will never trust a match system they don't understand and have no idea what's happening, and that's especially true of this one. If they are getting a Roster match or an ELO match, the game has to signal that. Otherwise the player will just be mystified why they are sometimes getting strong matches and sometimes weak ones, seemingly randomly (because it is). Players have to understand why the game is doing what it is doing so at least they can comprehend why the game is behaving the way it is. They might not agree, but it is much worse when they think the game is being randomly capricious.
Okay, so here's the TL;DR:
1. Change scoring from win = +1 trophy loss = -1 trophy to:
Win 2/0 = +2 trophies Win 2/1 = +1 trophy Loss 1/2 = even Loss 0/2 = -1 trophy
Increase number of tokens required to promote to compensate.
2. Start everyone one full tier lower than they ended the previous season. If the player ended in GC, start in Vibranium. Add solo objectives to allow players starting higher in VT to earn the missed VT progress rewards.
3. Start everyone matching by Roster strength, use a confidence parameter to slowly shift to ELO matching.
Yeah, I don't actually think I'm going to get universal agreement to all of this, or even any of this. But I believe this represents something most players would accept as reasonably fair for the most part, and acceptable enough where it isn't, at least compared to the current system. But, time to find out. Kabam thinks we don't all agree how to move BG forward, and they are right: we don't all agree. But can we is the real question.
Also, I did try to keep this as short as possible. I really, really tried:
This particular individual is expressing themselves in a pleasing manner ⬆️
In my opinion, you can incentivize content that is otherwise uncompelling with increased rewards. But when you try to incentivize content that is hostile with increased rewards you're playing with fire.
Without the whales and other spenders, the game cannot exist. But without the 95% of F2P players that are going along for the ride, the game wouldn't exist.
It is possible to have a competition that caters only to the top competitors. But it is not possible to have a competitive game mode that must justify its existence in a monetized F2P game that caters only to the top competitors. The expense to manage it would be impossible to justify.
An irony here is that the most competitive players are also on average the most resilient. They will continue to compete and push for higher ranks even if the game mode is problematic. That doesn't mean they are willing to tolerate anything and that doesn't mean we won't lose a few, but history shows they are more likely to keep coming back over and over and over again no matter the pain, because that's how top competitors treat pain. It is everyone else that won't do that. Most players will not tolerate even relatively small amounts of game play pain before they decide to move on.
First, an observation, any change to BGs (or no change) will be hostile to some players.
Yes, I agree. The hardest part about addressing any systemic game design problem is that for all possible designs and all possible changes to that design, at least one person will like them and at least one person will hate them. The trick is not the find something everyone will like, because that's impossible. The hard part is finding something that the largest possible subset of players will like, and the overwhelming majority can at least live with.
This is what I attempted to do, to see if it was even achievable. Some subset of people like my ideas. Some different subset of people don't especially like my ideas but think its better than the current system and could live with them. Hopefully only a small group of players outright hate them and couldn't live with them. I think that number is small, but the forums can only go so far in determining that. We are not a perfectly representative group of players. But I think while we aren't statistically representative, we do tend to at least encompass a wide range of contradictory viewpoints, such that if there was someone out there that hated these ideas, there's probably at least one person in here who hates them just as much for similar reasons.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
You know what kabams only problem is with cheaters? They need to INVESTIGATE accounts that have legends title and 4 star champs in profile. Their INVESTIGATION is killing the game in terms of BG. While they INVESTIGATE 10 or maybe 100 more cheat accounts go unnoticed. Its like going to a bank wich successfully gets robbed every week. If i was a new player and i heard that the game devs cant keep cheaters from cheating in most competitive pvp mode it has i would NEVER trust this game with my time or money. Back in the day i thought there were VERY few cheaters in AW and i had no problem with someone exploring abyss and getting banned after. But this SOFT SOFT WEAK!!!! policy on cheating in BG is blowing my brain up. No need to INVESTIGATE the most obvious cheaters that a 10 year old can spot.
I agree with you i would NUKE them to orbit. One month ban on BG first time and SECOND TIME lifetime ban. FOREVER! Kabam underastimates the importance of a cheater cheating SECOND time. Thats not A LITTLE more than one timer. It shows intent and resolve that they got nothing to loose a.k.a they dont give a damn for the account because if my account got banned one time i would be CAREFUL BEYOND BELIEF cause its a huge stack of my money and time and emotions connected to journey.
On paper, that might seem like retribution, but in practical terms, that's very dangerous. There's a reason for a process of investigation. Rarely have we seen these actions reversible. The last thing we need is a "Ban now, ask questions later." approach. I wouldn't want the off-chance that goes wrong.
I agree that this shouldnt be applied left and right BUT !!!!! There are THOSE ACCOUNTS man. Those EYE HURTING explored abyss, legends, BG one shotters with 6 star groot rank 1 lvl 21 as best champ (cause even cheaters have iso problems ahahaha). Theres endless rage and anger in me when i think about kabam employee seeing that and going YEAH A WEEK IS ENOUGH FOR HIM.
Weak punishments are as effective as no punishments, the current state of the game could be characterized as pro cheater just reviewing this area of the ToS…
Fixing matchmaking would be great. But it’s complex. Shifting rewards early on to favor participation more and relieve initial frustration is far easier and doable now.
I'm not sure it is easier.
Hypothetically, if I was God of Video Games and I could command all game designers to do my bidding and I was answerable to no one and everyone feared my power, then yes this would be easier. However, in practice I'm barely Gopher of Video Games and the only thing game designers fear is a producer might assign them to read one of my posts.
Because balancing rewards in the way you're describing is as much a matter of judgment as it is objective reality, there's no particular reason for a game designer to trust my judgment over their own. They have the data I don't have, they have the systems information I have at best crude models of, and they have balance objectives I'm unaware of. I would be trying to win a hand of poker while only being dealt three cards.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
You know what kabams only problem is with cheaters? They need to INVESTIGATE accounts that have legends title and 4 star champs in profile. Their INVESTIGATION is killing the game in terms of BG. While they INVESTIGATE 10 or maybe 100 more cheat accounts go unnoticed. Its like going to a bank wich successfully gets robbed every week. If i was a new player and i heard that the game devs cant keep cheaters from cheating in most competitive pvp mode it has i would NEVER trust this game with my time or money. Back in the day i thought there were VERY few cheaters in AW and i had no problem with someone exploring abyss and getting banned after. But this SOFT SOFT WEAK!!!! policy on cheating in BG is blowing my brain up. No need to INVESTIGATE the most obvious cheaters that a 10 year old can spot.
I agree with you i would NUKE them to orbit. One month ban on BG first time and SECOND TIME lifetime ban. FOREVER! Kabam underastimates the importance of a cheater cheating SECOND time. Thats not A LITTLE more than one timer. It shows intent and resolve that they got nothing to loose a.k.a they dont give a damn for the account because if my account got banned one time i would be CAREFUL BEYOND BELIEF cause its a huge stack of my money and time and emotions connected to journey.
On paper, that might seem like retribution, but in practical terms, that's very dangerous. There's a reason for a process of investigation. Rarely have we seen these actions reversible. The last thing we need is a "Ban now, ask questions later." approach. I wouldn't want the off-chance that goes wrong.
In the US criminal justice system, the standard of proof is "proof beyond reasonable doubt." Not proof beyond all doubt, and not absolute certainty. We live in a world where you can go to jail on less than absolute certainty, because absolute certainty doesn't exist. A criminal justice system that required absolute certainty would be non-functional.
No one wants to see players banned accidentally. But if we aim for perfection, the system won't work at all. We need a system where there's no *reasonable* doubt, perhaps with an explicit appeal process, but we cannot require absolutely no doubt.
I would not advocate for skipping steps in TOS investigations. I don't advocate for Kabam speeding up the process at the cost of investigation accuracy. But when they make the call, they have to stand by the call and act accordingly. They can't say "well, we just don't know, and we will never know." You put yourself on the jury, and you decide the defendant is guilty or innocent. And you will never know if you were right or wrong. But you make the call, or you tell the judge right up front you're incapable of serving on juries.
Fixing matchmaking would be great. But it’s complex. Shifting rewards early on to favor participation more and relieve initial frustration is far easier and doable now.
I'm not sure it is easier.
Hypothetically, if I was God of Video Games and I could command all game designers to do my bidding and I was answerable to no one and everyone feared my power, then yes this would be easier. However, in practice I'm barely Gopher of Video Games and the only thing game designers fear is a producer might assign them to read one of my posts.
Because balancing rewards in the way you're describing is as much a matter of judgment as it is objective reality, there's no particular reason for a game designer to trust my judgment over their own. They have the data I don't have, they have the systems information I have at best crude models of, and they have balance objectives I'm unaware of. I would be trying to win a hand of poker while only being dealt three cards.
Maybe. And maybe the players who voice frustrations with BGs here and in other channels are the only ones who grow weary of a mode that should, on paper, be super promising. And maybe Kabam’s metrics say the mode is super-perfect just the way it is.
Or maybe none of that and the balance between rewarding participation versus rewarding victories is off. And it’s off to an order of magnitude that players who ordinarily would be loyal BG players are instead playing it tue same way people do things like flossing or eating broccoli. Or worse—they aren’t playing it (and they aren’t flossing or eating their broccoli either).
Ultimately, I don’t think the easy part is convincing the team to make a particular change—in fact, I think it’s safe to say the team feels pretty confident things are just fine. The oft-proven rule of this game is that change rarely comes unless things are literally on fire—and in the case of the phone-melt fiasco a few years ago, even that didn’t merit quick attention.
But I do think a quantitative adjustment to rewards is—from an implementation perspective—easier than computing a “fair” matchmaking system. You’re right to note that convincing the team change needs to be made is nowhere near as easy.
2. I don’t want cheaters to be able to claim ranks or rewards for the season they cheated or to participate at all in the next season.
This was not part of this specific set of suggestions, but I believe I've posted elsewhere (and I've directly suggested to the developers) that they implement mode-specific banning capabilities, so that when someone cheats in a particular game mode they can level punishment specific to that game mode that does not require them to ban the player from the entire game. The theory being Kabam as a company is reluctant to completely ban a player, so bans tend to account for not completely doing so. But if a ban could be directed at a game mode, it would open the door to more effective banning.
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first shoot retire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.
The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
You know what kabams only problem is with cheaters? They need to INVESTIGATE accounts that have legends title and 4 star champs in profile. Their INVESTIGATION is killing the game in terms of BG. While they INVESTIGATE 10 or maybe 100 more cheat accounts go unnoticed. Its like going to a bank wich successfully gets robbed every week. If i was a new player and i heard that the game devs cant keep cheaters from cheating in most competitive pvp mode it has i would NEVER trust this game with my time or money. Back in the day i thought there were VERY few cheaters in AW and i had no problem with someone exploring abyss and getting banned after. But this SOFT SOFT WEAK!!!! policy on cheating in BG is blowing my brain up. No need to INVESTIGATE the most obvious cheaters that a 10 year old can spot.
I agree with you i would NUKE them to orbit. One month ban on BG first time and SECOND TIME lifetime ban. FOREVER! Kabam underastimates the importance of a cheater cheating SECOND time. Thats not A LITTLE more than one timer. It shows intent and resolve that they got nothing to loose a.k.a they dont give a damn for the account because if my account got banned one time i would be CAREFUL BEYOND BELIEF cause its a huge stack of my money and time and emotions connected to journey.
On paper, that might seem like retribution, but in practical terms, that's very dangerous. There's a reason for a process of investigation. Rarely have we seen these actions reversible. The last thing we need is a "Ban now, ask questions later." approach. I wouldn't want the off-chance that goes wrong.
In the US criminal justice system, the standard of proof is "proof beyond reasonable doubt." Not proof beyond all doubt, and not absolute certainty. We live in a world where you can go to jail on less than absolute certainty, because absolute certainty doesn't exist. A criminal justice system that required absolute certainty would be non-functional.
No one wants to see players banned accidentally. But if we aim for perfection, the system won't work at all. We need a system where there's no *reasonable* doubt, perhaps with an explicit appeal process, but we cannot require absolutely no doubt.
I would not advocate for skipping steps in TOS investigations. I don't advocate for Kabam speeding up the process at the cost of investigation accuracy. But when they make the call, they have to stand by the call and act accordingly. They can't say "well, we just don't know, and we will never know." You put yourself on the jury, and you decide the defendant is guilty or innocent. And you will never know if you were right or wrong. But you make the call, or you tell the judge right up front you're incapable of serving on juries.
I agree, for sure. What I don't necessarily want to perpetuate is the focus that Players have on hunting down and identifying cheaters. It's a double-edged sword. It's helpful that they're spotting them and reporting them. It's become too much of a hyperfocus, in my opinion. It's become quite the extreme. I'm sure that's in part because there is so much of it. The other aspect is the idea that we're all personally responsible for identifying them, and because of that, if there isn't immediate action then Kabam isn't doing anything. What concerns me isn't the process. It's the idea that the alternative is anyone having anyone banned without due process. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Given the choice, I'd say it's a permanent ban, when that process has found as verifiably as satisfies their criteria. That's not up to me, and I suppose it allows Players a chance to rectify their behavior if they choose. I don't think relying on scrolling through the Leaderboard is sufficient evidence without some kind of data to back it up. That's more of a hair trigger approach from my point of view.
Comments
For example, most first time bans are a week. I would make the first time ban for cheating in BG be banning from an entire season. To do that now you'd have to ban a player completely for an entire month, which the Powers That Be might be less inclined to do. But simply blocking a player from participating in a mode they cheated in for a complete season might be more palatable.
Personally, I would just nuke them from orbit. But to do that, we'd probably need to first
shootretire to a farm upstate the lawyers and then possibly some of the brand guardians. But then they'd just replace them and we'd be back to square one. So we need to find long term solutions that accommodate them.The problem with any sit-out punishment is the player might not care: they could just sit out and wait for the ban to expire. So I think it is worth considering a debt-style punishment. Other games implement debt systems in various contexts, and MCOC does for the case involving Contest Credits (i.e. negative units). Maybe if someone cheats in BG, on top of banning they could get "negative trophies" applied to their account, which would force them to actually work off the debt to clear their account punishment. Let's say an account was caught cheating and they cheated in eight matches. We'd slap them with eight "trophy debt." During the next BG season they were eligible to play in, they would work off the debt in some fashion, by say having every other win go towards paying off the debt. So they could still progress, but only much slower as only half the wins would go towards progress (and the need to keep up a streak would make things even more difficult, as losses continue to subtract real trophies).
The advantage of trophy debt is you cannot just sit out the penalty and things go back to normal. You have to pay off your debt to society, and that debt stays with you forever until you pay it off. If you don't want to pay it off, that's effectively a permanent ban on the game mode, but one that is voluntary on the part of the player, not technically enforced by Kabam.
Dr. Zola
I would emphasize the italicized phrase “specific and actionable” in that excerpt. You gave your reply. Now let’s keep the thread on track this time.
Dr. Zola
I included #2 mainly as one of my guiding principles—each of which was included to demonstrate how easy it is to say “things should be like this!”—all the while acknowledging how hard it is to make the system that reliably gets you there.
Again—I think you wanted to (and I’d like to) focus on specifics here if we can. This thread derailed a lot the past couple of weeks.
Dr. Zola
A reasonable start isn't that ambiguous. It means the variation in strength between Accounts doesn't exceed a certain point. That doesn't necessarily have to look like completely equal metrics, but it doesn't mean anyone can match with anyone. Reasonable, as in there's no logical reasoning behind having such extremes in sizes at the onset of the competition.
Roster strength seems to be used in some arguments and tossed aside in others, but I won't digress. In the system I proposed, the results would be based on Win/Loss after a certain number was achieved. Which is what everyone has been saying they want. I suggested numbers because they accommodate for more situations than Coins, and they're more easily adjustable depending on the progress marker a Player is at.
Basically, it allows for a competition based on results where Players can progress or fall, regardless of what Title they have, but it makes it more advantageous to be higher up.
Now, while your question was not about my suggestion, I was demonstrating that I am aware that those are factors. However, skill in BGs pertains to the skill in the competition itself. Knowledge of their Champs, and diversity, is already baked into it, so-to-speak. We're making use of what we have, and using Bans, to maximize the Nodes-du-jour. We're not being rewarded for everything else we've done in the game. BG skill is skill in BGs.
Because consensus is so hard to actually achieve, and so fragile when it is formed, if we can all agree that a suggestion is reasonable and appropriate, whether we each individually agree on the specifics of why its reasonable given our diverse perspectives and goals is less important than whether we can coexist comfortably in something new and debate why its good after we get it.
This is also practice for when the devs do whatever they are going to do. The odds of them implementing my suggestions in full are not high. They might do better. They might do equally well but in a completely different way. And they might just fall flat on their faces. It is important for us to be prepared to give their changes a fair shot, but also to focus on what's wrong if we think it is wrong. If we spend the first four weeks after changes are released debating about whether its wrong because it gives too much assistance to too many Uncollected players or punishes too many Paragon players, the devs will simply presume there's no consensus at all about anything, and thus their changes are just as good as any other.
If we can focus on the key things most of us all seem to want in at least some measure, and target criticism in those key areas, there's a window of opportunity that will open when the devs decide to take action. If they release major changes to the game mode to try to address these issues - or the issues as they see them - that means they will also have allocated significant resources to working on the mode. That will be the moment when our feedback can have the largest potential impact. That window doesn't stay open for long. Probably weeks, not (many) months.
We've all seen how the discussion can get side tracked, and we've seen where those side tracks go. Maybe when it counts the most, we can all try to avoid those more and concentrate the majority of our discussion at the game mode, and what we want from it, and why it does or doesn't achieve those goals.
Dr. Zola
I just hope the developers are listening.
I’m not nearly as steeped in development theory as @DNA3000 but this is an aspect that has struck me (and I suspect others) as a weakness with this game mode.
For me, the real prize in BGs is the store. Some make a big deal about GC being the end goal. Maybe, but for me it is because of what I get along the way—at the end, my season prizes are largely just icing on the cake.
I realize this won’t be the case for players who score at the very top of GC, but that’s not most players. In fact, it’s really anyone who’s not top 500. Starting at rank 501 through rank 50,000, season prizes are a matter of 10K 6* shards plus some amount of 6* sig stones.
Alliance rank prizes aren’t that dissimilar, with rewards beyond the top 20% comprised of items largely available elsewhere in game for veteran players.
So where does this all leave me? One thing I have come to believe is that the rewards for participation alone—not just winning—need to be enhanced, either by increasing their absolute amounts or the frequency with which they can be earned.
Now, before anyone accuses me of being part of “participation trophy culture” (in real life, I’m as far from that perspective as you could imagine), I will make these points:
1. BGs is a mode that absolutely requires participation in order to exist.
2. Lower participation can ultimately doom BGs.
3. The BG store is the absolute best value in game today precisely because participation is so important for the mode to exist.
4. As long as other modes are going to continue to offer lesser prizes relative to BGs, then players should have more opportunities to obtain the BG currency.
5. A rewards system that essentially fast tracks accounts that do BGs versus those who don’t isn’t good for MCoC.
Keeping with my request for specific proposals, I would suggest either (1) more frequent BG objectives and/or (2) additional objectives based on type of champs used or total fights (not matches) won or matches won against “larger/bigger” opponents or some other metric.
None of this would have anything to do with matchmaking—that thorny knot of a problem could continue just as it is today. And none of it would impact prizes won along the way by progressing through VT or season end prizes for the very top competitors through the scrubs. And it would be available to everyone.
Bottom line: I think it would make what is currently a zero-sum game mode seem more rewarding to play and encourage participation.
That’s my suggestion. I’m sure it’s riddled with problems (game economy, participation trophyism, etc.) that others will point out. I will go ahead and tag @DNA3000 here to show me the error of my thinking. But it is the simplest way I can think of to boost participation and shift the frustration a number of players feel about a game mode the team readily admits will likely be a losing experience for the vast majority of players.
Dr. Zola
1.) Modding runs rampant and get rewards for it
2.) Bugs like immediate KOs or you finish a fight only to get the spinning wheel of death, just for that fight to start again exist in moderate frequency in this game mode
Players will continue to feel that this mode is broken. Especially when it’s been made very grindy and time consuming. So while I applaud the current conversation it does feel a bit like ignoring the forest for your favorite trees
As for modders, you’d think the eye-test would be sufficient for 80% of the cases but apparently it isn’t. Who knows why?
Dr. Zola
It is important to not miss the forest for the trees, but I would argue that if basic participatory pain points are not addressed, the top tier players won't have modding to worry about any more because the game mode will die. A competitive game mode must first and foremost be a reasonable competition or it is pointless, but a competitive game mode that relies upon player density to exist that fails to be tolerable to the wider playerbase simply won't exist at all.
This is the same dynamic we see with balancing the whales against the F2P players in a microtransaction supported game. Without the whales and other spenders, the game cannot exist. But without the 95% of F2P players that are going along for the ride, the game wouldn't exist.
It is possible to have a competition that caters only to the top competitors. But it is not possible to have a competitive game mode that must justify its existence in a monetized F2P game that caters only to the top competitors. The expense to manage it would be impossible to justify.
An irony here is that the most competitive players are also on average the most resilient. They will continue to compete and push for higher ranks even if the game mode is problematic. That doesn't mean they are willing to tolerate anything and that doesn't mean we won't lose a few, but history shows they are more likely to keep coming back over and over and over again no matter the pain, because that's how top competitors treat pain. It is everyone else that won't do that. Most players will not tolerate even relatively small amounts of game play pain before they decide to move on. That's true for game modes and entire games. Battlegrounds is especially sensitive to this, because of its turnstile. MCOC as a game can survive with 10% fewer players, and even 40% fewer players. But BG as a game mode cannot survive below a certain minimum density where matches become too hard to find. At that point, as other games have discovered, you can enter a death spiral where every player that quits makes the mode harder to maintain, causing other people to quit.
Others may disagree, but in my opinion these issues are the keystone issues for BG. They aren't targeted at my favorite trees, they are targeted at the minimum effort necessary to make sure the forest itself survives.
Related to this but separate from this, rewards are like a drug. Players get used to them. No matter how high you make the rewards, players will eventually normalize around them and their ability to incentivize participation will disappear. Some of this is due to game inflation, but a lot of it is due to player psychology. Once players know that a certain level of rewards is achievable, they ratched their expectations upward. If *that* is not impossible to get, then something *even higher* should be reasonable to expect.
In my opinion, you can incentivize content that is otherwise uncompelling with increased rewards. But when you try to incentivize content that is hostile with increased rewards you're playing with fire. What starts off as player bribery will eventually turn around and become developer extortion. And while you could say that about all in-game rewards, I think on a more nuanced level there's a difference between incentivizing and overwhelming reward bribery, even if it is difficult to quantify.
As we saw with Dungeons, this can also dramatically accelerate burn out. When a game mode is hostile to players but the rewards compel players to play it anyway, this can become a problem unto itself. Players begin to see the problems in the game mode as not things to avoid but as problems that are unavoidable. And I think that's also something we want to try to avoid to the best degree possible in BG. I suspect this is one factor explaining why BG objectives are every 48 hours not daily. The devs wanted the objectives to not be something players felt compelled to chase continuously.
I think that’s why I would calibrate slowly, perhaps even by progression level.
Two complaints that are “popular” on forums today are (1) that people may delay rankups to stay in advantageous competitive silos and (2) that the mode feels punitive because it is literally a zero sum game and veterans smashing each other in the face in Bronze can be discouraging.
Why do Bronze BGs have fewer objectives? Likely because the team wanted to incentivize VT progression. But doesn’t the incentive structure at each tier do that already? What if Paragons (who, quite honestly, face the stiffest competition in BGs) had the full set of objectives starting at Bronze instead of adding more each nominal tier?
If overall rewards are the concern, rebalancing rewards between progression and participation could also an area to explore—by allocating more tokens to more participation and total win objectives at the lower tiers (Bronze/Silver) and away from actual VT tier progression at those same tiers.
Fixing matchmaking would be great. But it’s complex. Shifting rewards early on to favor participation more and relieve initial frustration is far easier and doable now.
Dr. Zola
Their INVESTIGATION is killing the game in terms of BG. While they INVESTIGATE 10 or maybe 100 more cheat accounts go unnoticed.
Its like going to a bank wich successfully gets robbed every week. If i was a new player and i heard that the game devs cant keep cheaters from cheating in most competitive pvp mode it has i would NEVER trust this game with my time or money. Back in the day i thought there were VERY few cheaters in AW and i had no problem with someone exploring abyss and getting banned after. But this SOFT SOFT WEAK!!!! policy on cheating in BG is blowing my brain up.
No need to INVESTIGATE the most obvious cheaters that a 10 year old can spot.
I agree with you i would NUKE them to orbit. One month ban on BG first time and SECOND TIME lifetime ban. FOREVER! Kabam underastimates the importance of a cheater cheating SECOND time. Thats not A LITTLE more than one timer. It shows intent and resolve that they got nothing to loose a.k.a they dont give a damn for the account because if my account got banned one time i would be CAREFUL BEYOND BELIEF cause its a huge stack of my money and time and emotions connected to journey.
Next, would it be possible to understand the distribution of competitors vs. casual player on a spenders / F2P grouping? I would think that the whales and heavy spenders are not the most affected by the BG set up. Its the heavy competitors who don't spend or spend minimally. They are high enough on the progression tier but are some way off from the top. Most of them, as you pointed out, will probably continue to participate because they are competitive. Whatever solution is implemented would look to keep casual players who are spenders happy and try to retain a reasonable proportion of casual F2P players. Increased hostility feels like a poor way to keep those players on.
This suggests that overall progression rates in BG would have to go up for BG to be a competition in the real sense. Without that casual players will reduce participation.
The overall progression rates in BGs need to go up, else participation will drop and the mode will enter the death spiral.
The mode won’t survive for long with the 65%+ win ratio needed to advance at VT (in a pace that makes time to rewards ratio reasonable).
Kabam needs to rework the win/lose number of shields, or restructure VT at all, in order to ensure that percentage drops from 60%+ to ~40%.
Also to help this way, they need to rework Victory Shields to persist until you actually lose a match, and lower their price so they will be more affordable, and an efficient solution for those who have very low win ratio.
Battlegrounds participation has already start dropping, and that’s not an opinion, that’s data.
People are getting tired of the zero sum game.
Kabam needs to act fast, before BGs become Incursions 2.0.
This is what I attempted to do, to see if it was even achievable. Some subset of people like my ideas. Some different subset of people don't especially like my ideas but think its better than the current system and could live with them. Hopefully only a small group of players outright hate them and couldn't live with them. I think that number is small, but the forums can only go so far in determining that. We are not a perfectly representative group of players. But I think while we aren't statistically representative, we do tend to at least encompass a wide range of contradictory viewpoints, such that if there was someone out there that hated these ideas, there's probably at least one person in here who hates them just as much for similar reasons.
Hypothetically, if I was God of Video Games and I could command all game designers to do my bidding and I was answerable to no one and everyone feared my power, then yes this would be easier. However, in practice I'm barely Gopher of Video Games and the only thing game designers fear is a producer might assign them to read one of my posts.
Because balancing rewards in the way you're describing is as much a matter of judgment as it is objective reality, there's no particular reason for a game designer to trust my judgment over their own. They have the data I don't have, they have the systems information I have at best crude models of, and they have balance objectives I'm unaware of. I would be trying to win a hand of poker while only being dealt three cards.
No one wants to see players banned accidentally. But if we aim for perfection, the system won't work at all. We need a system where there's no *reasonable* doubt, perhaps with an explicit appeal process, but we cannot require absolutely no doubt.
I would not advocate for skipping steps in TOS investigations. I don't advocate for Kabam speeding up the process at the cost of investigation accuracy. But when they make the call, they have to stand by the call and act accordingly. They can't say "well, we just don't know, and we will never know." You put yourself on the jury, and you decide the defendant is guilty or innocent. And you will never know if you were right or wrong. But you make the call, or you tell the judge right up front you're incapable of serving on juries.
Or maybe none of that and the balance between rewarding participation versus rewarding victories is off. And it’s off to an order of magnitude that players who ordinarily would be loyal BG players are instead playing it tue same way people do things like flossing or eating broccoli. Or worse—they aren’t playing it (and they aren’t flossing or eating their broccoli either).
Ultimately, I don’t think the easy part is convincing the team to make a particular change—in fact, I think it’s safe to say the team feels pretty confident things are just fine. The oft-proven rule of this game is that change rarely comes unless things are literally on fire—and in the case of the phone-melt fiasco a few years ago, even that didn’t merit quick attention.
But I do think a quantitative adjustment to rewards is—from an implementation perspective—easier than computing a “fair” matchmaking system. You’re right to note that convincing the team change needs to be made is nowhere near as easy.
Dr. Zola
What concerns me isn't the process. It's the idea that the alternative is anyone having anyone banned without due process. Is there room for improvement? Sure. Given the choice, I'd say it's a permanent ban, when that process has found as verifiably as satisfies their criteria. That's not up to me, and I suppose it allows Players a chance to rectify their behavior if they choose. I don't think relying on scrolling through the Leaderboard is sufficient evidence without some kind of data to back it up. That's more of a hair trigger approach from my point of view.