Gladiator's Circuit is Frustrating
Disthene_T
Member Posts: 40 ★
I want to start by saying, I love battlegrounds. Probably my favorite game mode. I think the recent changes to victory track were great moves. The rewards are very worth the grind and it is fun. My complaint is that for me (and I suspect a lot of other players) is that Gladiator's Circuit is the "End of a Journey" rather than a fun destination.
Matchmaking is acceptable. I don't mind strong opponents, that is fair. While in Uru, all my opponents were Uru. So nothing wrong (even if some of those accounts were monsters)
Orange diamond is me. Not a perfect representation of strength but higher Base Hero rating implies larger and wider champ pool and prestige suggests how many R5 6 star up to 5. I have one R5 6 star and one R2 7 Star.
The beginning of the problem is the points system. Gain points for wins and lose a bit less for a loss. Then your rank is your current points when season ends. I played 40 matches in GC (won 15, lost 25) and my end season points were 1. That's fine too. The problem is that the "most important" matches are the last few played.
I logged my whole match history for the season. I was quite happy to get a freak 4 match win streak and get to 72 points. At the time it put me in Uru 1 (end of season 72 would have been Uru 2), the best I've ever done. Then I had a decision to make. Quit for the season and rank better than Uru 3 or keep playing to get objective rewards and contribute to solo and alliance events. Did the math, there were 2 sets of objectives left (so 2400 trophy tokens). If I stayed in Uru 1 by doing nothing, by increase in rewards was 5000 tokens, if the cutoff pushed me into Uru2, only 2500.
Since the difference was minor, I kept playing and lost 6 straight matches, lol. My best ever performance, erased and completely irrelevant. Would it be so bad to make your highest achieved score be your season score? I don't know how it would affect the top brackets but in the low brackets it could make a difference in stratifying the bottom. If your win rate is around 50%, your score will hover around 0, making you the same as players with 25% win rates.... or ones that never win a single match.
The next problem is that the tiers are awful.
For Season 11, there were about 25k players in GC. The bottom of Uru 2 is rank 8500. So the remaining 16.5k players (~65%) are in consolation prize tier. The cut off was around 68 points which is for a lot of players, a pretty good accomplishment considering the strength of all the opponents. Then looking at the 7 star shard rewards, they don't increase till Arcane 1. Meaning that 92% of players are getting the same thing. There are increases in relic rank up materials but I don't have a feel for their value.
The main point I realized that Uru 3 is hard to escape and even if you do, the reward isn't that much better unless I can get into the top 2000. It is also strange that after Uru 3, the gaps between tiers is much smaller. The difference between Arcane 2 and 3 was 16 points (one win) but you need a net 5 wins to break out of Uru 3.
Even more horrifying, is what happened in Season 9.
Something in the ballpark of 60k players got into GC. As a result 88% of players got Uru 3 and the cutoff was about 174 points. That's out of control.
The tiers make it difficult to even bother try. Being in GC at all takes effort and significant investment in your account. To then be told that despite that, the tournament is really only for the top 10 percent of this already high level group, is anti-fun. To contemplate better rewards by NOT playing is anti-fun.
So my two recommendations are
1) Use highest achieved score for season rank
2) Change the bottom tiers to be percentage brackets rather than fixed. Like Uru3 - 75-100%, Uru 2- 50-75%, Uru 1 25-50%. That is not too different from current but the grading helps elevate lower player motivation.
Matchmaking is acceptable. I don't mind strong opponents, that is fair. While in Uru, all my opponents were Uru. So nothing wrong (even if some of those accounts were monsters)
Orange diamond is me. Not a perfect representation of strength but higher Base Hero rating implies larger and wider champ pool and prestige suggests how many R5 6 star up to 5. I have one R5 6 star and one R2 7 Star.
The beginning of the problem is the points system. Gain points for wins and lose a bit less for a loss. Then your rank is your current points when season ends. I played 40 matches in GC (won 15, lost 25) and my end season points were 1. That's fine too. The problem is that the "most important" matches are the last few played.
I logged my whole match history for the season. I was quite happy to get a freak 4 match win streak and get to 72 points. At the time it put me in Uru 1 (end of season 72 would have been Uru 2), the best I've ever done. Then I had a decision to make. Quit for the season and rank better than Uru 3 or keep playing to get objective rewards and contribute to solo and alliance events. Did the math, there were 2 sets of objectives left (so 2400 trophy tokens). If I stayed in Uru 1 by doing nothing, by increase in rewards was 5000 tokens, if the cutoff pushed me into Uru2, only 2500.
Since the difference was minor, I kept playing and lost 6 straight matches, lol. My best ever performance, erased and completely irrelevant. Would it be so bad to make your highest achieved score be your season score? I don't know how it would affect the top brackets but in the low brackets it could make a difference in stratifying the bottom. If your win rate is around 50%, your score will hover around 0, making you the same as players with 25% win rates.... or ones that never win a single match.
The next problem is that the tiers are awful.
For Season 11, there were about 25k players in GC. The bottom of Uru 2 is rank 8500. So the remaining 16.5k players (~65%) are in consolation prize tier. The cut off was around 68 points which is for a lot of players, a pretty good accomplishment considering the strength of all the opponents. Then looking at the 7 star shard rewards, they don't increase till Arcane 1. Meaning that 92% of players are getting the same thing. There are increases in relic rank up materials but I don't have a feel for their value.
The main point I realized that Uru 3 is hard to escape and even if you do, the reward isn't that much better unless I can get into the top 2000. It is also strange that after Uru 3, the gaps between tiers is much smaller. The difference between Arcane 2 and 3 was 16 points (one win) but you need a net 5 wins to break out of Uru 3.
Even more horrifying, is what happened in Season 9.
Something in the ballpark of 60k players got into GC. As a result 88% of players got Uru 3 and the cutoff was about 174 points. That's out of control.
The tiers make it difficult to even bother try. Being in GC at all takes effort and significant investment in your account. To then be told that despite that, the tournament is really only for the top 10 percent of this already high level group, is anti-fun. To contemplate better rewards by NOT playing is anti-fun.
So my two recommendations are
1) Use highest achieved score for season rank
2) Change the bottom tiers to be percentage brackets rather than fixed. Like Uru3 - 75-100%, Uru 2- 50-75%, Uru 1 25-50%. That is not too different from current but the grading helps elevate lower player motivation.
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