"Rewards budget" is a dirty word for corporate greed
Basically the more rewards they give out to players playing the game, the more it will cannibalize sales and revenue
On 1 end of the spectrum, they cannot give nothing, on the other end of the spectrum, they cannot give everything bcos they have to sell something like T4A
So there is a need for a balance all the time, give too little and the players will boycott, give too much and sales & revenue will be affected
Players are boycotting now bcos they felt that rewards are not keeping up with the current situation of the game, end game rewards are very limited bcos they want to sell those end game rewards to players
It should also be noted that Kabam have clearly stated that we've advanced far quicker in the game over the last couple of years than they intended so, if anything, they're going to more deliberately pull the hand brake on rewards to slow things down - which of course is infuriating for anyone in the top echelons of the game, hence why all the YouTubers are throwing their toys at the moment.
Whether any of those actions are justified or not is entirely subjective based on your own circumstances so while I have no real issue with the game's progression at the moment (since I'm still trudging slowly through end game content like the Ordeal and Epoch) I can totally understand the Lagacys and Vegas of the MCoC world being fed up.
Or does this mean the type and quantity of rewards created?
It’s this. There is a limit to the overall rewards that are made available in a game to ensure the “economy” remains balanced. So while it’s changed with a bit of coding, there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into determining what those numbers should be. This is why you may have heard there’s a maximum number of units available in the game at a time and to increase in one area, they would decrease in another (arena milestones).
Ok so where would the balance come in the picture? I thought I understood, but then another question popped in my head that made me question that lol. I ask because, isn't every reward and resource available (at some point) for every single MCOC account?
I've seen this being mentioned when discussing a rewards buff. I'm trying to get a solid understanding of what this means for a GAME.
Irl, a budget is money/income set aside for a purpose. Money doesn't have to be reserved for buffed rewards and other items in the game. These are things that can be changed and buffed by changing the rewards coding right?? Or does this mean the type and quantity of rewards created?
Can somebody break it down for me in laymans terms please?
All in-game rewards serve a purpose. To oversimplify, they incentivize. Players do certain content for certain rewards, the rewards incentivize that play. They serve that purpose in a couple of ways. They have a progressional benefit: they can, for example, improve your roster in various ways, by adding new champions to rosters or rank and level up those champions to make them more powerful. The value of the rewards comes in the in-game benefit they provide. There are other value elements, for example, being one of the first players to acquire a particular champ can have a value all its own, separate from any normal roster growth benefits.
However, rewards do not have objective constant value. A 6* champ has different value to an Uncollected player than a Valiant player. And that's because a Valiant player is likely to have a roster sufficiently strong to make the relative incremental benefit of a random 6* champ much lower than it would have to a player without such a roster. And even for the same player, an R3 rank up crystal has more value when that player has no rank 3s and far less value a year later when they have 20 R3s. Each R3 has less incremental value than the previous one does, more or less. The fundamental idea is rewards are self-diluting. The more rewards you give out, the less they are worth.
This places limits on how much of any particular reward you can pump into the game because they have diminishing value. You can never run out of those rewards, because they are just numbers in a database, but you can run out of value. Since rewards exist for their incentivizing value, when that value drops the ability for rewards to serve their purpose also drops. You can give out an infinite number of 7* crystals, but at a certain point they'd have no value, and in that sense there is a soft limit to the number of crystals you can give out.
This notion that there is only so much "value" in the bag, even if the amount of stuff in the bag is infinite, forms the basis of managing a game economy, at least in a game like this. If they give too much rewards out today, what are they going to give out tomorrow? What are they going to sell tomorrow? Just more? They can always make *new* stuff, but that has its own problems. Imagine they give out way more 7* crystals, and they dilute to the point they have no incentive value any more, or at least so little they aren't useful as rewards at the top of the game. Well, they can always introduce 8* champs, and then 9* champs. But the problem there is that rewards don't dilute at the same rate for everyone. The players with the most stuff will see the problem first. If we introduce 8* champs when they are saturated, that will be long before most players have even built up reasonable 7* rosters. They won't have had any time to have strong 7s before we ask them to start over with 8s. If the progression curve upward is too steep, we will leave too many players behind, and soon enough we will lose those players as they will never feel like they are ever catching up.
So reward dilution soft caps how much rewards you can add of any particular type, and progression acceleration soft caps how fast you can introduce new stuff to reboot reward dilution. Within those bounds, you have to manage how you make rewards available because running into either boundary is non-trivial to fix. You cannot pivot game economies on a dime. If you give out too much rewards today, you can't fix it by giving out too few tomorrow for obvious reasons.
In a certain sense, the game economy is never perfectly balanced. It is always running a little too hot or a little too cold. The goal is to try to keep it bouncing in between two reasonable bounds and not hit the rails in either direction, because perfect balance is an impossible target to hit.
Reward budgets exist because while rewards themselves are unlimited, rewards are about perception, not numbers. The perceived value of rewards is not infinite, and so that perceived value itself must be budgeted. Specifically, reward value has to be managed in between economical tiers where new rewards can be introduced.
Layman’s terms, it means the team isn’t going to give you what you want, but they will likely make you work harder than you think you should for what they do give you.
Dr. Zola
Yes
I do remember Kabam Jax saying we wont put rewards on your lap
Probably should add the revised Act 5 payout into any “rewards budget” conversation.
If this is accurate, is there even a rewards budget at all? I’m sure recipients worked super hard against the watered down Act 5 defenders.
Dr. Zola
The game evolves over time, and as the ceiling advances, the requirements to advance enough advance as well. Simply, it takes more to start out these days than it used to.
Probably should add the revised Act 5 payout into any “rewards budget” conversation.
If this is accurate, is there even a rewards budget at all? I’m sure recipients worked super hard against the watered down Act 5 defenders.
Dr. Zola
The game evolves over time, and as the ceiling advances, the requirements to advance enough advance as well. Simply, it takes more to start out these days than it used to.
More what? Certainly not more time, certainly not more effort. For those of us who explored Act 5 when it was released, it’s hard to fathom how new players (who are doing the content with champ rarities that didn’t even exist when it was released) really need yet another handout.
If what Kabam sees in their number is that a significant percentage of new players abandon the game around act 5 and they need to do this to retain them, then so be it. But let’s not act like this is equitable to players who already completed the content. This is a bribe to newer players to keep them going.
Probably should add the revised Act 5 payout into any “rewards budget” conversation.
If this is accurate, is there even a rewards budget at all? I’m sure recipients worked super hard against the watered down Act 5 defenders.
Dr. Zola
The game evolves over time, and as the ceiling advances, the requirements to advance enough advance as well. Simply, it takes more to start out these days than it used to.
More what? Certainly not more time, certainly not more effort. For those of us who explored Act 5 when it was released, it’s hard to fathom how new players (who are doing the content with champ rarities that didn’t even exist when it was released) really need yet another handout.
If what Kabam sees in their number is that a significant percentage of new players abandon the game around act 5 and they need to do this to retain them, then so be it. But let’s not act like this is equitable to players who already completed the content. This is a bribe to newer players to keep them going.
Yea but if those new players get handouts like this, compare that to what you've earned over the last 10 years. It's literally a drop in the bucket. Kabam updating the early game for newbies isn't gonna somehow hurt the veterans. If anything it's hurting the newbies. They certainly aren't developing the skills necessary for later content like we did.
Gotta admit its kinda funny though. Long time players complaining about how bad rewards are, lots of promises and one thing that gets addressed is things for new players. Yeah yeah It could have been planned and scheduled long time ago; but the timing to release it is pretty awful and leaves a pretty bad taste. Let me clarify, the bad taste is not about the free stuff, is about the priorities
It means they will keep tying in the highest tier brackets together for most reward scenarios. Easiest way to monetize and keep the lower tiers closer to the top. Reason why i’m not excited for the next “progression level”,..and banking on it to be just as underwhelming as Paragon / Valiant milestones.
Probably should add the revised Act 5 payout into any “rewards budget” conversation.
If this is accurate, is there even a rewards budget at all? I’m sure recipients worked super hard against the watered down Act 5 defenders.
Dr. Zola
The game evolves over time, and as the ceiling advances, the requirements to advance enough advance as well. Simply, it takes more to start out these days than it used to.
Gotta admit its kinda funny though. Long time players complaining about how bad rewards are, lots of promises and one thing that gets addressed is things for new players. Yeah yeah It could have been planned and scheduled long time ago; but the timing to release it is pretty awful and leaves a pretty bad taste. Let me clarify, the bad taste is not about the free stuff, is about the priorities
I guess everyone’s not playing on the same *budget*…
Probably should add the revised Act 5 payout into any “rewards budget” conversation.
If this is accurate, is there even a rewards budget at all? I’m sure recipients worked super hard against the watered down Act 5 defenders.
Dr. Zola
The game evolves over time, and as the ceiling advances, the requirements to advance enough advance as well. Simply, it takes more to start out these days than it used to.
More what? Certainly not more time, certainly not more effort. For those of us who explored Act 5 when it was released, it’s hard to fathom how new players (who are doing the content with champ rarities that didn’t even exist when it was released) really need yet another handout.
If what Kabam sees in their number is that a significant percentage of new players abandon the game around act 5 and they need to do this to retain them, then so be it. But let’s not act like this is equitable to players who already completed the content. This is a bribe to newer players to keep them going.
Yea but if those new players get handouts like this, compare that to what you've earned over the last 10 years. It's literally a drop in the bucket. Kabam updating the early game for newbies isn't gonna somehow hurt the veterans. If anything it's hurting the newbies. They certainly aren't developing the skills necessary for later content like we did.
This is true. But it’s also true that the game team response seems to be to continue to gut content so noobs don’t struggle too much for their boosted rewards.
Gotta admit its kinda funny though. Long time players complaining about how bad rewards are, lots of promises and one thing that gets addressed is things for new players. Yeah yeah It could have been planned and scheduled long time ago; but the timing to release it is pretty awful and leaves a pretty bad taste. Let me clarify, the bad taste is not about the free stuff, is about the priorities
I guess everyone’s not playing on the same *budget*…
Dr. Zola
They are becoming masters of applying changes that nobody asked for.
Gotta admit its kinda funny though. Long time players complaining about how bad rewards are, lots of promises and one thing that gets addressed is things for new players. Yeah yeah It could have been planned and scheduled long time ago; but the timing to release it is pretty awful and leaves a pretty bad taste. Let me clarify, the bad taste is not about the free stuff, is about the priorities
I guess everyone’s not playing on the same *budget*…
Dr. Zola
The game's reward budget is about the game economy, not about any one individual player. Individual players playing the game at different times are going to experience a different game, and thus yes, in fact different players will experience a game implementing different reward budgets. It does not make sense to compare two different players "reward budgets" because different players, whether playing at the same time or different times, get differing rewards based on their gameplay. Individual player reward budgets have nothing whatsoever to do with the game budget as a whole. One involves how a player uses the rewards they get, the other manages how rewards are allocated throughout the game.
"Individual player reward budgets have nothing whatsoever to do with the game budget as a whole. One involves how a player uses the rewards they get, the other manages how rewards are allocated throughout the game."
The games reward budget is intrinsical to an individual players reward budget. There's a limit to the amount of rewards a player can obtain by playing the game. That's an individual players reward budget.
My alliance placed 1st last BG season and we still can't rank 3 a champ with those rewards (let's not even talk about r4s) because of the games reward budget.
How do we use those rewards? We don't because they're outdated and we only get 1 1/2 T4A.
Layman’s terms, it means the team isn’t going to give you what you want, but they will likely make you work harder than you think you should for what they do give you.
It's crazy how rewards should serve as "incentivizers" when there are accounts that have over 150 r3s but a game mode can't even fit into its budget a single r3.
And yet we have people saying rewards can't get buffed because it would hurt the game economy... Make it make sense.
If anything, it's the monetization strategies that are affecting the game economy.
The games reward budget is intrinsical to an individual players reward budget. There's a limit to the amount of rewards a player can obtain by playing the game. That's an individual players reward budget.
Colloquially, that is a reward budget, insofar as that's the rewards the player has to budget when using them. However, that's not what the term "reward budget" generally means in the context of the game design or when used by the game designers. The game's overall reward budget is influenced indirectly by how much rewards individual players can earn, but only in a stochastic sense. The devs have no idea how much rewards any individual player can earn, nor do they care except in terms of progressional guardrails.
We know this because of speedrunners. Speedrunners are capable of earning rewards not only far faster than the average player, but also faster than the game itself is designed to properly account for. Speed runners have gone so far as to trip the exploit circuit breakers that signalled exploitive behavior - they were in some instances autobanned for it. When the devs determined these actions were the result of fair play, they removed the bans. They did not alter the game economy to prevent those earning rates. Instead they removed the circuit breakers that performed the autobans. These are considered edge cases the game doesn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about.
Another area where this difference showed through was the fact that some high tier players were getting hammered with huge amounts of T2A when they were rushing through story arc content. Because they were playing through much faster than average, they were experiencing reward imbalances most players did not see. However, once again this was considered an edge case that would work itself out eventually. Players were expected to manage their rewards and content speed appropriately. This was not considered an actionable flaw in the game economy, because it was not a statistically significant economic problem.
Individual players can exceed the normal reward boundaries of the game, provided they don't do so to too high a degree and they don't have a statistically significant impact on the game. In that sense, the game mostly cares about the statistical experience of the playerbase as a whole, but doesn't care too much about individual player "reward budgets." This is not a strong design constraint.
To put it another way, the game reward budget is a game economy design problem for the developers to solve. The player reward budget is a resource management problem for individual players to solve.
The games reward budget is intrinsical to an individual players reward budget. There's a limit to the amount of rewards a player can obtain by playing the game. That's an individual players reward budget.
Colloquially, that is a reward budget, insofar as that's the rewards the player has to budget when using them. However, that's not what the term "reward budget" generally means in the context of the game design or when used by the game designers. The game's overall reward budget is influenced indirectly by how much rewards individual players can earn, but only in a stochastic sense. The devs have no idea how much rewards any individual player can earn, nor do they care except in terms of progressional guardrails.
We know this because of speedrunners. Speedrunners are capable of earning rewards not only far faster than the average player, but also faster than the game itself is designed to properly account for. Speed runners have gone so far as to trip the exploit circuit breakers that signalled exploitive behavior - they were in some instances autobanned for it. When the devs determined these actions were the result of fair play, they removed the bans. They did not alter the game economy to prevent those earning rates. Instead they removed the circuit breakers that performed the autobans. These are considered edge cases the game doesn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about.
Another area where this difference showed through was the fact that some high tier players were getting hammered with huge amounts of T2A when they were rushing through story arc content. Because they were playing through much faster than average, they were experiencing reward imbalances most players did not see. However, once again this was considered an edge case that would work itself out eventually. Players were expected to manage their rewards and content speed appropriately. This was not considered an actionable flaw in the game economy, because it was not a statistically significant economic problem.
Individual players can exceed the normal reward boundaries of the game, provided they don't do so to too high a degree and they don't have a statistically significant impact on the game. In that sense, the game mostly cares about the statistical experience of the playerbase as a whole, but doesn't care too much about individual player "reward budgets." This is not a strong design constraint.
To put it another way, the game reward budget is a game economy design problem for the developers to solve. The player reward budget is a resource management problem for individual players to solve.
firstly there is no way the dev team doesn't know what rewards any player can get, it will be hard to fully estimate every possible reward but it can be estimated. This is because the rewards structure in the game is binary in nature i.e. you explore a quest you get the exploration rewards, you finish the path you get the path rewards and for example a player only completes a quest you can estimate every possible reward for each of the paths they might have taken.
is speedrunning in relation to mcoc or to other games? because as far as i recall the only speedruns we have are story content and the recent necropolis mythic runs and legends run which are now cancelled. Additionally, what if you earned the rewards in the day it came out, does it mean you suddenly have a special rewards for the same periods the rewards are available for everyone? NO, so i don't understand how speedrunners getting rewards breaks the budget allocated the rewards.
The T2a issue is the same as above, but then again top tier players also have similar rewards from the other game modes they are top in such as: aw, aq, incursions. The game clearly doesn't care about the "statistical experience" of the playerbase when it comes to rewards, and why this is very clear to see, is the skewed resource updates towards the top rewards, sales targetting those top rewards and the constant weird grouping of titles that just ends up diluting the rewards for those that do want to do the content.
For me, the notion of a “rewards budget” being anything other than a catchphrase to justify not doing something goes out the window when I consider the compensation just awarded for Act 5.
I will post it again here:
Assuming those photos are accurate—that compensation (relatively large, given the difficulty of content) was given to players who completed Act 5 over the past 90 days (a relatively small population).
While that may not be an *individual* budget, it is a highly targeted group of Summoners. It’s also relevant to consider that the final GM quest features 30-40K 6* defenders and the entire act has been made more “accessible” since it was introduced.
What else in game rewards something like 20 million gold, 35 mythic crystals and 21 Cav crystals (not to mention the ISO and gold from them) for comparable effort?
This is the kind of budget I’d like to be suffering under. Instead, those who are well past Act 5 are routinely told that updates to prizes and stores are coming soon.
"Rewards Budget" is game developer speak for "Rewards Throttling"...they need to throttle the rewards to make sure the juicy stuff is more like a slow trickling stream instead of a broken dam that unleashes a raging torrent, so they don't have to constantly rebuild a flooded city.
The games reward budget is intrinsical to an individual players reward budget. There's a limit to the amount of rewards a player can obtain by playing the game. That's an individual players reward budget.
Colloquially, that is a reward budget, insofar as that's the rewards the player has to budget when using them. However, that's not what the term "reward budget" generally means in the context of the game design or when used by the game designers. The game's overall reward budget is influenced indirectly by how much rewards individual players can earn, but only in a stochastic sense. The devs have no idea how much rewards any individual player can earn, nor do they care except in terms of progressional guardrails.
We know this because of speedrunners. Speedrunners are capable of earning rewards not only far faster than the average player, but also faster than the game itself is designed to properly account for. Speed runners have gone so far as to trip the exploit circuit breakers that signalled exploitive behavior - they were in some instances autobanned for it. When the devs determined these actions were the result of fair play, they removed the bans. They did not alter the game economy to prevent those earning rates. Instead they removed the circuit breakers that performed the autobans. These are considered edge cases the game doesn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about.
Another area where this difference showed through was the fact that some high tier players were getting hammered with huge amounts of T2A when they were rushing through story arc content. Because they were playing through much faster than average, they were experiencing reward imbalances most players did not see. However, once again this was considered an edge case that would work itself out eventually. Players were expected to manage their rewards and content speed appropriately. This was not considered an actionable flaw in the game economy, because it was not a statistically significant economic problem.
Individual players can exceed the normal reward boundaries of the game, provided they don't do so to too high a degree and they don't have a statistically significant impact on the game. In that sense, the game mostly cares about the statistical experience of the playerbase as a whole, but doesn't care too much about individual player "reward budgets." This is not a strong design constraint.
To put it another way, the game reward budget is a game economy design problem for the developers to solve. The player reward budget is a resource management problem for individual players to solve.
The game's reward budget is a design problem that affects individual reward budget wether devs take accountability for it or not. Even if the concept of reward budget has a different meaning for them game wise, their design focus being the playerbase as a whole means any individual player should have the same design experience.
However, the mere existence of speed runners, whales, raids compensation and Act 5 reward revamp help nothing but prove there's absolutely no need for a reward budget. They are exceptions that "swallow" the rule. That need, is a created misbelief in order to justify resource restrainment.
The problem with trying to justify resources restrainment is players can only earn as many rewards as they are allowed to and by this I include those that are exceeding the reward boundaries.
In other words, devs are creating a misbelief need for a reward budget in order to justify reward restrainment while at the same time contradicting themselves by allowing exceptions to that need.
Comments
Whether any of those actions are justified or not is entirely subjective based on your own circumstances so while I have no real issue with the game's progression at the moment (since I'm still trudging slowly through end game content like the Ordeal and Epoch) I can totally understand the Lagacys and Vegas of the MCoC world being fed up.
However, rewards do not have objective constant value. A 6* champ has different value to an Uncollected player than a Valiant player. And that's because a Valiant player is likely to have a roster sufficiently strong to make the relative incremental benefit of a random 6* champ much lower than it would have to a player without such a roster. And even for the same player, an R3 rank up crystal has more value when that player has no rank 3s and far less value a year later when they have 20 R3s. Each R3 has less incremental value than the previous one does, more or less. The fundamental idea is rewards are self-diluting. The more rewards you give out, the less they are worth.
This places limits on how much of any particular reward you can pump into the game because they have diminishing value. You can never run out of those rewards, because they are just numbers in a database, but you can run out of value. Since rewards exist for their incentivizing value, when that value drops the ability for rewards to serve their purpose also drops. You can give out an infinite number of 7* crystals, but at a certain point they'd have no value, and in that sense there is a soft limit to the number of crystals you can give out.
This notion that there is only so much "value" in the bag, even if the amount of stuff in the bag is infinite, forms the basis of managing a game economy, at least in a game like this. If they give too much rewards out today, what are they going to give out tomorrow? What are they going to sell tomorrow? Just more? They can always make *new* stuff, but that has its own problems. Imagine they give out way more 7* crystals, and they dilute to the point they have no incentive value any more, or at least so little they aren't useful as rewards at the top of the game. Well, they can always introduce 8* champs, and then 9* champs. But the problem there is that rewards don't dilute at the same rate for everyone. The players with the most stuff will see the problem first. If we introduce 8* champs when they are saturated, that will be long before most players have even built up reasonable 7* rosters. They won't have had any time to have strong 7s before we ask them to start over with 8s. If the progression curve upward is too steep, we will leave too many players behind, and soon enough we will lose those players as they will never feel like they are ever catching up.
So reward dilution soft caps how much rewards you can add of any particular type, and progression acceleration soft caps how fast you can introduce new stuff to reboot reward dilution. Within those bounds, you have to manage how you make rewards available because running into either boundary is non-trivial to fix. You cannot pivot game economies on a dime. If you give out too much rewards today, you can't fix it by giving out too few tomorrow for obvious reasons.
In a certain sense, the game economy is never perfectly balanced. It is always running a little too hot or a little too cold. The goal is to try to keep it bouncing in between two reasonable bounds and not hit the rails in either direction, because perfect balance is an impossible target to hit.
Reward budgets exist because while rewards themselves are unlimited, rewards are about perception, not numbers. The perceived value of rewards is not infinite, and so that perceived value itself must be budgeted. Specifically, reward value has to be managed in between economical tiers where new rewards can be introduced.
I do remember Kabam Jax saying we wont put rewards on your lap
You need to fight for them
If this is accurate, is there even a rewards budget at all? I’m sure recipients worked super hard against the watered down Act 5 defenders.
Dr. Zola
If what Kabam sees in their number is that a significant percentage of new players abandon the game around act 5 and they need to do this to retain them, then so be it. But let’s not act like this is equitable to players who already completed the content. This is a bribe to newer players to keep them going.
Long time players complaining about how bad rewards are, lots of promises and one thing that gets addressed is things for new players.
Yeah yeah It could have been planned and scheduled long time ago; but the timing to release it is pretty awful and leaves a pretty bad taste. Let me clarify, the bad taste is not about the free stuff, is about the priorities
Easiest way to monetize and keep the lower tiers closer to the top.
Reason why i’m not excited for the next “progression level”,..and banking on it to be just as underwhelming as Paragon / Valiant milestones.
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
"Individual player reward budgets have nothing whatsoever to do with the game budget as a whole. One involves how a player uses the rewards they get, the other manages how rewards are allocated throughout the game."
The games reward budget is intrinsical to an individual players reward budget. There's a limit to the amount of rewards a player can obtain by playing the game. That's an individual players reward budget.
My alliance placed 1st last BG season and we still can't rank 3 a champ with those rewards (let's not even talk about r4s) because of the games reward budget.
How do we use those rewards? We don't because they're outdated and we only get 1 1/2 T4A.
And yet we have people saying rewards can't get buffed because it would hurt the game economy... Make it make sense.
If anything, it's the monetization strategies that are affecting the game economy.
We know this because of speedrunners. Speedrunners are capable of earning rewards not only far faster than the average player, but also faster than the game itself is designed to properly account for. Speed runners have gone so far as to trip the exploit circuit breakers that signalled exploitive behavior - they were in some instances autobanned for it. When the devs determined these actions were the result of fair play, they removed the bans. They did not alter the game economy to prevent those earning rates. Instead they removed the circuit breakers that performed the autobans. These are considered edge cases the game doesn't have to spend a lot of time worrying about.
Another area where this difference showed through was the fact that some high tier players were getting hammered with huge amounts of T2A when they were rushing through story arc content. Because they were playing through much faster than average, they were experiencing reward imbalances most players did not see. However, once again this was considered an edge case that would work itself out eventually. Players were expected to manage their rewards and content speed appropriately. This was not considered an actionable flaw in the game economy, because it was not a statistically significant economic problem.
Individual players can exceed the normal reward boundaries of the game, provided they don't do so to too high a degree and they don't have a statistically significant impact on the game. In that sense, the game mostly cares about the statistical experience of the playerbase as a whole, but doesn't care too much about individual player "reward budgets." This is not a strong design constraint.
To put it another way, the game reward budget is a game economy design problem for the developers to solve. The player reward budget is a resource management problem for individual players to solve.
is speedrunning in relation to mcoc or to other games? because as far as i recall the only speedruns we have are story content and the recent necropolis mythic runs and legends run which are now cancelled. Additionally, what if you earned the rewards in the day it came out, does it mean you suddenly have a special rewards for the same periods the rewards are available for everyone? NO, so i don't understand how speedrunners getting rewards breaks the budget allocated the rewards.
The T2a issue is the same as above, but then again top tier players also have similar rewards from the other game modes they are top in such as: aw, aq, incursions.
The game clearly doesn't care about the "statistical experience" of the playerbase when it comes to rewards, and why this is very clear to see, is the skewed resource updates towards the top rewards, sales targetting those top rewards and the constant weird grouping of titles that just ends up diluting the rewards for those that do want to do the content.
I will post it again here:
Assuming those photos are accurate—that compensation (relatively large, given the difficulty of content) was given to players who completed Act 5 over the past 90 days (a relatively small population).
While that may not be an *individual* budget, it is a highly targeted group of Summoners. It’s also relevant to consider that the final GM quest features 30-40K 6* defenders and the entire act has been made more “accessible” since it was introduced.
What else in game rewards something like 20 million gold, 35 mythic crystals and 21 Cav crystals (not to mention the ISO and gold from them) for comparable effort?
This is the kind of budget I’d like to be suffering under. Instead, those who are well past Act 5 are routinely told that updates to prizes and stores are coming soon.
Dr. Zola
However, the mere existence of speed runners, whales, raids compensation and Act 5 reward revamp help nothing but prove there's absolutely no need for a reward budget. They are exceptions that "swallow" the rule. That need, is a created misbelief in order to justify resource restrainment.
The problem with trying to justify resources restrainment is players can only earn as many rewards as they are allowed to and by this I include those that are exceeding the reward boundaries.
In other words, devs are creating a misbelief need for a reward budget in order to justify reward restrainment while at the same time contradicting themselves by allowing exceptions to that need.