Incentive Structure in BGs and season points (thoughts for the future)
Double_Helix
Member Posts: 105 ★★
I've been playing BGs since the first beta, and I'm also a psychologist that spends a fair bit of time thinking about incentive structures and what motivates people to do certain things. As such, I've always found the BG season point structure fairly interesting. From the beginning, the system was designed primarily to encourage playing rather than winning, which made sense to get people into the new game mode, but which also has a lot of side-effects. Some of you may remember the flurry of YouTube videos and hasty scoring changes just before Season 1, when it was (correctly) pointed out that the best way to place high in the BG ranked rewards was to queue up as many matches as possible and to lose as fast as possible. Whoever entered the most matches by the end of the season would get the highest season score... trying to win matches along the way would only slow you down. As a result, Kabam introduced different levels of points for winning versus losing, so that you'd have to queue up ~3 quick losses for every win to get the same amount of points. Not worth it. Thus, season points became an interesting mix of both playing a lot (high volume) and winning as often as you can (high quality play), which is good for the competitive aspect of the game. However, the variable missing has always been that there is zero incentive to obtain any of those wins against quality opponents. Playing at your peak level only matters during the last hour of the last day of the season. The most obvious side effect is that point farming is incentivized, just like it was in the first beta. Lose down to zero, rack up easy wins, repeat. There is no benefit for a celestial player to be in celestial ranks until the very end of the season, and in fact, the scoring system penalizes it. Getting wins in Celestial is hard, but takes the same amount of time as getting a win in Uru III, or in Diamond II (although getting low-level accounts to forfeit more often as the season progresses is obviously faster). This is of course compounded by the lack of meaningful rewards in the BG store that make it not particularly worth it to push past Gamma / Arcane just for surplus trophy tokens that you can't spend on anything useful.
The second side effect of this can be seen in Kabam's recent post -- BGs has become a niche mode. I've seen this a lot in forum posts over the years where developing players try to get into BGs, only to be frustrated at getting stomped repeatedly by stronger accounts. The two most common pieces of advice I see given to them in the forums is (a) stop playing BGs until you can build up your account, and / or (b) just wait until the end when the big accounts finally move up, and then you have a brief window to play matches you can more reasonably win towards the end of the season. This is sound advice based on the current incentive structure, but my goodness it's also pretty toxic for the long-term health of the mode. When "don't play BGs" is the best advice we can give developing players, how are we supposed to expect BGs to last? Of course it's a niche mode. If you don't have an end-game account, or close to it, it's objectively not a fun time and people go elsewhere. How to fix this? Incentivize people to play at their own level, so that developing accounts can play against each other and enjoy it and earn rewards relative to their level and the difficulty of their opponent, so they are incentivized to grow their accounts and take on tougher opponents and earn bigger rewards. Meanwhile, the end-game accounts are incentivized to face other end-game accounts and get the rewards of facing bigger challenges.
So how do we get there?
Solo rewards were probably the best place to do that, but that ship has sailed. Alliance ranked rewards are still up for grabs, though, which presents an opportunity. The tl;dr... there needs to be a multiplier on the match points such that losing in Celestial rewards more points than winning easier matches in lower tiers. In this way, your points are determined by a combination of playing often (volume), win rate (quality of play), and the level you compete at (quality of opponent). If playing at a lower level than you're able to actively hurts your season score, then people are naturally incentivized to play at a higher level. Likewise, waiting to play until later in the season makes your early matches easy, but also makes them less rewarding and puts you that much further behind people who have already climbed and are getting higher numbers of points per match.
Compare this with Alliance War... AW has the same number of matches per season, so there is no volume consideration, but both the quality of your play (maximize attack bonuses while minimizing time) and the quality of your opponents (higher war ratings = higher tier = higher multiplier) are super important. Imagine taking away the tier multiplier... the optimal strategy would be to start a new alliance with a zero war rating each season to get easy opponents that you could defeat with zero deaths. Developing players and starter alliances would be grist for the mill and would stop playing the mode pretty quickly. But as it is, going undefeated in Bronze or Silver doesn't get you top-tier rewards. For that, you need to play against masters-level opponents and show enough skill to prevail most of the time. BGs lack this incentive entirely.
Kabam has signaled an intent to incentivize players to push higher, faster, but the ideas in the post were far too limited to have the intended effect. Essentially the idea mentioned was to have milestones that give a bonus for things like "getting to GC in the first 7 days," or "gain 100 points in the first 14 days." However, these only shift the problem from having one day of the season where your ranking matters to having ~4 days of the season where it matters. A talented player could farm VT for six days and then jump to GC, for example, where they then farm Uru III while occasionally racking up enough points to hit the required milestones for the bonuses.
What I'm proposing is for every. single. match to have a built-in incentive to push higher and play at one's peak level. You shouldn't be afraid to lose, because performing well in a loss against a high-level opponent is still rewarding. I've outlined an example of how one such multiplier scaling system could work below, but obviously Kabam should tune it around their specific goals (e.g., narrowing the point differences between wins and losses).
There are currently 30 tiers in VT, from Bronze 5 up to Vibranium 1 (which is zero points in GC). Let's assign each tier a point multiplier starting at 1 for Bronze 5 up to 29 for Vibranium 2. That means you get the standard 7,350 points for a win and 2,650 a loss to start, but by the time you hit Vibranium 2, a loss is now worth 76,850 points, which is more than a win in Silver 1. Maybe still not enough separation, but things really get interesting when you hit GC. If you take the 30x multiplier for Vibranium 1, which is a GC rating of zero points, and add, say, 50% of the GC rating of your opponent (this could be tuned to different amounts, obviously), then your multiplier starts to grow very quickly. Losing a match against an opponent with a GC rating of 100 will net you 212,000 points, while a win farming Vibranium II would only net you 213,000. Meanwhile, if you're winning 50% of your matches (as you should in an ELO system), hovering around a 100 rating would average 400k points per match.
The side effect of this is that we'd be dealing with very, very large numbers for season alliance scores. I'm sure there are other side effects that I haven't thought of as well, which is where the benefit of community discussion comes from. Let me know what you think, and thanks for reading this far for those who stuck it out.
The second side effect of this can be seen in Kabam's recent post -- BGs has become a niche mode. I've seen this a lot in forum posts over the years where developing players try to get into BGs, only to be frustrated at getting stomped repeatedly by stronger accounts. The two most common pieces of advice I see given to them in the forums is (a) stop playing BGs until you can build up your account, and / or (b) just wait until the end when the big accounts finally move up, and then you have a brief window to play matches you can more reasonably win towards the end of the season. This is sound advice based on the current incentive structure, but my goodness it's also pretty toxic for the long-term health of the mode. When "don't play BGs" is the best advice we can give developing players, how are we supposed to expect BGs to last? Of course it's a niche mode. If you don't have an end-game account, or close to it, it's objectively not a fun time and people go elsewhere. How to fix this? Incentivize people to play at their own level, so that developing accounts can play against each other and enjoy it and earn rewards relative to their level and the difficulty of their opponent, so they are incentivized to grow their accounts and take on tougher opponents and earn bigger rewards. Meanwhile, the end-game accounts are incentivized to face other end-game accounts and get the rewards of facing bigger challenges.
So how do we get there?
Solo rewards were probably the best place to do that, but that ship has sailed. Alliance ranked rewards are still up for grabs, though, which presents an opportunity. The tl;dr... there needs to be a multiplier on the match points such that losing in Celestial rewards more points than winning easier matches in lower tiers. In this way, your points are determined by a combination of playing often (volume), win rate (quality of play), and the level you compete at (quality of opponent). If playing at a lower level than you're able to actively hurts your season score, then people are naturally incentivized to play at a higher level. Likewise, waiting to play until later in the season makes your early matches easy, but also makes them less rewarding and puts you that much further behind people who have already climbed and are getting higher numbers of points per match.
Compare this with Alliance War... AW has the same number of matches per season, so there is no volume consideration, but both the quality of your play (maximize attack bonuses while minimizing time) and the quality of your opponents (higher war ratings = higher tier = higher multiplier) are super important. Imagine taking away the tier multiplier... the optimal strategy would be to start a new alliance with a zero war rating each season to get easy opponents that you could defeat with zero deaths. Developing players and starter alliances would be grist for the mill and would stop playing the mode pretty quickly. But as it is, going undefeated in Bronze or Silver doesn't get you top-tier rewards. For that, you need to play against masters-level opponents and show enough skill to prevail most of the time. BGs lack this incentive entirely.
Kabam has signaled an intent to incentivize players to push higher, faster, but the ideas in the post were far too limited to have the intended effect. Essentially the idea mentioned was to have milestones that give a bonus for things like "getting to GC in the first 7 days," or "gain 100 points in the first 14 days." However, these only shift the problem from having one day of the season where your ranking matters to having ~4 days of the season where it matters. A talented player could farm VT for six days and then jump to GC, for example, where they then farm Uru III while occasionally racking up enough points to hit the required milestones for the bonuses.
What I'm proposing is for every. single. match to have a built-in incentive to push higher and play at one's peak level. You shouldn't be afraid to lose, because performing well in a loss against a high-level opponent is still rewarding. I've outlined an example of how one such multiplier scaling system could work below, but obviously Kabam should tune it around their specific goals (e.g., narrowing the point differences between wins and losses).
There are currently 30 tiers in VT, from Bronze 5 up to Vibranium 1 (which is zero points in GC). Let's assign each tier a point multiplier starting at 1 for Bronze 5 up to 29 for Vibranium 2. That means you get the standard 7,350 points for a win and 2,650 a loss to start, but by the time you hit Vibranium 2, a loss is now worth 76,850 points, which is more than a win in Silver 1. Maybe still not enough separation, but things really get interesting when you hit GC. If you take the 30x multiplier for Vibranium 1, which is a GC rating of zero points, and add, say, 50% of the GC rating of your opponent (this could be tuned to different amounts, obviously), then your multiplier starts to grow very quickly. Losing a match against an opponent with a GC rating of 100 will net you 212,000 points, while a win farming Vibranium II would only net you 213,000. Meanwhile, if you're winning 50% of your matches (as you should in an ELO system), hovering around a 100 rating would average 400k points per match.
The side effect of this is that we'd be dealing with very, very large numbers for season alliance scores. I'm sure there are other side effects that I haven't thought of as well, which is where the benefit of community discussion comes from. Let me know what you think, and thanks for reading this far for those who stuck it out.
15
Comments
The perfect tuning probably isn’t a completely linear multiplier increase though.
Edit: okay yeah I'm into it.
Your suggestion is at base a viable one and it would solve matchmaking issues, however there is a problem named Elder Marks. Sadly that's the game mode's monetizing currency so we have to consider how it would effect the game mode's economy.
With an escalating multiplier like you suggest, higher ranked players would for the most part not need to buy elders because winning or loosing matches with a high multiplier while using energy would give them more points than those ranked in lower tiers using Elders. That said, why would lower ranked players even buy elders if higher ranked ones can get more points with energy. What if escalating multiplier only activates while using elders? It doesn't sound like something worth investing money specially if it's being valued differently depending on rank position. Players would probably wait at least till the last week of the season to start using elders somewhere around their final ranking placements where they can get most value out of Elders and even then, might use a lot less then they normally do with current system because they would try to secure rank positions and therefore play less during final days. I would guess first 3 days of the last week during every season where pushing with elders would take place.
It worked on realm event because rewards were shared throughout the community and people didn't mind being carried by top spenders which are minority of the playerbase. And still that was only a change in point difference from VT and GC, meaning once in GC all matches won with elders awarded same amount of points regardless rank position.
I personally think Elder Marks are the reason farming even exists in the first place. I would love them to be removed but tbh I don't see that happening.
My assumption was that if this was implemented for alliance scores rather than solo scores, then alliances would still spend marks to outdo each other. ...but that may not be correct. I've never been a fan of the two currency thing, tbh.
Alliance rankings would suffer the same experience as players with current matchmaking, players simply can't keep up therefore would have no incentive to push at all.