Concerned About Radiance for Top Players

DannyB01

Firstly, I think the radiance store is an exciting addition and the structure of what’s in the store and how the currency will be available is really great. However, I think the distribution of radiance is too heavily skewed towards a very low percentage of players. I’m worried the same will be the case with AW and AQ. To put it in perspective, it’s like giving 4x more rewards to Masters tier alliances than P1 or lower.

Here’s the breakdown.


Once you’re out of mysterium—and bear in mind these are still some of the top players in the game in Quantum ranks—the difference in rewards between you and the top players can be over 300k radiance. It’s almost the difference between a whole extra R4 7*, every BGs season.

Think about how that plays out for you if you’re chasing higher ranks in BGs. The gap will get larger at a faster rate than we’ve ever seen before.

I love the store but I think the distribution of radiance is far too extreme between the ranks. There are tens of thousands of players at a decent level in this game. Top 1000 players should not be getting triple or quadruple the rewards of top 10,000 players. Kabam themselves said there’s over 100,000 valiant players.

If the reward distribution stays like this, I expect we’ll see disillusionment amongst the mid/high level players that will have absolutely no way of keeping up.

Asher1_1

Yeah it's literally mostly same people in Celestial 6 & up every season .
Mysterium demon stays in mysterium 😂

& Rest whatever can't climb up

M1 - 175k , C5 -275k 😂

Vendemiaire

DannyB01 said:

Firstly, I think the radiance store is an exciting addition and the structure of what’s in the store and how the currency will be available is really great. However, I think the distribution of radiance is too heavily skewed towards a very low percentage of players. I’m worried the same will be the case with AW and AQ. To put it in perspective, it’s like giving 4x more rewards to Masters tier alliances than P1 or lower.

Here’s the breakdown.


Once you’re out of mysterium—and bear in mind these are still some of the top players in the game in Quantum ranks—the difference in rewards between you and the top players can be over 300k radiance. It’s almost the difference between a whole extra R4 7*, every BGs season.

Think about how that plays out for you if you’re chasing higher ranks in BGs. The gap will get larger at a faster rate than we’ve ever seen before.

I love the store but I think the distribution of radiance is far too extreme between the ranks. There are tens of thousands of players at a decent level in this game. Top 1000 players should not be getting triple or quadruple the rewards of top 10,000 players. Kabam themselves said there’s over 100,000 valiant players.

If the reward distribution stays like this, I expect we’ll see disillusionment amongst the mid/high level players that will have absolutely no way of keeping up.

As it should be. If there’s not a lot of difference, then why push? Why would I push for the next rank, if it’s only a few thousands.

DannyB01

Totally appreciate the rewards are stretch rewards to push players. But let me contextualise it:

To the vast majority of players, “pushing” means making it to the GC.
The players I’d thought this was intended for (top 10%), “pushing” would likely mean ranking Gamma or better.
To a small fraction of competitive players, “pushing” means getting to Arcane or Quantum ranks.
To a slim minority of players, “pushing” means Mysterium or Celestial ranks.

You can be a top 5% player here and push super hard, and still end up with barely a quarter of the rewards of some of the people you’re competing against. That could drive a divide between top players very quickly, a lot more quickly than we’ve seen from rewards structures elsewhere before, and that’s what I’m concerned about.

Chuck_Finley

That also might be intentional - create a gap and then release a new progression level. We have had to complete some piece of content + have a number of champions at a certain rank and rarity to progress. They might want to develop the gap, put the new progression just outside even the top players to let them achieve it relatively quickly - and everyone else is so far behind that the new progression level stays unattainable for months and possibly a year.

The top players are satisfied with meaningful rewards and progression, the rest of the lesser valiants are now chasing a title and trying to scheme a way there (or buy your way there) for a long time…

The downside is there is no catching up or even holding serve. People are going to start being lapped, and then you playing a delicate balancing game of keeping the lesser summoners interested vs just throwing up their hands and finding other things to do.

Even non-top tier summoners (like me) still have a level of achievement they want to and have been able to achieve at a slower rate than the best players. And while I click on a YouTube guide and see content creators with rare champs and more R4’s and a lot more R3’s than me, it’s still not so much that we are playing a different game. This store might indeed put the gap in place where those sorts of guides won’t be relevant to lesser valiants at all.

Asher1_1

Chuck_Finley said:

That also might be intentional - create a gap and then release a new progression level. We have had to complete some piece of content + have a number of champions at a certain rank and rarity to progress. They might want to develop the gap, put the new progression just outside even the top players to let them achieve it relatively quickly - and everyone else is so far behind that the new progression level stays unattainable for months and possibly a year.

The top players are satisfied with meaningful rewards and progression, the rest of the lesser valiants are now chasing a title and trying to scheme a way there (or buy your way there) for a long time…

The downside is there is no catching up or even holding serve. People are going to start being lapped, and then you playing a delicate balancing game of keeping the lesser summoners interested vs just throwing up their hands and finding other things to do.

Even non-top tier summoners (like me) still have a level of achievement they want to and have been able to achieve at a slower rate than the best players. And while I click on a YouTube guide and see content creators with rare champs and more R4’s and a lot more R3’s than me, it’s still not so much that we are playing a different game. This store might indeed put the gap in place where those sorts of guides won’t be relevant to lesser valiants at all.

That's total opposite of how a game should be - if u create a gap & with offers gap will keep on growing it will just make people play less .

u might just play less as u know there will be a gap - that's what lower end players like early valiant & below players suffers.

(It will be clear when next bg season how many people are in GC by everyday )

Like would u play a gamemode where u are at a disadvantage & the disadvantage will keep on growing ??

Midnightfox

Honestly I want to see how radiance plays out but as it looks right now as a casual valiant player who has been excited to grow(I’m one of the top 1500 in the global game) I may just throw in the towel. The radiance gap is wayyyyyyy too big. I invest a lot of time in the game and I have invested some money but again we see the pay 2 play continue to rule.

Azdef

Crashed did mention there will be a new game mode ( and rewards) where individual roster strength and solo play would be the focus. That might fill the gap.
I am more interested in that considering I am in a dead alliance.

Searmenis

I agree. Plus, the new matchmaking system, makes the gap even more solid, the mid to low valiant player that goes to GC, will have to compete not only with other players at his level, but also with the vast majority of those that are in Celestial, since it s hard to find matches in these high ranks, and will get paired constantly with Uru, the rank where everybody else will be. An d stay there forever.

Chuck_Finley

Azdef said:

Crashed did mention there will be a new game mode ( and rewards) where individual roster strength and solo play would be the focus. That might fill the gap.
I am more interested in that considering I am in a dead alliance.

But that’s kind of a double edge sword, I like the concept but if we are already at place when it is released where roster strength is significantly gapped, that’s just going to feed the problem further

MrSanguini

The only thing that semi-remedies this (and could be tuned to make it remedy it even more) is the scaling prices. Crashed says they will scale exponentially on later purchases, meaning that having 4X more radiance will not mean affording 4X more of the same reward, because the prices would get so high in the later purchase quantities that it'll even out the number you can buy.

If, for example, someone with 500K radiance buys T7, with the first costing 75K and each one increasing in price by a power of 1.1, they'd only be able to get 2. A person who only earned 100K radiance (5X less) would be able to get one, half as much. That's the idea behind it, but I haven't studied how well this is enforced in the current radiance store. All I know is that Crashed says the cost increases will be small in the first few purchases, then jump greatly in the latter ones.

altavista

Searmenis said:

I agree. Plus, the new matchmaking system, makes the gap even more solid, the mid to low valiant player that goes to GC, will have to compete not only with other players at his level, but also with the vast majority of those that are in Celestial, since it s hard to find matches in these high ranks, and will get paired constantly with Uru, the rank where everybody else will be. An d stay there forever.

What is interesting is the new "5 minute max" matchmaking rule. Whether that leads to a lot more unbalance matchups or just slightly unbalanced matchups, that will be interesting to see.

BigBlueOx

I think it’s interesting to see the same top heavy approach that has been applied to AW, applied here. I’m curious to see how the store plays out but it does look a bit too top heavy atm

BringPopcorn

I got mixed feelings; but I guess asking for better rewards come with a cost. The top part will always be a few there is no fixing that and there shouldn't be a way anyway. The middle and the bottom will be interesting to see. A lot of people will reevaluate their situation and alliances choices.

TotemCorruption

MrSanguini said:

The only thing that semi-remedies this (and could be tuned to make it remedy it even more) is the scaling prices. Crashed says they will scale exponentially on later purchases, meaning that having 4X more radiance will not mean affording 4X more of the same reward, because the prices would get so high in the later purchase quantities that it'll even out the number you can buy.

If, for example, someone with 500K radiance buys T7, with the first costing 75K and each one increasing in price by a power of 1.1, they'd only be able to get 2. A person who only earned 100K radiance (5X less) would be able to get one, half as much. That's the idea behind it, but I haven't studied how well this is enforced in the current radiance store. All I know is that Crashed says the cost increases will be small in the first few purchases, then jump greatly in the latter ones.

The scaled pricing is laid out in Crashed's post. You don't have to wonder about it.

JackTheSnack

If you’re not at least high up in the circuit, you likely won’t see radiance or any at all for a while. The other stores aren’t disappearing, so it all stays balanced

DrZola

I probably saved it somewhere, but what are the current numbers of Summoners per GC tier (before the new tier structure)? How many are potentially added via the new structure? Where would existing ranks fall in the new tier structure ceteris paribus?

Dr. Zola

Average_Desi

DrZola said:

I probably saved it somewhere, but what are the current numbers of Summoners per GC tier (before the new tier structure)? How many are potentially added via the new structure? Where would existing ranks fall in the new tier structure ceteris paribus?

Dr. Zola

It's there in the BG SEASON post

Herbal_Taxman

I think something like this was inevitable. They probably see in the data that a large number of valiants are stalled out — not playing high level AW/AQ and not bothering to push GC. Massively juicing the rewards is probably the best lever they can pull and they feel that it needs to create major FOMO so low and mid level valiants re-engage.

DrZola

Average_Desi said:

DrZola said:

I probably saved it somewhere, but what are the current numbers of Summoners per GC tier (before the new tier structure)? How many are potentially added via the new structure? Where would existing ranks fall in the new tier structure ceteris paribus?

Dr. Zola

It's there in the BG SEASON post

Got it now—thanks!

Dr. Zola

altavista

Herbal_Taxman said:

I think something like this was inevitable. They probably see in the data that a large number of valiants are stalled out — not playing high level AW/AQ and not bothering to push GC. Massively juicing the rewards is probably the best lever they can pull and they feel that it needs to create major FOMO so low and mid level valiants re-engage.

While more rewards is always nice, I don't think the behavior of stalled Valiants will change at all. People who are stalled either:
1. Only care about the Minimum to begin with (such as reaching GC to get a Saga champion piece) so they already don't care about leaving rewards on the table.
2. Stalled because they can't progress (skill, roster, etc). More rewards for higher tiers isn't gonna magically make players able to progress into the higher tiers. Overtime, maybe it does mean they improve but it requires a time investment from players who aren't predisposed to BGs to begin with.

Personally, I could play more, but earning an extra 7-star / AG / 7R4 doesn't matter to me since:
1. Those rewards only matter if you're trying to get higher in competitive modes
2. The extra work/stress required to get that.

So, overall I think the Radiance store changes is great for player who are already engaged in the mode, but I don't think it will effectively increase overall participation.

Cuber2906

for me , things look fine , the only concern is the massive fall off of radiance from mysterium 3 to quantum 1 , like the gradual decrease seems fine in every other bracket except this , its a near 60k fall off in radiance . atleast make it a bit gradual i feel.

Herbal_Taxman

altavista said:

Herbal_Taxman said:

I think something like this was inevitable. They probably see in the data that a large number of valiants are stalled out — not playing high level AW/AQ and not bothering to push GC. Massively juicing the rewards is probably the best lever they can pull and they feel that it needs to create major FOMO so low and mid level valiants re-engage.

While more rewards is always nice, I don't think the behavior of stalled Valiants will change at all. People who are stalled either:
1. Only care about the Minimum to begin with (such as reaching GC to get a Saga champion piece) so they already don't care about leaving rewards on the table.
2. Stalled because they can't progress (skill, roster, etc). More rewards for higher tiers isn't gonna magically make players able to progress into the higher tiers. Overtime, maybe it does mean they improve but it requires a time investment from players who aren't predisposed to BGs to begin with.

Personally, I could play more, but earning an extra 7-star / AG / 7R4 doesn't matter to me since:
1. Those rewards only matter if you're trying to get higher in competitive modes
2. The extra work/stress required to get that.

So, overall I think the Radiance store changes is great for player who are already engaged in the mode, but I don't think it will effectively increase overall participation.

You might be right, it’s hard to say.

I think Kabam believes one of two things based on the radiance plan:

1) better rewards at the highest levels will drive broad-based participation with many players trying to get from VT to GC, then players currently in Uru / Arcane trying to climb GC more aggressively

And / or

2) whether or not more players actually engage, there is substantial financial opportunity if they heavily incentivize the small minority at the top

CesarSV7

DannyB01 said:

Firstly, I think the radiance store is an exciting addition and the structure of what’s in the store and how the currency will be available is really great. However, I think the distribution of radiance is too heavily skewed towards a very low percentage of players. I’m worried the same will be the case with AW and AQ. To put it in perspective, it’s like giving 4x more rewards to Masters tier alliances than P1 or lower.

Here’s the breakdown.


Once you’re out of mysterium—and bear in mind these are still some of the top players in the game in Quantum ranks—the difference in rewards between you and the top players can be over 300k radiance. It’s almost the difference between a whole extra R4 7*, every BGs season.

Think about how that plays out for you if you’re chasing higher ranks in BGs. The gap will get larger at a faster rate than we’ve ever seen before.

I love the store but I think the distribution of radiance is far too extreme between the ranks. There are tens of thousands of players at a decent level in this game. Top 1000 players should not be getting triple or quadruple the rewards of top 10,000 players. Kabam themselves said there’s over 100,000 valiant players.

If the reward distribution stays like this, I expect we’ll see disillusionment amongst the mid/high level players that will have absolutely no way of keeping up.

Radiance is the premium currency for competitive players. Players that invest a lot of time and effort in order to develope their roster, game knowledge, skills and strategy. They are end gamers, players that need to be engaged by pursuing the highest competition the game offers and this is not an easy task to accomplish.

Rewards should by no means be equally distributed between tenths of thousands of players simply because the top 200 players (now 250) are in a completely different level of experience which they have rightfully earned by playing this game at the highest levels for years.

Trophy tokens, loyalty, glory, mysterium and incursion artefacts all serve that purpose you are asking for. Tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of players and a lot more can gain all those resources with relative ease just by simply playing the game with no specific developed skill sets required.

Casual players wanting to earn nearly as much radiance as end gamers in a competitive game mode is insane. The top 1% of Battlegrounds is nowhere close to being as achievable as doing any type of story content, Epoch, Carinas, etc where players can use unlimited revives to fully explore content regardless their skill sets.

It's about time the game rewards its best players in a meaningful way. Being Valiant is not being an end gamer, being an end gamer means your are constantly pushing at the highest levels of every piece of content this game offers including Masters in AW and Celestial in Battlegrounds. These rewards are not entitled to anyone, if players want to EARN those rewards take some time and put in some effort in order to strive at becoming one of the best players in Mcoc.

TotemCorruption

altavista said:

Herbal_Taxman said:

I think something like this was inevitable. They probably see in the data that a large number of valiants are stalled out — not playing high level AW/AQ and not bothering to push GC. Massively juicing the rewards is probably the best lever they can pull and they feel that it needs to create major FOMO so low and mid level valiants re-engage.

While more rewards is always nice, I don't think the behavior of stalled Valiants will change at all. People who are stalled either:
1. Only care about the Minimum to begin with (such as reaching GC to get a Saga champion piece) so they already don't care about leaving rewards on the table.
2. Stalled because they can't progress (skill, roster, etc). More rewards for higher tiers isn't gonna magically make players able to progress into the higher tiers. Overtime, maybe it does mean they improve but it requires a time investment from players who aren't predisposed to BGs to begin with.

Personally, I could play more, but earning an extra 7-star / AG / 7R4 doesn't matter to me since:
1. Those rewards only matter if you're trying to get higher in competitive modes
2. The extra work/stress required to get that.

So, overall I think the Radiance store changes is great for player who are already engaged in the mode, but I don't think it will effectively increase overall participation.

I thought the same thing, but I'll say, this last season where they buffed the rewards, I saw a big increase in the number of people playing BG.
Among my alliance for example, and even just from my own matches. I was getting matches both in VT and GC much quicker regardless of what day or time I was playing, and I also was facing much weaker rosters than I usually face. (I don't mean rosters much weaker than mine, just rosters weaker than what I normally see).

Ayemeboi

CesarSV7 said:

Radiance is the premium currency for competitive players. Players that invest a lot of time and effort in order to develope their roster, game knowledge, skills and strategy. They are end gamers, players that need to be engaged by pursuing the highest competition the game offers and this is not an easy task to accomplish.

Rewards should by no means be equally distributed between tenths of thousands of players simply because the top 200 players (now 250) are in a completely different level of experience which they have rightfully earned by playing this game at the highest levels for years.

Trophy tokens, loyalty, glory, mysterium and incursion artefacts all serve that purpose you are asking for. Tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of players and a lot more can gain all those resources with relative ease just by simply playing the game with no specific developed skill sets required.

Casual players wanting to earn nearly as much radiance as end gamers in a competitive game mode is insane. The top 1% of Battlegrounds is nowhere close to being as achievable as doing any type of story content, Epoch, Carinas, etc where players can use unlimited revives to fully explore content regardless their skill sets.

It's about time the game rewards its best players in a meaningful way. Being Valiant is not being an end gamer, being an end gamer means your are constantly pushing at the highest levels of every piece of content this game offers including Masters in AW and Celestial in Battlegrounds. These rewards are not entitled to anyone, if players want to EARN those rewards take some time and put in some effort in order to strive at becoming one of the best players in Mcoc.

It’s not that top tier players shouldn’t be rewarded, it’s that the distribution of rewards is insanely disproportionate. Those that are at the top will now have a system that keep them at the top. The disparity between these top rewards is going to keep the top players at the top and growing.

A player getting 1 r4 per season will have an insanely stacked deck after a few seasons, and sometimes battlegrounds is a matter of deck depth. Not matter how well you play, going up against an r4 while placing an r3 defender means that you could lose on time no matter how perfect you play.

Obviously top 100 players should be rewarded, but this shop is so good that the problem is you may be giving out too many rewards to the same people over multiple seasons, and they will continually be able to strengthen their deck and stay at the top because they’re given such good rewards for being at the top. I’m also skeptical that this is the case, but the way they break it up does suggest that those stuck in Mysterium/Quantum may not be able to get out if they’re continually going up against people that are getting vastly better rewards than them each season

Vanitelia

@CesarSV7 I think you're spot on, but unless they remove elder's marks, BG's doesn't necessarily reward the best players. There's still a significant disparity between the points for using Elder's Marks and Energy and the grind it takes to reach those top end scores are significant factors in reaching the top. Maybe their impact is offset with some of the changes that will start next week.

Overall, I think the Radiance distribution is on par with what we see in top tier AW rewards and is in line with the community's thoughts on how ranked BG rewards were distributed previously.

Should be noted that with the need for EM's and the recent importance of prestige in content outside of AQ, the game team has made both EM and Relics rank ups relevant again. Both of them will be important if you're wanting to be/remain competitive.

CesarSV7

Vanitelia said:

@CesarSV7 I think you're spot on, but unless they remove elder's marks, BG's doesn't necessarily reward the best players. There's still a significant disparity between the points for using Elder's Marks and Energy and the grind it takes to reach those top end scores are significant factors in reaching the top. Maybe their impact is offset with some of the changes that will start next week.

Overall, I think the Radiance distribution is on par with what we see in top tier AW rewards and is in line with the community's thoughts on how ranked BG rewards were distributed previously.

Should be noted that with the need for EM's and the recent importance of prestige in content outside of AQ, the game team has made both EM and Relics rank ups relevant again. Both of them will be important if you're wanting to be/remain competitive.

I am a member of a BG focused alliance that has placed 1st multiple seasons. Just to put thinks into perspective, I have used up to 30k+ units in a single BG season.

The alliance event scoring update rewarding players using elders marks in GC has no significant impact towards alliance rank rewards because those rewards will remain the same with no update. In fact, my alliance is seriously thinking of not pushing for top alliance ranks anymore because using elders marks is useless unless an alliance wants to spend crazy amounts of money in order to earn 1 1/2 T4A.

I have done the math on the equivalent cost 1st place in alliance rank rewards have buy purchasing those rewards with radiance and the total amount is equal to 24,375k. We as players can now achieve up to 30k radiance by simply playing the game mode and reaching 200 points in GC before the end of week 3. Believe me, alliance rank rewards are not worth spending or grinding anymore *unless* they add a trophy champ (maybe Magik) to those rewards and even then, that's a huge maybe.

This said, elder marks will have absolutely no impact towards earned radiance because it will only be earned by solo ranking placements.

Deacon

the plump get plumpier. tis always gonna be so. the same old same old rinse and repeat and the gap continues to widen to where a small percentage of folks are happy.

Ladpcw78

I was interested in seeing my placement this season to see. I rarely play GC cos the rewards didn’t scale. I played 1 match this season and came in at 25,023. Looking forward to actually playing more and seeing how far I can go