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Concerned About Radiance for Top Players

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.
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.
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Comments
Mysterium demon stays in mysterium 😂
& Rest whatever can't climb up
M1 - 175k , C5 -275k 😂
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.
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.
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 ??
I am more interested in that considering I am in a dead alliance.
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.
Dr. Zola
Dr. Zola
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 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
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.
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).
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
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.
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.