It’s about as pure a competition as you could dream up. What OP fails to understand is that 80% of the competition is taking place outside of BGs. It’s the time spent in story and progression, the time spent to acquire champs through sagas, EoP, Ordeal, etc.
BG is like most competitions in that the outcome of the individual game is dictated by everything that a player or team has done in preparation.
If I go to the park across the street to run in the Saturday pickup game and I don’t want to get packed up, I don’t complain that the rules of basketball are unfair or argue that we should lower the rim. I work the phones and find my buddies who are better players than the scrubs I would have brought otherwise. I stack the deck in my favor by preparing. That’s what is valiants are doing all the time by playing the game seriously over the long haul.
Thats the same for every competition. 80% of the battle takes place before the match starts. But none of that is an excuse to disregard any sense of fair play. For all that Kabam has been saying that this game is more than valiants and trying to get the community to have any sort of sympathy for the average player they have been trying to appeal to, suddenly those player's experiences mean nothing. All that matters is structuring the mode for the top.
Again you're also falling into the same fallacy as DNA. Nothing about this has to do with winning or losing. He already tried to use strong cavs beating weak TBs as an example. In the same example, who cares if the pickup team beat the NBA squad. The point is why the hell are we normalizing complete and utter mismatches and branding it as competitive. You see a grown man playing JV kids and your first thought isn't, "this is pure competition" its, "who let a grown man into a JV league."
They already said their approach hadn't been working and caused them to abandon the mode for months on end. You go anywhere players can voice opinions, reddit, the discord, ingame in global, youtube video comments, twitch streams, its a constant outcry of why BGs is unfair. The structure does not create an enjoyable or valid experience for most of the playerbase, the ones that it does heavily favor still don't take it seriously, its even more niche among the pvp enjoying playerbase than pvp is generally among pve style games like this one, and its run using an anti-competitive structure being lauded as competitive. They need to just come out and say its as intended so the real outcry can start.
First off, just want to say I appreciate your effort to foster a dialogue about the topic. It’s hard to bring open ended questions or what-if’s to the forums. So kudos for keeping it going.
I think it’s all a matter of perspective. Your basketball analogy is helpful, but I’d turn it around and ask “Why should JV players think they should compete with adults?” I think that’s part of the disconnect for me. What is it about BG that makes everyone feel like they are entitled to some success? Maybe someone hasn’t played enough or built enough skill to compete with established players. If that’s the case, my attitude is, don’t go ask for rule changes to help me out. Instead, get back in the gym and put up thousands of shots. Hit the weight room and put on some mass so you can post up the 25 year old.
I’m in a plat 2/3 alliance. We are relatively successful and mildly ambitious. But I don’t jump on the forums and complain about the fact that it’s too hard to reach t1. I know why we aren’t playing t1, and I know what we would need to do in order to compete at that level. It’s not about anything being unfair, it’s the fact that t1 alliances have done and continue to do a ton of work to compete at the highest level.
I understand BGs is different because — to use my example — in the war of all against all, the strong valiant players are ripping through the cav players every month on the way to the top of the leaderboard. But instead of complaining about that, the cav crowd could instead choose to go and emulate the valiant players. Put in the work, get better, build your roster, pay attention when you lose, learn as you go.
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I think it’s all a matter of perspective. Your basketball analogy is helpful, but I’d turn it around and ask “Why should JV players think they should compete with adults?” I think that’s part of the disconnect for me. What is it about BG that makes everyone feel like they are entitled to some success? Maybe someone hasn’t played enough or built enough skill to compete with established players. If that’s the case, my attitude is, don’t go ask for rule changes to help me out. Instead, get back in the gym and put up thousands of shots. Hit the weight room and put on some mass so you can post up the 25 year old.
I’m in a plat 2/3 alliance. We are relatively successful and mildly ambitious. But I don’t jump on the forums and complain about the fact that it’s too hard to reach t1. I know why we aren’t playing t1, and I know what we would need to do in order to compete at that level. It’s not about anything being unfair, it’s the fact that t1 alliances have done and continue to do a ton of work to compete at the highest level.
I understand BGs is different because — to use my example — in the war of all against all, the strong valiant players are ripping through the cav players every month on the way to the top of the leaderboard. But instead of complaining about that, the cav crowd could instead choose to go and emulate the valiant players. Put in the work, get better, build your roster, pay attention when you lose, learn as you go.