The Problem With Compensation and It's Solution
Yes I know what you are going to say... "Another compensation thread?!?!" Well yes and no, my goal here isn't to suggest what we get from compensation or to argue about what is too much or too little. I just want to point out why the way we get compensated for issues with the game is not a great method and also a bit inconsistent with what Kabam has told us.
There is quite a large gaping hole when it comes to the current method of compensation... That hole is the fact that there is no way you can compensate everyone when you put everyone into the same group and toss some rewards at them. In fact I think this is probably one of the worst ways to provide compensation after some of the issues that we have had to put up with for basically the entire past month. The big issue here is that we may be given 2500 5* shards to "make up for what we missed", but the truth is that this only appropriately compensates a very small chunk of users in the game. And then on the flip side of the coin you have all of the users who have either received far more than they missed out on or far less than they missed out on.
It is absolutely not reasonable to think that a level 40 player would have been able to acquire the same amount of 5* shards as a level 60 player. We have heard numerous times from Kabam Mike that the goal of compensation is to make up to summoners what they missed out on during down time/unplayable game. But it is quite obvious that this compensation goal is only being met for a small group of summoners. What about everyone else who missed out on multiple 5* crystals? How is this compensation fair if the goal of it was to compensate for what was missed? And on the other hand, how can it be justifiable to give 1/4 of a 5* crystal to summoners who have yet to obtain their first 4*? There is no way that 2500 5* shards is what they missed out on.
I hope that you can all see why this is a big problem with the current method of compensation. What really baffles me though is why Kabam has not found a better way to provide compensation. If they are truly attempting to appropriately compensate every summoner then I think that the current method needs to change. There is an extremely easy solution to this! Prestige. We have the prestige system in the game and it is perfect for determining what level of play that every summoner is currently at, so why not use it to better approximate the losses of all summoners?
Now I know nothing is perfect, and I realize that there is no way to meet the losses of all summoners on an individual basis, but this would be a huge step in the right direction. Instead of one generic package there might be 10 different packages that are distributed based on a players prestige. It would require a little bit more work for Kabam to put together this many compensation packages, but I would think that it would be well worth the time to make sure that all players are being appropriately compensated for their losses. After all, is that not the goal of compensation?
This method of compensation has even been used before around 12.0. Not specifically based on prestige, but there was a way to split summoners into categories in order to determine what compensation package they would receive. I say, do it it again for 19.0. It is not only fair, but it is the right thing to do based on everything we have been told about how these compensation packages work.
What are your thoughts on compensation and how it is achieved? Is it done right? How could it be improved? Is a prestige based compensation method better than what we have currently?
