Battlegrounds Champion Recharge

A champion recharge mechanic is not unique to Battlegrounds, it exists already both in Incursions and Arena and is fairly uncontroversial. However, in the form it has taken in Battlegrounds, it has raised a lot of negative feedback from the community. I’d like to get into why that’s the case, and what makes this recharge different from Arena and Incursions.

Arena is a mode in which you are, necessarily, going to cycle through as many champions as you can you put up as many points as possible. It’s a mode all about roster width, rather than depth. It doesn’t matter who you select for any given team, and Kabam knows that which is why we have a Quick Fill option. It’s just cycle through as many as you can as quick as you can. 6* champions recharge over approximately 11 hours, so can reasonably be used for two runs a day without alliance help while the grind continues with lower rarity champions.

Incursions is a very different playstyle. You pick your starting three champs and (with the ability to substitute as you go) try to just grind out as much as you can with that team. For most people playing the mode, they’ll only need to use one or two teams in order to get all the milestone/room rewards they are aiming for in a given week. It takes days for an Incursion champion to recharge, however it is not a mode that requires repeated attempts, so that recharge rarely comes into play outside of players trying to reach the deepest rooms.

The common element between these two is that you do not have to stop playing the mode completely after a short session. A Cavalier or Thronebreaker player can put two hours into an arena grind, at least, before starting to run out of champions because they don’t need to rely on their best for the mode. An Incursion player will knock out everything they needed to without having to worry about that recharge timer at all. But Battlegrounds does not have that flexibility.

Battlegrounds, unlike the other two modes, is directly competitive with other players. You are making strategic champion selection decisions in the mode, and that starts with the creation of your deck. Therefore, you always want to have your best options available. The recharge system makes that impossible after a very brief run.

For example, I will not play without my Human Torch, or my Nick Fury, or my Hyperion in my deck. They are too valuable and cannot be replaced by anybody else in my roster. I don’t want to handicap myself by not bringing my best champions, so when a champion is out of charges I either have to wait or pay to recharge that champion. And this is the core of the problem. Neither Arena nor Incursions demand the player have access to one specific champion in their team the way Battlegrounds does. If I lose my first team in Incursions, I can put together a second team no problem. If I lose my best champion in Battlegrounds, I’m not going back in until I can use them again. As a competitive mode, the stakes are too high.

I am not necessarily saying the recharge needs to be removed. I understand it serves a purpose to contain endless grinding like we have in Arena and I like that. But it definitely needs tuning. 18 hours for a full charge that takes 30-60 minutes to spend is not a good system.

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TheBair123

Out of curiosity, do you use Hyperion a lot on offense with the current masochism set up? I feel like he’s amazing on defense but he just can’t get the damage going fast enough on offense. Even with mine being at 6R3. Maybe you’re using him better than me though and I’d love to learn if there’s a secret there.

I use him more on defense but it’s possible to use him effectively on offense. If the opponent has doom or Claire then I won’t put Hype on defense. I usually just parry heavy until I get just under 2 bars of power. I’ll parry to trigger masochism and then throw a SP2 to hope the get the stun and the armor break. Depending on masteries you’ll most likely only be able to get 1 heavy in

GinjabredMonsta

Out of curiosity, do you use Hyperion a lot on offense with the current masochism set up? I feel like he’s amazing on defense but he just can’t get the damage going fast enough on offense. Even with mine being at 6R3. Maybe you’re using him better than me though and I’d love to learn if there’s a secret there.

When I use hype on offense I usually just try to cycle sp1

Wicket329

Out of curiosity, do you use Hyperion a lot on offense with the current masochism set up? I feel like he’s amazing on defense but he just can’t get the damage going fast enough on offense. Even with mine being at 6R3. Maybe you’re using him better than me though and I’d love to learn if there’s a secret there.

I go for the sp3, throwing whatever safe heavies I can along the way. That ups his damage for the rest of the fight while I cycle sp2s.

Jaded

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.

GinjabredMonsta

I don't agree with the recharge or the costs. I think you can have a cost to enter the BG, or energy recharge and costs, but not both. Or at least a more clear system of how long the recharge is and then shorten that

Wicket329

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.

Interesting, I haven’t really run into any issues with the energy requirements. At most I’ve had to use three small refills (to get 15 energy) for one additional round before one or more of my champions went on cooldown. I always end up stopping because a champion needs recharging, not because of a lack of energy.

Jaded

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.
Interesting, I haven’t really run into any issues with the energy requirements. At most I’ve had to use three small refills (to get 15 energy) for one additional round before one or more of my champions went on cooldown. I always end up stopping because a champion needs recharging, not because of a lack of energy.

I stopped because of energy, but it’ll be more interesting if they keep the energy requirements for battlegrounds and release new questing content.

Then the rating system will be flawed, easily tank your rating after you compete the goals. Allowing you to start within easier ranks.

Wicket329

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.
Interesting, I haven’t really run into any issues with the energy requirements. At most I’ve had to use three small refills (to get 15 energy) for one additional round before one or more of my champions went on cooldown. I always end up stopping because a champion needs recharging, not because of a lack of energy.
I stopped because of energy, but it’ll be more interesting if they keep the energy requirements for battlegrounds and release new questing content.

Then the rating system will be flawed, easily tank your rating after you compete the goals. Allowing you to start within easier ranks.

You’re assuming that this goals system is what they intend to go live with, and not just an incentive to get people to play a lot of rounds in the beta. If this is what it goes live with and it’s just about winning as many as you can, then yes, tanking to get easy matches could be a problem. But if it’s about what your rating looks like at the end of a season, then tanking doesn’t actually serve any purpose.

Jaded

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.
Interesting, I haven’t really run into any issues with the energy requirements. At most I’ve had to use three small refills (to get 15 energy) for one additional round before one or more of my champions went on cooldown. I always end up stopping because a champion needs recharging, not because of a lack of energy.
I stopped because of energy, but it’ll be more interesting if they keep the energy requirements for battlegrounds and release new questing content.

Then the rating system will be flawed, easily tank your rating after you compete the goals. Allowing you to start within easier ranks.
You’re assuming that this goals system is what they intend to go live with, and not just an incentive to get people to play a lot of rounds in the beta. If this is what it goes live with and it’s just about winning as many as you can, then yes, tanking to get easy matches could be a problem. But if it’s about what your rating looks like at the end of a season, then tanking doesn’t actually serve any purpose.

Of course, it’s all speculation right now. I just don’t see them changing the recharge time/cost on champions. Having it allows for a larger swing in matchups imo, you could easily match with bigger accounts at the end of their deck or vice versa. It also creates another step of diversity to decks/rosters. If anything they should make recharges more expensive and thus less used.

Wicket329

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.
Interesting, I haven’t really run into any issues with the energy requirements. At most I’ve had to use three small refills (to get 15 energy) for one additional round before one or more of my champions went on cooldown. I always end up stopping because a champion needs recharging, not because of a lack of energy.
I stopped because of energy, but it’ll be more interesting if they keep the energy requirements for battlegrounds and release new questing content.

Then the rating system will be flawed, easily tank your rating after you compete the goals. Allowing you to start within easier ranks.
You’re assuming that this goals system is what they intend to go live with, and not just an incentive to get people to play a lot of rounds in the beta. If this is what it goes live with and it’s just about winning as many as you can, then yes, tanking to get easy matches could be a problem. But if it’s about what your rating looks like at the end of a season, then tanking doesn’t actually serve any purpose.

Of course, it’s all speculation right now. I just don’t see them changing the recharge time/cost on champions. Having it allows for a larger swing in matchups imo, you could easily match with bigger accounts at the end of their deck or vice versa. It also creates another step of diversity to decks/rosters. If anything they should make recharges more expensive and thus less used.

Yeah, I gotta pretty comprehensively disagree with you on this one.

We’ll have to wait and see what the data from the beta says, but I imagine Kabam will find that the majority of players, when faced with the options of Replace, Recharge, or Wait, will choose option number 3. I know I will.

The mode, at the higher ratings, is too competitive to run without your best champions. And you load your deck with your best champions from the jump. So necessarily you’d be downgrading. I’m not going to play with a weakened deck, and I’m not gonna drop 45 units to recharge one champ, especially when after that one round another champ is going to need recharging anyway.

There’s already a ton of deck diversity at the higher levels because people use the champions they are good with. I’m trash with Mr. Negative (I’m gonna need lessons @BitterSteel), so he’s in my deck largely as a defensive placement. I’m great with Silver Surfer and use him offensively into a lot of tough matchups. It’s more about the player than the meta (at least for now) and I love that.

Jaded

I don’t see a problem with the recharge time or cost. I finished the objectives quickly and only used energy refills. No units spent. Then there is zero motivation to do any matches once the objectives are completed.

I’d be more concerned over the rating and energy requirements.
Interesting, I haven’t really run into any issues with the energy requirements. At most I’ve had to use three small refills (to get 15 energy) for one additional round before one or more of my champions went on cooldown. I always end up stopping because a champion needs recharging, not because of a lack of energy.
I stopped because of energy, but it’ll be more interesting if they keep the energy requirements for battlegrounds and release new questing content.

Then the rating system will be flawed, easily tank your rating after you compete the goals. Allowing you to start within easier ranks.
You’re assuming that this goals system is what they intend to go live with, and not just an incentive to get people to play a lot of rounds in the beta. If this is what it goes live with and it’s just about winning as many as you can, then yes, tanking to get easy matches could be a problem. But if it’s about what your rating looks like at the end of a season, then tanking doesn’t actually serve any purpose.

Of course, it’s all speculation right now. I just don’t see them changing the recharge time/cost on champions. Having it allows for a larger swing in matchups imo, you could easily match with bigger accounts at the end of their deck or vice versa. It also creates another step of diversity to decks/rosters. If anything they should make recharges more expensive and thus less used.
Yeah, I gotta pretty comprehensively disagree with you on this one.

We’ll have to wait and see what the data from the beta says, but I imagine Kabam will find that the majority of players, when faced with the options of Replace, Recharge, or Wait, will choose option number 3. I know I will.

The mode, at the higher ratings, is too competitive to run without your best champions. And you load your deck with your best champions from the jump. So necessarily you’d be downgrading. I’m not going to play with a weakened deck, and I’m not gonna drop 45 units to recharge one champ, especially when after that one round another champ is going to need recharging anyway.

There’s already a ton of deck diversity at the higher levels because people use the champions they are good with. I’m trash with Mr. Negative (I’m gonna need lessons @BitterSteel), so he’s in my deck largely as a defensive placement. I’m great with Silver Surfer and use him offensively into a lot of tough matchups. It’s more about the player than the meta (at least for now) and I love that.

It appears you’re putting a more competitive spin on it then there really is. As you stated before, we don’t know what the final product will give us. I would say out of the three options because timing is an issue for play time I’d replace, never recharge and only wait if I’m out of energy AND lower on my deck. That’s only because rating doesn’t matter in the current state except for match making. Since completing the objectives I have only run a 5* deck and still minus out any 5* r5 solid defenders.

You are making a choice to not run your deck without specific champions is a choice you’re making. I don’t see it that way. There are far too many upsides to having an expensive refresh then a cheaper one.

BitterSteel

I’m trash with Mr. Negative (I’m gonna need lessons @BitterSteel)

Tap, tap, tap, tap, swipe, tap, hold heavy, tap, tappppp, screenshot to share with line chats

Panchulon21

I agree with your statement I disagree on when my best champs are no longer useable I don’t care/stop playing the mode. I swap that champion and continue without them. This mode is just about using your best champions and stopping it’s about building the right deck in all situations. If I need to swap my anhilius and korg I find a solid replacement (usually man thing and KP). If my fury is depleted and torch then I replace them. Usually those are banned so I don’t need to recharge them as often.

Do we need to do something about recharge? Yeah maybe make it 2.5 hours per energy instead of 6 or 3 hours. But it’s not as bad as folks make it seem.

Kappa2g

It is so obvious that the champ refresh mechanic in battlegrouds is nothing more than a way to force players to spend. Apart from the competitive nature that promotes using the best champs and the hindrance of extended grinding sessions, the mode itself promotes you to use a particular set of champions both attack and defense-wise, as each node promotes a different meta so certain champions will increase in value and not having them on a "recharge" state is flat out disadvantage.

Imagine that Alliance war had a defender recharge per bg, that means you wouldn't be able to foot your defensive tatic matching defenders every single war, effectively making your defense much weaker.

There is simply no place for battlegrounds to have both an entry cost and champ refresh mechanic. A proposed change that would be fair is to make the energy cost for battlegrounds to scale up after a number of matches in a row (say 5 matches) and it goes up to 30 energy per match, the energy cost will slowly drop back to 15 if you stop playing the mode for a period of time.

Colinwhitworth69

I achieved all of the objectives without spending any units on recharging.

In the current beta, your overall ranking does not impact anything except possibly your self-esteem. That might change, but the leaderboard is probably important to a small percentage of the overall player base, because of most of us will never be able to compete with the Happy McMuffins of the contest.

I am currently ranked in top 1000 even though I played a bunch of matches with my "B team", meaning my top champs were on cooldown. I won some of those, lost some.

IMO it's best not to overthink this game, and just play and enjoy it as you can.

Wicket329

@Colinwhitworth69 and @Jaded both of you are talking about the current iteration of the beta, which does not reward overall ranking outside of pride. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the mode that has been billed as a competitive solo game type, which has its own leaderboard, and which has been discussed in the context of seasons previously, will reward higher ratings upon its actual release.

As such, I think it is prudent to give feedback to Kabam that will be relevant to that eventuality so that it can be the best system it can be upon release. I can’t imagine their not being rewards based on ratings in this mode.

Jaded

@Colinwhitworth69 and @Jaded both of you are talking about the current iteration of the beta, which does not reward overall ranking outside of pride. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the mode that has been billed as a competitive solo game type, which has its own leaderboard, and which has been discussed in the context of seasons previously, will reward higher ratings upon its actual release.

As such, I think it is prudent to give feedback to Kabam that will be relevant to that eventuality so that it can be the best system it can be upon release. I can’t imagine their not being rewards based on ratings in this mode.

This is where a true disagree is placed. Having a live leaderboard in bata tells me they won’t reward based on ratings/leaderboard. Similar to alliance war rating, there are benefits but you don’t get a reward for simply having a higher rating. If they do include a competitive leaderboard with rewards/milestones it’ll be more like the arena leaderboards to which we only see a certain amount of rankings and the rest get a percentage but this would be point based not rating based.

You think it’s prevalent to give feedback on something that isn’t there currently and no signs of it being there.

Wicket329

@Colinwhitworth69 and @Jaded both of you are talking about the current iteration of the beta, which does not reward overall ranking outside of pride. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that the mode that has been billed as a competitive solo game type, which has its own leaderboard, and which has been discussed in the context of seasons previously, will reward higher ratings upon its actual release.

As such, I think it is prudent to give feedback to Kabam that will be relevant to that eventuality so that it can be the best system it can be upon release. I can’t imagine their not being rewards based on ratings in this mode.
This is where a true disagree is placed. Having a live leaderboard in bata tells me they won’t reward based on ratings/leaderboard. Similar to alliance war rating, there are benefits but you don’t get a reward for simply having a higher rating. If they do include a competitive leaderboard with rewards/milestones it’ll be more like the arena leaderboards to which we only see a certain amount of rankings and the rest get a percentage but this would be point based not rating based.

You think it’s prevalent to give feedback on something that isn’t there currently and no signs of it being there.

Well, I suppose neither of us will be able to say for certain until it’s out. But saying that a higher war rating is not indicative of the rewards that alliance will receive seems… reductive. You’re right in that the war rating isn’t what rewards are directly calculated off of, but it is what everything else surrounding war rewards is centered on.

I believe the same will be true for Battlegrounds ratings. Do you honestly believe that the intent is to reward the player who can’t get above 1400 rating the same as the player sitting at the top of the leaderboard so long as they both play enough to win 30 matches?