I remember when the guy who first cleared RoL (or LoL?) made the Goodfellas inspired ‘F-you pay me’ post and it feels like we’re back at that point again with BGs.
I’m no whale by any means, but I buy the sigil each month as well as the daily unit card. I’ve also bought the x3 summer passes and bought the daily cards for a bit when they upped the items you got. I’ll also wait to see whatever the daily offer is and if it’s something good I’ll get it (although Kabam are making it much easier to ignore these lately).
This never feels enough for Kabam though and they keep wanting more, more, more.
I really enjoyed the Betas of BGs and started ranking my champions mainly based on this game mode. My last rank up was Korg while I have MODOK and Mephisto on my to-do list purely because they’re decent options here.
One of my main frustrations is that there was literally nothing about Elder Marks during the Beta but now they’re essential if you want the good rewards. It feels like a bit like a drug dealer getting you hooked on the product for free then whacking up the price.
During the Betas I would pick up the currency from the objectives and use them in the store and I’m probably going to just keep doing that if things stay the way they are.
My main criticisms like the reward structure, the P2W orientation of the mode and the complexity have already been mentioned several times. Here are some suggestions for improvement: - Elder Marks are nonsensical in their current form. But there would be a lot of potential if you expand this as an additional currency. We were mostly under a deficit of energy and now should we use another 15 energy per match? Why not establish Elder Marks as a BG currency that recharges over time - BG is a solo mode. But I like the idea of scoring points together in the Alliance. There is an opportunity to help smaller members to get further together than they could alone. So the community could be strengthened here if there were low-threshold access for all members to Alliance Mode, where you can collect points together. Here you should be guided by the AW season reward. You could offer BG items that are not available in AW. - Basically, BG is a Summer Summoner for everyone. Solo mode should also be kept as simple as this. 3 matches, best wins, happy milestones, happy season rewards and done.
Ok the necessity to use EM to complete solo and alliance objectives is ridiculous.
Everyone can understand and accept that a spender can have an advantage over a F2P player, just like the sigil which open another shop, but F2P still have access to basic shop to buy materials
With BG, F2P have next to nothing to gain because EM are mandatory to do solo objectives
Let the solo and alliance objectives available for everyone but give an edge to spender who will use units for EM. That could be more points if you use EM for example or even the possibility to double their points from the fight if they win
I’ve had a bit of time to mull over this over the last couple of days and will try to be constructive in this post.
I’ve loved the idea of BG since their inception and outside of mods, which I appreciate are difficult to tackle and will always be a retrospective action by definition anyway, there were only two ways that BG could fail: 1. The rewards and reward structure either weren’t sufficient or there was no real recognition of skill - a BG equivalent of a masters title for instance. 2. The cost of entry prohibited low/non spenders, and reduced the contest to a few die hards who save their units for entry and big spenders.
Unfortunately it seems that both of these have been hit firmly on the head.
An energy cost associated with BG is fine IMO, though I’d have preferred it to be akin to AW/AQ energy so the player doesn’t have to choose between game modes. A starting energy point of ~5, recharging at a similar pace to AQ would allow most players to be able to pick up BG pretty much whenever they wanted and unless they were playing for an hour straight they’d probably not run out of energy.
The Good:
The Victory Track leading into the Gladiator Circuit is a good idea IMO, it wets the toes of the novices and allows them to work on their decks as they progress before reaching the big time, where hopefully they’ve got a good idea of where they want their BG decks to be.
The decks and mastery load outs are a win, as is the interface. There’s a lot of information that’s pretty well organised and accessible.
The game mode itself: the healthpools are back and reward clean play over bursting damage a bit more
The Bad:
The reward structure is still all wrong IMO. It should be built into the season rewards at the end as this places all of the emphasis on winning, rather than grinding. The placement method employed in the beta was perfect, you knew where you were ranked and how far/close your rivals were from you. Applying brackets to this scoring system is all that was required: - Podium - Top 100 - Top 300 - Top 600 (Approximate ‘masters’ level based off AW) However the various cutoffs are organised is beside the point, but that’s where the rewards to lie, and there should certainly be title recognition for those who place highly, or go on the longest streaks etc.
I think that an element of alliance reward isn’t a problem, but it should be bonus rewards - refills, perhaps a few shards or currency. Something to entice lower level players/alliances into just having fun in the victory track while they develop their skills and rosters.
The Ugly:
The Elder’s marks system is totally flawed and has the potential to kill the game mode in its tracks. There should be no unit/financial cost of entry, certainly not to access the higher rewards.
There should be no barrier to entry, certainly not for a fresh game mode that for the first time allows players to finally see who is the most skilful in the contest. I realise that this is a business and that an element of monetisation is what keeps the food on the table and the lights on at the HQ but the real monetisation from this game mode comes from players spending on offers and deals to develop their rosters to be able to compete at the highest level.
The Solution:
1. Remove Elder’s marks completely. 2. 90% of the rewards should be in season rewards, not grind-based milestones.
With this game mode, Kabam has the potential to actually make genuine e-sports a thing with MCoC. That is where the monetisation potential comes in: players will spend to stack their rosters and compete for access to tournaments. We’ve all seen the LoL, CoD tournaments streamed globally, there’s huge sponsorship, prize pools etc. available.
Please take a long view on this and see the potential and you’ll realise it’s not worth a short term influx of cash that kills the mode when you can breath life back into a game that, let’s be honest, hasn’t exactly been glowing with vitality recently.
I would say it’s just my 2c, but this has become a DNAesque length post.
So, you can buy EM to get points for the second level, but to reach this second level is still a mess, since it's so hard to have 3 wins in a row, because if you don't, u go back to zero in your bracket. That's the more annoying part for me, you can spend hours and hours and still end this season without even reaching Diamond level.
Are these points transferrable to next season at least? Because I already lost interest after all this frustration.
The only "good" part in all of this, is watching skilled youtubers play the mode for 2+ hours and still remain in Bronze 2, and this way you don't feel like **** and the worst player in the world.
The solo event and rewards are joke.. 15k 6* shards for 300k points.. 2050 points for win and completion or 800 if u lose/completion.. so that would be about 146 wins..
So need atleast 146×15=2190 EM.. Assuming all wins.. or 375*15=5625 EM.. Assuming losing all..
So, lets say, a middle value of 3600 EM needed for to get all milestones in solo event.. 3600 EM deal in store is about 3100 units..
3100units = $100 in Units store
So, $100 worth of units for 15k 6* shards. NO THANKS.
I can instead buy Daily Paragon deal..which after a week gives me 15k shards.. 😂 For $35= 6 class,2 Cav Nexus, 4k 6* shards, 70% T5CC selector, 14% T3CC, 14% T6B
The company has to make money,I get it But if you can provide atleast 30 elder marks daily(which is not so much btw) would help casual players and who are pushing for higher ranks can still get them from units or progressing through tiers
My problem with battle grounds is the blatant monetisation of the game mode and the removal of actually making the game competitive as it was during the beta phases. just look at the below from a F2P perspective;
1. 300,000 points required to complete all 15 milestone in the solo event which rewards you with 15,000 six stars shards. 2. For getting to the gladiator circuit you get 900 elder marks 3. You need 46 wins to get to the top, from a hypothetical stand point if we average it out at a 50/50 win ratio as it will be tougher at the top you will need 92 wins. At 15 energy a match you are looking at 1,380 energy or the equivalent of 19.7 full energy refills aka 600 units. 4. Once you have acquired your 900 elder marks you have the ability to take part in 60 total matches. 5. From taking part in the solo event you get 800 points for playing a match and 1250 if you win. So if you managed to win all 60 rounds you would only acquire 123,000 points which isn’t even half of the milestones for the event. 6. The above is unrealistic so even if you were generous and had a 2/1 winning ratio you would collect 82,000 points for wins (2,050 x 40 wins) and a further 16,000 points for losses (800 x 20 losses) i.e a total of 98,000 points per 900 elder marks ( 1 elder mark = 108.88 points) 7. Following the above to meet the remaining milestones and acquire the remaining 202,000 points you will require 1,855.25 elder marks. 8. To acquire these additional elder marks you can purchase 3600 elder marks for 3100 units for the equivalent of £100, putting the price of 1 elder mark at 0.861 units or 2.777 pence. 9. It doesn’t sound much but to acquire the remaining elder marks just for the solo milestones you would need to spend the equivalent of £51.54.
From a time perspective following the above 2/1 win ratio to complete the 300,000 milestone you would need 123 wins ( 2,050 x 122 = 252,150 points) and 60 losses (800 x 60 = 48,000 points). With a match taking an average of 8 minutes you are looking at a total of 24.4 hours of game time.
Granted you can get more elder marks to lower the monetary cost however it is negligible considering it’s 9 million points for the top milestone putting the cost at 300,000 points per alliance member.
This is why I feel that a game mode which had so much potential has essentially been ruined. As with everything you will always the top rewards hidden behind some form of “pay wall” aka gifting and arena with champ refreshes. However the disparity between what can be acquired from being good to what you can simply buy is just ridiculous and quite demoralising to be perfectly honest.
I think people are wasting time wanting/expecting Elders Marks to just be removed completely or have their importance reduced personally. While I think that's a lost cause, I do think that situation can and should be improved significantly.
Games like this need monetization to survive. People that have problems with that are playing the wrong type of game. However, just like in most other aspects of the game l, what I think should be sold is time. I don't think it's unreasonable to sell faster access to something as long as someone that isn't paying can still attain it by spending time to get it.
People should be able to grind Elders Marks by winning matches played with energy. It should be just like units in arena. You can swipe that card if you can afford it and can't be bothered grinding or you can just grind them out at a much slower pace.
Having the finite amount of marks in the victory track levels is my major concern. It doesn't give a grinder any opportunity to compete with a spender regardless of the amount of time they are willing to spend to do so which I feel is a major problem.
Do I feel the balance between the rank and event rewards is correct? Not even close, but without there even being a way to grind more ranked entries it's just a flat non starter for a lot of people. That's a much bigger issue than trying to figure out the reward per area balance in my opinion.
There are many problems with battlegrounds: 1. Monetization is worse than almost any game I’ve ever seen. You’re going to lock all the best rewards behind paywall, and for those who don’t want to pay they can grind arena endlessly and spend all those units on elders marks 2. Multiple energy types is awful. We’ve already seen confusion from folks using quest energy to play and not getting progress in solo or alliance event. It makes the grind so much worse. And if you’re going to put the best rewards behind premium energy, have the decency to give us some for free to get us enticed to play. The motivation for (conservatively) 90% of the playerbase goes to 0 if they don’t have a free taste of the new mode. 3. The alliance event is a terrible decision. It forces people to be in competitive alliances for a mode that is based on solo participation. Just get rid of it all together or move most of the rewards elsewhere 4. The paywall for extra decks is insane. I honestly think they should be free, but I understand a bit of payment to access them. But 4000 units for two extra decks? Absolutely insane. 5. The strategy for battlegrounds is horrible. It encourages tanking fairly often to beat up on lower players in order to climb, and then tank again. There are more problems, but I’ve chosen to highlight the most egregious ones. Hopefully you can rectify these mistakes and make the game mode good
The thought process behind this is at least stupid. Finishing 94% hp you lose to someone finishing with 75% hp because they ended the fight 20s earlier. This has no real logic. There is no field where something like this would ever apply. If you come back healthy from a fight, they say it's better to end it fast and lose 2 limbs in the process. Promotes quantity over quality mentality as well and just facing tanks on every single match-up. Time should only be used as a deciding factor between 2 very similar hp left (within the 3% range) imo.
Not sure what is going on... other than the BG fight itself which was also changed a bit, nothing is even close to how it looked in the beta.. I'm happy to see that you add a layer of alliance and solo event but was it really necessary to make it so confusing? elder marks? token? relics? Circuit? too many new terms all at once... feels like diving into completely different game (vs new game mode) The more complicate a new mode in the game is, people will find way to exploit it. It need to be MUCH simpler
I was also surprised to find out that you weren't really honest (or clear) about some of the changes you announced before the weekend: - You said you'll allow to save different set of mastery with every deck and it will be free to switch decks with their associate mastery but you failed to mention that it will cost a lot of units to buy a 2nd and 3rd deck (not that I care personally because I never switch mastery) - you said you heard our feedback from the beta and added a new "currency" to enter BG instead of energy, but you failed to mention that this currency will be available only in the BG store for units (again, a lot of units) or after winning many matched for still using energy. At this point I rather spend my energy on quests which is more fun just because of the ratio between the rewards and the how easy it to understand what is going on.
IMO, this game mode is going to end MCOC, it simply change the game to a full time job. Imagine the hours and money you have to spend in the game if you want to attend AQ+AW+BG+Monthly event, this is ridiculous.
Kabam, what are you doing?
I don't like this sentence: "If you don't like it, don't play it." But in this case it is just true. Nobody needs BG in this way and most of us are still addicted to the game after years (thanks to Game launcher I know that I played over 4.400 hours yet). It's just a mode that will vanish because of the bad decisions Kabam made.
So what now? We still have enough game-modes - more than we can play. The update for incursions will come and maybe Kabam learns from it's mistakes. I would be glad if I could help. Our Team of J.A.R.V.I.S. represents a lot of German players, we have close to 7k using our helpbot for tips and tricks, a Youtube-Channel with close to 1k frequent viewers, a Instagram-acc with 1k follower and help-groups in Facebook and more and more.
We wanted to be in the CCP and tried it a lot, but no chance. I'd like to be the players voice (always in mind that Kabam isn't a non-profit-organisation) and gell Kabam in detail where the problem is - and use my time to make a better game and better experience- but you don't even get an answer...
If we want to address feedback, we need to know WHY you're feeling the way you do, not just HOW you feel.
That's pretty much what the comments have been about. Just interpret them, it's easy to know WHY the community is pissed about this. Not to mention, what were the multiple betas for? So much just so you guy's ended up releasing something totally different, untested, not asked by anyone. You should already know that "surprises" from this game are, most of the times, unnapreaciated by everyone and actually really bad. ____________________
But to start things off, and you won't like this one:
- Remove monetization. There, is that simple. Already a huge step forward. Don't pretend you don't know that this is an issue, and don't expect to make up any excuses in order to leave it there. Just do what it needs to be done.
-----
Now, about those Elder Mark's:
-Get rid of them. No one asked for a P2W feature here. Especially since this will eventually just be spammed across multiple "battleground offers" in the future.
However, if you want to keep this feature, then you could rework it and turn it into something different. Turn them in to a Battleground Scoring Mark. This will work similar to an energy system.
What I mean by it is that, in order to score in the solo and alliance event's, you would need to spend Elder Mark's in a match. You can still play as much as you want by using quest energy, but you won't be scoring anything in the events. You will only score if you start a match with an Elder Mark. Let's say for simplicity, 1x Elder Mark to be able to start a match that will actually award points.
Now, this isn't much different from the current system. But now here's the catch: These Elder Mark's are not purchasable or obtainable in any way, shape or form. Yeh let's not go that route. Instead, they are automatically added to your inventory every X hours, or every day. For simplicity, let's say you get 1 Elder Mark per day, and the max you can hold is 5.
You start the Battleground season with 5/5 Elder Mark's. Similar to a energy system in which you start with it at max. Now, you can use Elder Mark's to start a match and contribute points toward the solo and alliance events. Or you can just test the water's and use quest energy instead, without contributing points for the events. Once you have spent an Elder Mark, you will have to wait for the next day to get +1 Elder Mark. So if you were at 0/5 Elder Mark's, the next day you would have 1/5. And considering you haven't used it, you would have 2/5 on the following day. This will allow player's to have free time to do anything else in the game and hold the Elder Mark's for a few days, before they cap at 5/5. If they stay cap for the next day then it's one less opportunity to score in the events, just that.
And if you want to keep playing BG for fun, but you don't have any Elder Mark's left, you can just use quest energy instead. You won't score for the events though, but you can still score in the solo objectives this way. Which BTW, add one or two more there to incentivize playing while at 0 Elder Mark's left.
With this you would likely need to rework the scoring system and change some other stuff here and there once again, but that's on you for changing it first prior to fix the various problems with the mode in the first place.
The game of battlegrounds is amazing, the development have done a great team.
But I don’t know which team decided on the entry and rewards system but they couldn’t have done a worse job if they tried. I honestly don’t think I’ll bother with season 1 at all, if ever with the mode. I played all the betas, hit all the milestones. The implementation of this mode makes me feel total apathy towards the whole game. I genuinely don’t understand how you can get something this wrong.
If we want to address feedback, we need to know WHY you're feeling the way you do, not just HOW you feel.
That's pretty much what the comments have been about. Just interpret them, it's easy to know WHY the community is pissed about this. Not to mention, what were the multiple betas for? So much just so you guy's ended up releasing something totally different, untested, not asked by anyone. You should already know that "surprises" from this game are, most of the times, unnapreaciated by everyone and actually really bad. ____________________
But to start things off, and you won't like this one:
- Remove monetization. There, is that simple. Already a huge step forward. Don't pretend you don't know that this is an issue, and don't expect to make up any excuses in order to leave it there. Just do what it needs to be done.
-----
Now, about those Elder Mark's:
-Get rid of them. No one asked for a P2W feature here. Especially since this will eventually just be spammed across multiple "battleground offers" in the future.
However, if you want to keep this feature, then you could rework it and turn it into something different. Turn them in to a Battleground Scoring Mark. This will work similar to an energy system.
What I mean by it is that, in order to score in the solo and alliance event's, you would need to spend Elder Mark's in a match. You can still play as much as you want by using quest energy, but you won't be scoring anything in the events. You will only score if you start a match with an Elder Mark. Let's say for simplicity, 1x Elder Mark to be able to start a match that will actually award points.
Now, this isn't much different from the current system. But now here's the catch: These Elder Mark's are not purchasable or obtainable in any way, shape or form. Yeh let's not go that route. Instead, they are automatically added to your inventory every X hours, or every day. For simplicity, let's say you get 1 Elder Mark per day, and the max you can hold is 5.
You start the Battleground season with 5/5 Elder Mark's. Similar to a energy system in which you start with it at max. Now, you can use Elder Mark's to start a match and contribute points toward the solo and alliance events. Or you can just test the water's and use quest energy instead, without contributing points for the events. Once you have spent an Elder Mark, you will have to wait for the next day to get +1 Elder Mark. So if you were at 0/5 Elder Mark's, the next day you would have 1/5. And considering you haven't used it, you would have 2/5 on the following day. This will allow player's to have free time to do anything else in the game and hold the Elder Mark's for a few days, before they cap at 5/5. If they stay cap for the next day then it's one less opportunity to score in the events, just that.
And if you want to keep playing BG for fun, but you don't have any Elder Mark's left, you can just use quest energy instead. You won't score for the events though, but you can still score in the solo objectives this way. Which BTW, add one or two more there to incentivize playing while at 0 Elder Mark's left.
With this you would likely need to rework the scoring system and change some other stuff here and there once again, but that's on you for changing it first prior to fix the various problems with the mode in the first place.
Or just have elder marks that act like aq/aw energy. “Gain 1 for X amount of time”. But the fault in your method would be that the max points anyone can get is equal to the same as someone else. There has to be something that separates people besides wins/losses because with such few elder marks it’s easier to pin-point a must win fight. So better yet to have elder marks like an energy bar that fills 1 every 5 mins, 1 to enter the fight for points but you can buy refills. There is separation from time and whales can whale out if they want to spend all day there.
I’d also suggest that energy/elder marks both generate points for goals but one is less then the other enticing people to maximize their points/time by using elder marks but then the casual player can use both if they craved out an hour to play them.
Also, add gold to matches. 50k for win, 25k for loss. Promotes grinding for a reason, so win or lose at least we are gaining something to help us in the game.
I’ve had a bit of time to mull over this over the last couple of days and will try to be constructive in this post.
I’ve loved the idea of BG since their inception and outside of mods, which I appreciate are difficult to tackle and will always be a retrospective action by definition anyway, there were only two ways that BG could fail: 1. The rewards and reward structure either weren’t sufficient or there was no real recognition of skill - a BG equivalent of a masters title for instance. 2. The cost of entry prohibited low/non spenders, and reduced the contest to a few die hards who save their units for entry and big spenders.
Unfortunately it seems that both of these have been hit firmly on the head.
An energy cost associated with BG is fine IMO, though I’d have preferred it to be akin to AW/AQ energy so the player doesn’t have to choose between game modes. A starting energy point of ~5, recharging at a similar pace to AQ would allow most players to be able to pick up BG pretty much whenever they wanted and unless they were playing for an hour straight they’d probably not run out of energy.
The Good:
The Victory Track leading into the Gladiator Circuit is a good idea IMO, it wets the toes of the novices and allows them to work on their decks as they progress before reaching the big time, where hopefully they’ve got a good idea of where they want their BG decks to be.
The decks and mastery load outs are a win, as is the interface. There’s a lot of information that’s pretty well organised and accessible.
The game mode itself: the healthpools are back and reward clean play over bursting damage a bit more
The Bad:
The reward structure is still all wrong IMO. It should be built into the season rewards at the end as this places all of the emphasis on winning, rather than grinding. The placement method employed in the beta was perfect, you knew where you were ranked and how far/close your rivals were from you. Applying brackets to this scoring system is all that was required: - Podium - Top 100 - Top 300 - Top 600 (Approximate ‘masters’ level based off AW) However the various cutoffs are organised is beside the point, but that’s where the rewards to lie, and there should certainly be title recognition for those who place highly, or go on the longest streaks etc.
I think that an element of alliance reward isn’t a problem, but it should be bonus rewards - refills, perhaps a few shards or currency. Something to entice lower level players/alliances into just having fun in the victory track while they develop their skills and rosters.
The Ugly:
The Elder’s marks system is totally flawed and has the potential to kill the game mode in its tracks. There should be no unit/financial cost of entry, certainly not to access the higher rewards.
There should be no barrier to entry, certainly not for a fresh game mode that for the first time allows players to finally see who is the most skilful in the contest. I realise that this is a business and that an element of monetisation is what keeps the food on the table and the lights on at the HQ but the real monetisation from this game mode comes from players spending on offers and deals to develop their rosters to be able to compete at the highest level.
The Solution:
1. Remove Elder’s marks completely. 2. 90% of the rewards should be in season rewards, not grind-based milestones.
With this game mode, Kabam has the potential to actually make genuine e-sports a thing with MCoC. That is where the monetisation potential comes in: players will spend to stack their rosters and compete for access to tournaments. We’ve all seen the LoL, CoD tournaments streamed globally, there’s huge sponsorship, prize pools etc. available.
Please take a long view on this and see the potential and you’ll realise it’s not worth a short term influx of cash that kills the mode when you can breath life back into a game that, let’s be honest, hasn’t exactly been glowing with vitality recently.
I would say it’s just my 2c, but this has become a DNAesque length post.
I appreciate posts like this that not only appropriately critique the problem, but also highlights good points and provides a solution to help resolve the issue/problem.
If we want to address feedback, we need to know WHY you're feeling the way you do, not just HOW you feel.
That's pretty much what the comments have been about. Just interpret them, it's easy to know WHY the community is pissed about this. Not to mention, what were the multiple betas for? So much just so you guy's ended up releasing something totally different, untested, not asked by anyone. You should already know that "surprises" from this game are, most of the times, unnapreaciated by everyone and actually really bad. ____________________
But to start things off, and you won't like this one:
- Remove monetization. There, is that simple. Already a huge step forward. Don't pretend you don't know that this is an issue, and don't expect to make up any excuses in order to leave it there. Just do what it needs to be done.
-----
Now, about those Elder Mark's:
-Get rid of them. No one asked for a P2W feature here. Especially since this will eventually just be spammed across multiple "battleground offers" in the future.
However, if you want to keep this feature, then you could rework it and turn it into something different. Turn them in to a Battleground Scoring Mark. This will work similar to an energy system.
What I mean by it is that, in order to score in the solo and alliance event's, you would need to spend Elder Mark's in a match. You can still play as much as you want by using quest energy, but you won't be scoring anything in the events. You will only score if you start a match with an Elder Mark. Let's say for simplicity, 1x Elder Mark to be able to start a match that will actually award points.
Now, this isn't much different from the current system. But now here's the catch: These Elder Mark's are not purchasable or obtainable in any way, shape or form. Yeh let's not go that route. Instead, they are automatically added to your inventory every X hours, or every day. For simplicity, let's say you get 1 Elder Mark per day, and the max you can hold is 5.
You start the Battleground season with 5/5 Elder Mark's. Similar to a energy system in which you start with it at max. Now, you can use Elder Mark's to start a match and contribute points toward the solo and alliance events. Or you can just test the water's and use quest energy instead, without contributing points for the events. Once you have spent an Elder Mark, you will have to wait for the next day to get +1 Elder Mark. So if you were at 0/5 Elder Mark's, the next day you would have 1/5. And considering you haven't used it, you would have 2/5 on the following day. This will allow player's to have free time to do anything else in the game and hold the Elder Mark's for a few days, before they cap at 5/5. If they stay cap for the next day then it's one less opportunity to score in the events, just that.
And if you want to keep playing BG for fun, but you don't have any Elder Mark's left, you can just use quest energy instead. You won't score for the events though, but you can still score in the solo objectives this way. Which BTW, add one or two more there to incentivize playing while at 0 Elder Mark's left.
With this you would likely need to rework the scoring system and change some other stuff here and there once again, but that's on you for changing it first prior to fix the various problems with the mode in the first place.
Or just have elder marks that act like aq/aw energy. “Gain 1 for X amount of time”. But the fault in your method would be that the max points anyone can get is equal to the same as someone else.
Correct. That would get solved with some changes to the scoring system. Not via any monetizable or purchased method though, The intention is to about those at any cost
The expectation for them to develop this and not have it be monetized at all is a pipe dream. Also everyone keeps talking about how this system is p2w and doesn't reward skill but then wants marks to just be given to them. That's why I suggested being able to earn them through winning matches with energy. That way if you're good enough you can earn enough to actually compete in the solo/alliance events.
If we want to address feedback, we need to know WHY you're feeling the way you do, not just HOW you feel.
That's pretty much what the comments have been about. Just interpret them, it's easy to know WHY the community is pissed about this. Not to mention, what were the multiple betas for? So much just so you guy's ended up releasing something totally different, untested, not asked by anyone. You should already know that "surprises" from this game are, most of the times, unnapreaciated by everyone and actually really bad. ____________________
But to start things off, and you won't like this one:
- Remove monetization. There, is that simple. Already a huge step forward. Don't pretend you don't know that this is an issue, and don't expect to make up any excuses in order to leave it there. Just do what it needs to be done.
-----
Now, about those Elder Mark's:
-Get rid of them. No one asked for a P2W feature here. Especially since this will eventually just be spammed across multiple "battleground offers" in the future.
However, if you want to keep this feature, then you could rework it and turn it into something different. Turn them in to a Battleground Scoring Mark. This will work similar to an energy system.
What I mean by it is that, in order to score in the solo and alliance event's, you would need to spend Elder Mark's in a match. You can still play as much as you want by using quest energy, but you won't be scoring anything in the events. You will only score if you start a match with an Elder Mark. Let's say for simplicity, 1x Elder Mark to be able to start a match that will actually award points.
Now, this isn't much different from the current system. But now here's the catch: These Elder Mark's are not purchasable or obtainable in any way, shape or form. Yeh let's not go that route. Instead, they are automatically added to your inventory every X hours, or every day. For simplicity, let's say you get 1 Elder Mark per day, and the max you can hold is 5.
You start the Battleground season with 5/5 Elder Mark's. Similar to a energy system in which you start with it at max. Now, you can use Elder Mark's to start a match and contribute points toward the solo and alliance events. Or you can just test the water's and use quest energy instead, without contributing points for the events. Once you have spent an Elder Mark, you will have to wait for the next day to get +1 Elder Mark. So if you were at 0/5 Elder Mark's, the next day you would have 1/5. And considering you haven't used it, you would have 2/5 on the following day. This will allow player's to have free time to do anything else in the game and hold the Elder Mark's for a few days, before they cap at 5/5. If they stay cap for the next day then it's one less opportunity to score in the events, just that.
And if you want to keep playing BG for fun, but you don't have any Elder Mark's left, you can just use quest energy instead. You won't score for the events though, but you can still score in the solo objectives this way. Which BTW, add one or two more there to incentivize playing while at 0 Elder Mark's left.
With this you would likely need to rework the scoring system and change some other stuff here and there once again, but that's on you for changing it first prior to fix the various problems with the mode in the first place.
Or just have elder marks that act like aq/aw energy. “Gain 1 for X amount of time”. But the fault in your method would be that the max points anyone can get is equal to the same as someone else.
Correct. That would get solved with some changes to the scoring system. Not via any monetizable or purchased method though, The intention is to about those at any cost
The expectation for them to develop this and not have it be monetized at all is a pipe dream. Also everyone keeps talking about how this system is p2w and doesn't reward skill but then wants marks to just be given to them. That's why I suggested being able to earn them through winning matches with energy. That way if you're good enough you can earn enough to actually compete in the solo/alliance events.
I'm sure they won't remove the monetization aspect of it. Still just wanted to give my 2 cents I guess. Gain Mark's via winning matches could be a possibility, but maybe only if they are obtainable via the objectives or events, and is a limited ammount of them. Otherwise we'll have people spamming energy refils to get an unlimited ammount of them
If you're not willing to put in the time or money, why should you be at a competitive level?
Well it’s not being competitive if it’s locked behind a rare currency that can only be obtain two ways. Buying it or working through the victory track. Firstly, that VT is extremely difficult and time consuming to get through with minimal incentive to do it. Zero competition required for the VT except to monetize it, this is where casual players should be but because there is very little incentive to burn energy it’s easier to pass on it altogether. The real competition is beyond VT and into gladiator circuit. So it’s not really a “why should you be at a competitive level?” But more “why is there two competitive levels being monetized?”.
Limited ftp in the gladiator circuit makes sense, I can see your statement being true here.
For people like me, I will NEVER touch the mode in it's current form.
I have to pay hard earned money. Money that is best spent on my kids, my husband, my friends, rent, food, bills, clothes, dates, makeup, Halloween, Christmas, etc, JUST to earn rewards?
Pathetic.
There is no reason at least solo reward milestones should be locked behind a pay wall. None whatsoever. I think this is a big issue. True F2P will have no reason to even press icon to go to it. Light spenders will only play it when they have extra money to spend on units.
We have casually thrown around the phrases "pay to win" and "pay to play" in many aspects of this game. But this mode is the epitome of those phrases. Pay to WIN is fine in my eyes in a free to play game. But when you start to make people pay to play the game that is an issue.
This game has a delicate balance of "time = money" in this mode you want both plus more from us.
Will you at least buy me dinner before you..........
If you're not willing to put in the time or money, why should you be at a competitive level?
I can see what you’re saying, but the issue here is that unless you’re dropping serious money or serious hours for the privilege to play, you can’t. This is a mode that should be monetised by through its rewards and kudos - people spend on their roster for the purposes of placing high in BG. The more successful the mode is, the more likely people are to spend. Even you have said you curtailed your spending in recent months. Would you not have been more likely, or keen, to spend to get certain champions for the mode, rather than simply the right to enter?
I think that the post I made further up explains my thoughts quite well.
Comments
I’m no whale by any means, but I buy the sigil each month as well as the daily unit card. I’ve also bought the x3 summer passes and bought the daily cards for a bit when they upped the items you got. I’ll also wait to see whatever the daily offer is and if it’s something good I’ll get it (although Kabam are making it much easier to ignore these lately).
This never feels enough for Kabam though and they keep wanting more, more, more.
I really enjoyed the Betas of BGs and started ranking my champions mainly based on this game mode. My last rank up was Korg while I have MODOK and Mephisto on my to-do list purely because they’re decent options here.
One of my main frustrations is that there was literally nothing about Elder Marks during the Beta but now they’re essential if you want the good rewards. It feels like a bit like a drug dealer getting you hooked on the product for free then whacking up the price.
During the Betas I would pick up the currency from the objectives and use them in the store and I’m probably going to just keep doing that if things stay the way they are.
- Elder Marks are nonsensical in their current form. But there would be a lot of potential if you expand this as an additional currency. We were mostly under a deficit of energy and now should we use another 15 energy per match? Why not establish Elder Marks as a BG currency that recharges over time
- BG is a solo mode. But I like the idea of scoring points together in the Alliance. There is an opportunity to help smaller members to get further together than they could alone. So the community could be strengthened here if there were low-threshold access for all members to Alliance Mode, where you can collect points together. Here you should be guided by the AW season reward. You could offer BG items that are not available in AW.
- Basically, BG is a Summer Summoner for everyone. Solo mode should also be kept as simple as this. 3 matches, best wins, happy milestones, happy season rewards and done.
Everyone can understand and accept that a spender can have an advantage over a F2P player, just like the sigil which open another shop, but F2P still have access to basic shop to buy materials
With BG, F2P have next to nothing to gain because EM are mandatory to do solo objectives
Let the solo and alliance objectives available for everyone but give an edge to spender who will use units for EM. That could be more points if you use EM for example or even the possibility to double their points from the fight if they win
I’ve loved the idea of BG since their inception and outside of mods, which I appreciate are difficult to tackle and will always be a retrospective action by definition anyway, there were only two ways that BG could fail:
1. The rewards and reward structure either weren’t sufficient or there was no real recognition of skill - a BG equivalent of a masters title for instance.
2. The cost of entry prohibited low/non spenders, and reduced the contest to a few die hards who save their units for entry and big spenders.
Unfortunately it seems that both of these have been hit firmly on the head.
An energy cost associated with BG is fine IMO, though I’d have preferred it to be akin to AW/AQ energy so the player doesn’t have to choose between game modes. A starting energy point of ~5, recharging at a similar pace to AQ would allow most players to be able to pick up BG pretty much whenever they wanted and unless they were playing for an hour straight they’d probably not run out of energy.
The Good:
The Victory Track leading into the Gladiator Circuit is a good idea IMO, it wets the toes of the novices and allows them to work on their decks as they progress before reaching the big time, where hopefully they’ve got a good idea of where they want their BG decks to be.
The decks and mastery load outs are a win, as is the interface. There’s a lot of information that’s pretty well organised and accessible.
The game mode itself: the healthpools are back and reward clean play over bursting damage a bit more
The Bad:
The reward structure is still all wrong IMO. It should be built into the season rewards at the end as this places all of the emphasis on winning, rather than grinding. The placement method employed in the beta was perfect, you knew where you were ranked and how far/close your rivals were from you.
Applying brackets to this scoring system is all that was required:
- Podium
- Top 100
- Top 300
- Top 600 (Approximate ‘masters’ level based off AW)
However the various cutoffs are organised is beside the point, but that’s where the rewards to lie, and there should certainly be title recognition for those who place highly, or go on the longest streaks etc.
I think that an element of alliance reward isn’t a problem, but it should be bonus rewards - refills, perhaps a few shards or currency. Something to entice lower level players/alliances into just having fun in the victory track while they develop their skills and rosters.
The Ugly:
The Elder’s marks system is totally flawed and has the potential to kill the game mode in its tracks. There should be no unit/financial cost of entry, certainly not to access the higher rewards.
There should be no barrier to entry, certainly not for a fresh game mode that for the first time allows players to finally see who is the most skilful in the contest. I realise that this is a business and that an element of monetisation is what keeps the food on the table and the lights on at the HQ but the real monetisation from this game mode comes from players spending on offers and deals to develop their rosters to be able to compete at the highest level.
The Solution:
1. Remove Elder’s marks completely.
2. 90% of the rewards should be in season rewards, not grind-based milestones.
With this game mode, Kabam has the potential to actually make genuine e-sports a thing with MCoC. That is where the monetisation potential comes in: players will spend to stack their rosters and compete for access to tournaments. We’ve all seen the LoL, CoD tournaments streamed globally, there’s huge sponsorship, prize pools etc. available.
Please take a long view on this and see the potential and you’ll realise it’s not worth a short term influx of cash that kills the mode when you can breath life back into a game that, let’s be honest, hasn’t exactly been glowing with vitality recently.
I would say it’s just my 2c, but this has become a DNAesque length post.
Are these points transferrable to next season at least? Because I already lost interest after all this frustration.
The only "good" part in all of this, is watching skilled youtubers play the mode for 2+ hours and still remain in Bronze 2, and this way you don't feel like **** and the worst player in the world.
2050 points for win and completion or 800 if u lose/completion.. so that would be about 146 wins..
So need atleast 146×15=2190 EM.. Assuming all wins..
or 375*15=5625 EM.. Assuming losing all..
So, lets say, a middle value of 3600 EM needed for to get all milestones in solo event.. 3600 EM deal in store is about 3100 units..
3100units = $100 in Units store
So, $100 worth of units for 15k 6* shards. NO THANKS.
I can instead buy Daily Paragon deal..which after a week gives me 15k shards.. 😂
For $35= 6 class,2 Cav Nexus, 4k 6* shards, 70% T5CC selector, 14% T3CC, 14% T6B
But if you can provide atleast 30 elder marks daily(which is not so much btw) would help casual players and who are pushing for higher ranks can still get them from units or progressing through tiers
1. 300,000 points required to complete all 15 milestone in the solo event which rewards you with 15,000 six stars shards.
2. For getting to the gladiator circuit you get 900 elder marks
3. You need 46 wins to get to the top, from a hypothetical stand point if we average it out at a 50/50 win ratio as it will be tougher at the top you will need 92 wins. At 15 energy a match you are looking at 1,380 energy or the equivalent of 19.7 full energy refills aka 600 units.
4. Once you have acquired your 900 elder marks you have the ability to take part in 60 total matches.
5. From taking part in the solo event you get 800 points for playing a match and 1250 if you win. So if you managed to win all 60 rounds you would only acquire 123,000 points which isn’t even half of the milestones for the event.
6. The above is unrealistic so even if you were generous and had a 2/1 winning ratio you would collect 82,000 points for wins (2,050 x 40 wins) and a further 16,000 points for losses (800 x 20 losses) i.e a total of 98,000 points per 900 elder marks ( 1 elder mark = 108.88 points)
7. Following the above to meet the remaining milestones and acquire the remaining 202,000 points you will require 1,855.25 elder marks.
8. To acquire these additional elder marks you can purchase 3600 elder marks for 3100 units for the equivalent of £100, putting the price of 1 elder mark at 0.861 units or 2.777 pence.
9. It doesn’t sound much but to acquire the remaining elder marks just for the solo milestones you would need to spend the equivalent of £51.54.
From a time perspective following the above 2/1 win ratio to complete the 300,000 milestone you would need 123 wins ( 2,050 x 122 = 252,150 points) and 60 losses (800 x 60 = 48,000 points). With a match taking an average of 8 minutes you are looking at a total of 24.4 hours of game time.
Granted you can get more elder marks to lower the monetary cost however it is negligible considering it’s 9 million points for the top milestone putting the cost at 300,000 points per alliance member.
This is why I feel that a game mode which had so much potential has essentially been ruined. As with everything you will always the top rewards hidden behind some form of “pay wall” aka gifting and arena with champ refreshes. However the disparity between what can be acquired from being good to what you can simply buy is just ridiculous and quite demoralising to be perfectly honest.
Games like this need monetization to survive. People that have problems with that are playing the wrong type of game. However, just like in most other aspects of the game l, what I think should be sold is time. I don't think it's unreasonable to sell faster access to something as long as someone that isn't paying can still attain it by spending time to get it.
People should be able to grind Elders Marks by winning matches played with energy. It should be just like units in arena. You can swipe that card if you can afford it and can't be bothered grinding or you can just grind them out at a much slower pace.
Having the finite amount of marks in the victory track levels is my major concern. It doesn't give a grinder any opportunity to compete with a spender regardless of the amount of time they are willing to spend to do so which I feel is a major problem.
Do I feel the balance between the rank and event rewards is correct? Not even close, but without there even being a way to grind more ranked entries it's just a flat non starter for a lot of people. That's a much bigger issue than trying to figure out the reward per area balance in my opinion.
1. Monetization is worse than almost any game I’ve ever seen. You’re going to lock all the best rewards behind paywall, and for those who don’t want to pay they can grind arena endlessly and spend all those units on elders marks
2. Multiple energy types is awful. We’ve already seen confusion from folks using quest energy to play and not getting progress in solo or alliance event. It makes the grind so much worse. And if you’re going to put the best rewards behind premium energy, have the decency to give us some for free to get us enticed to play. The motivation for (conservatively) 90% of the playerbase goes to 0 if they don’t have a free taste of the new mode.
3. The alliance event is a terrible decision. It forces people to be in competitive alliances for a mode that is based on solo participation. Just get rid of it all together or move most of the rewards elsewhere
4. The paywall for extra decks is insane. I honestly think they should be free, but I understand a bit of payment to access them. But 4000 units for two extra decks? Absolutely insane.
5. The strategy for battlegrounds is horrible. It encourages tanking fairly often to beat up on lower players in order to climb, and then tank again.
There are more problems, but I’ve chosen to highlight the most egregious ones. Hopefully you can rectify these mistakes and make the game mode good
Participation- 500
Round 1 - 500
Round 2- 500
Round 3 - 500
If either person wins round 1 and 2 they gain the round 3 points by default.
This has no real logic. There is no field where something like this would ever apply. If you come back healthy from a fight, they say it's better to end it fast and lose 2 limbs in the process. Promotes quantity over quality mentality as well and just facing tanks on every single match-up.
Time should only be used as a deciding factor between 2 very similar hp left (within the 3% range) imo.
I'm happy to see that you add a layer of alliance and solo event but was it really necessary to make it so confusing?
elder marks? token? relics? Circuit? too many new terms all at once... feels like diving into completely different game (vs new game mode)
The more complicate a new mode in the game is, people will find way to exploit it. It need to be MUCH simpler
I was also surprised to find out that you weren't really honest (or clear) about some of the changes you announced before the weekend:
- You said you'll allow to save different set of mastery with every deck and it will be free to switch decks with their associate mastery but you failed to mention that it will cost a lot of units to buy a 2nd and 3rd deck (not that I care personally because I never switch mastery)
- you said you heard our feedback from the beta and added a new "currency" to enter BG instead of energy, but you failed to mention that this currency will be available only in the BG store for units (again, a lot of units) or after winning many matched for still using energy. At this point I rather spend my energy on quests which is more fun just because of the ratio between the rewards and the how easy it to understand what is going on.
But in this case it is just true.
Nobody needs BG in this way and most of us are still addicted to the game after years (thanks to Game launcher I know that I played over 4.400 hours yet). It's just a mode that will vanish because of the bad decisions Kabam made.
So what now? We still have enough game-modes - more than we can play. The update for incursions will come and maybe Kabam learns from it's mistakes. I would be glad if I could help.
Our Team of J.A.R.V.I.S. represents a lot of German players, we have close to 7k using our helpbot for tips and tricks, a Youtube-Channel with close to 1k frequent viewers, a Instagram-acc with 1k follower and help-groups in Facebook and more and more.
We wanted to be in the CCP and tried it a lot, but no chance. I'd like to be the players voice (always in mind that Kabam isn't a non-profit-organisation) and gell Kabam in detail where the problem is - and use my time to make a better game and better experience- but you don't even get an answer...
Not to mention, what were the multiple betas for? So much just so you guy's ended up releasing something totally different, untested, not asked by anyone. You should already know that "surprises" from this game are, most of the times, unnapreaciated by everyone and actually really bad.
____________________
But to start things off, and you won't like this one:
- Remove monetization.
There, is that simple. Already a huge step forward. Don't pretend you don't know that this is an issue, and don't expect to make up any excuses in order to leave it there. Just do what it needs to be done.
-----
Now, about those Elder Mark's:
-Get rid of them.
No one asked for a P2W feature here. Especially since this will eventually just be spammed across multiple "battleground offers" in the future.
However, if you want to keep this feature, then you could rework it and turn it into something different. Turn them in to a Battleground Scoring Mark. This will work similar to an energy system.
What I mean by it is that, in order to score in the solo and alliance event's, you would need to spend Elder Mark's in a match. You can still play as much as you want by using quest energy, but you won't be scoring anything in the events. You will only score if you start a match with an Elder Mark. Let's say for simplicity, 1x Elder Mark to be able to start a match that will actually award points.
Now, this isn't much different from the current system. But now here's the catch: These Elder Mark's are not purchasable or obtainable in any way, shape or form. Yeh let's not go that route.
Instead, they are automatically added to your inventory every X hours, or every day. For simplicity, let's say you get 1 Elder Mark per day, and the max you can hold is 5.
You start the Battleground season with 5/5 Elder Mark's. Similar to a energy system in which you start with it at max. Now, you can use Elder Mark's to start a match and contribute points toward the solo and alliance events. Or you can just test the water's and use quest energy instead, without contributing points for the events. Once you have spent an Elder Mark, you will have to wait for the next day to get +1 Elder Mark.
So if you were at 0/5 Elder Mark's, the next day you would have 1/5. And considering you haven't used it, you would have 2/5 on the following day. This will allow player's to have free time to do anything else in the game and hold the Elder Mark's for a few days, before they cap at 5/5. If they stay cap for the next day then it's one less opportunity to score in the events, just that.
And if you want to keep playing BG for fun, but you don't have any Elder Mark's left, you can just use quest energy instead. You won't score for the events though, but you can still score in the solo objectives this way. Which BTW, add one or two more there to incentivize playing while at 0 Elder Mark's left.
With this you would likely need to rework the scoring system and change some other stuff here and there once again, but that's on you for changing it first prior to fix the various problems with the mode in the first place.
But I don’t know which team decided on the entry and rewards system but they couldn’t have done a worse job if they tried. I honestly don’t think I’ll bother with season 1 at all, if ever with the mode. I played all the betas, hit all the milestones. The implementation of this mode makes me feel total apathy towards the whole game. I genuinely don’t understand how you can get something this wrong.
I’d also suggest that energy/elder marks both generate points for goals but one is less then the other enticing people to maximize their points/time by using elder marks but then the casual player can use both if they craved out an hour to play them.
Also, add gold to matches. 50k for win, 25k for loss. Promotes grinding for a reason, so win or lose at least we are gaining something to help us in the game.
Gain Mark's via winning matches could be a possibility, but maybe only if they are obtainable via the objectives or events, and is a limited ammount of them. Otherwise we'll have people spamming energy refils to get an unlimited ammount of them
Limited ftp in the gladiator circuit makes sense, I can see your statement being true here.
I have to pay hard earned money. Money that is best spent on my kids, my husband, my friends, rent, food, bills, clothes, dates, makeup, Halloween, Christmas, etc, JUST to earn rewards?
Pathetic.
There is no reason at least solo reward milestones should be locked behind a pay wall. None whatsoever. I think this is a big issue. True F2P will have no reason to even press icon to go to it. Light spenders will only play it when they have extra money to spend on units.
We have casually thrown around the phrases "pay to win" and "pay to play" in many aspects of this game. But this mode is the epitome of those phrases. Pay to WIN is fine in my eyes in a free to play game. But when you start to make people pay to play the game that is an issue.
This game has a delicate balance of "time = money" in this mode you want both plus more from us.
Will you at least buy me dinner before you..........
Even you have said you curtailed your spending in recent months. Would you not have been more likely, or keen, to spend to get certain champions for the mode, rather than simply the right to enter?
I think that the post I made further up explains my thoughts quite well.