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BGs Killing my Drive

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    GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,261 ★★★★★
    Stature said:

    Let's say the strength of the Rosters of Players at the lower end are represented by 3. They're fighting people within the 2, 3, and 4 range.
    You have people at the higher end, and we'll say they're 8 "power". They're fighting people in the 7, 8, 9 range.
    You can say "I'm an 8, and they're a 3. I'm fighting harder fights.". The reality is, it's a one point range, or equal, on both sides. You can't say because an 8 could overpower a 3, that the 3 is not fighting as hard. They are fighting just as hard, with different tools, against different tools.

    The range isn't that wide. Pretty much everyone in BGs is probably between 2 to 4 (a 6r4 has ~2x HP/Attack as a 5r4). Right now someone at 3 gets to play against players between 2.5-3.2, while if you are slightly closer to the higher end you stuck playing against 3.5-4 strength teams. People who are progressing are doing so because of roster strength and skill rather than some hypothetical Cav with amazing skills but can't figure out how to access or rank up 6 star champs.

    While the players who are progressing may be fighting just as hard, their progression is to an extent at the expense of another group who are condemned to long periods of stagnation. They are being penalized for investing in roster development in a game where roster development is a key part of progression.
    Roster development is quite ubiquitous, when in terms of BGs, it's very specific development. You need the right counters Ranked, and enough of them to respond to specific scenarios like Nodes, drafts, and Bans. Just because Player X has amassed 3 R4s to get the Paragon Title doesn't mean they're automatically more adept at BGs.
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    DrZolaDrZola Posts: 8,553 ★★★★★
    Stature said:

    Let's say the strength of the Rosters of Players at the lower end are represented by 3. They're fighting people within the 2, 3, and 4 range.
    You have people at the higher end, and we'll say they're 8 "power". They're fighting people in the 7, 8, 9 range.
    You can say "I'm an 8, and they're a 3. I'm fighting harder fights.". The reality is, it's a one point range, or equal, on both sides. You can't say because an 8 could overpower a 3, that the 3 is not fighting as hard. They are fighting just as hard, with different tools, against different tools.

    The range isn't that wide. Pretty much everyone in BGs is probably between 2 to 4 (a 6r4 has ~2x HP/Attack as a 5r4). Right now someone at 3 gets to play against players between 2.5-3.2, while if you are slightly closer to the higher end you stuck playing against 3.5-4 strength teams. People who are progressing are doing so because of roster strength and skill rather than some hypothetical Cav with amazing skills but can't figure out how to access or rank up 6 star champs.

    While the players who are progressing may be fighting just as hard, their progression is to an extent at the expense of another group who are condemned to long periods of stagnation. They are being penalized for investing in roster development in a game where roster development is a key part of progression.
    I would add that “fighting hard” isn’t as much an issue as roster dynamics as you move up through each siloed BG level. It ignores reality to say that the caliber of fights at the top are relatively no harder than those in lower silos. Roster development alone dictates otherwise.

    Example: A Cav who gets super lucky and pulls a 6* top-end champ (for sake of argument say, iDoom) with his entire stash of 15K shards suddenly has a game changing champion that may not be at all common at Cav level. At Paragon, that lone champ is unlikely to make an anywhere near as big an impact even if he’s awakened and at R4. Moreover, most rosters already have that top-end champ (and others) at that rank. At the very highest levels, issues may only arise if a draft goes 100% horribly wrong, and even then the top-tier players have workarounds.

    Dr. Zola
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    No_Dollar_BillNo_Dollar_Bill Posts: 35
    edited February 2023
    Back on what could maybe be a viable stopgap for the victory track so people don't give up on the game mode (a lot of good and interesting suggestions have been put up here), especially given that various bugs continue to pervade the game mode, would be to make every victory count toward progress in the victory track and losses wouldn't send you backwards within each victory track tier. Using a shield in fear of having the insta-loss bug show up or a disconnect seems just wrong, so how about just having each win move you a step closer in the victory track like it already does and remove the penalty for a loss until that great day when the bugs are worked out of the game mode that artificially stop progress? This approach would also force those with larger rosters deliberately losing to stay within a tier and rack up solo/alliance points to have to move on to where they will have a better-matched fight in the Gladiator circuit.

    In this hypothetical scenario once you got to the Gladiator circuit the gloves come off the same as it is now, and this simple tweak would I'd think be easy for Kabam to implement and alleviate a lot of player frustration while they are fixing the bugs.
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    GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,261 ★★★★★
    Stature said:

    Just because Player X has amassed 3 R4s to get the Paragon Title doesn't mean they're automatically more adept at BGs.

    While the TB who's moving up at an accelerated pace because they are largely playing against narrower teams while being sheltered from the baddies with 3 or more R4s automatically is? In the current context, progression is much more likely to be corelated to matchmaking than skills.

    If the game designers want to speed up development of weaker rosters by giving them easier access to resources, that's fine - happens all the time in different forms. But to frame it as "everyone's playing the same competition" rather than a reservation system is disingenuous at best.
    Huh? I'm TB. I am not sheltered. My Matches have been a range.
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    GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,261 ★★★★★
    Not sure what you're referring to. I've come up against a number of Paragons with multiple R4s. I have one. Whatever advantage you're implying is greatly exaggerated.
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    GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,261 ★★★★★
    Also, for the record, I'm fine with that. I play, I lose or win. That's how it goes. What I'm not agreeing to is taking out all the people winning "lower" than me because I can't string my own Wins together.
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    PikokPikok Posts: 131 ★★
    Stature said:

    Just because Player X has amassed 3 R4s to get the Paragon Title doesn't mean they're automatically more adept at BGs.

    While the TB who's moving up at an accelerated pace because they are largely playing against narrower teams while being sheltered from the baddies with 3 or more R4s automatically is? In the current context, progression is much more likely to be corelated to matchmaking than skills.

    If the game designers want to speed up development of weaker rosters by giving them easier access to resources, that's fine - happens all the time in different forms. But to frame it as "everyone's playing the same competition" rather than a reservation system is disingenuous at best.
    Agree. Bg in VT is nothing about the skill. Just have a look on leaderboard and last places in GC. Lot of skilled players there :smile: with less than 1m hero rating.
    Sometimes when I cannot find a match quickly matchmaking criteria „increases” and I got TB player. Tbh I got mixed feelings. I feel bad for him because match against 5 star roster with my account is not a match but walk in the park for me and ultra marathon for him. But on the other hand when matchmaking would be fair he would not be in plat or diamond so I am just showing him what a real world look like.
    Still we can just talk and talk and nothing will be changed when victory shields are used.
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    I'm not saying start people the following season in the GC but I don't see the harm in starting the people that finish VT in a week or two at the bottom of Platinum and giving those rewards personally.

    I think you'll find if you talk to people who's job it is to design a game economy, you'll discover that they will see the harm. Its their job to see the harm in all reward flow changes.

    But more to the point, those rewards only exist at all because of a specific reason: to promote participation. If you say we're not going to promote participation with those rewards anymore, it doesn't matter if it "does no harm" to give them away, you've knocked out the reason for them to even exist. Either your argument fails and they do nothing, or your argument succeeds and the rewards disappear. There's no version of "let's give the rewards away for doing nothing" that ends up winning anything.

    The law of unintended consequences is not to be trifled with.


    If it's truly this crazy idea of just giving out the previous milestones in that case (which I find ridiculous), then just make win objectives with those rewards for those players and have them take enough wins for them to possibly be out of VT again.

    That's what I said. But that's also non-trivial, because making those objectives is not about making the objectives. You've now proposed a solution that requires the game economy people to sign off on, among other people.

    And while you find the idea of not giving rewards out for free ridiculous, as I said I think the game economy designers would (off the record) look you dead in the eye and say "it is equally ridiculous to give out participation rewards for not doing anything. And also absurd." And to be frank, they would have the stronger position here.
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    Skydad23Skydad23 Posts: 539 ★★★

    Disagree. They're playing Matches that are lower, equal, greater (within range) of what they're working with. So are others. This whole self-serving comparison that flip flops needs to go, because no one looks at the larger scale. Only how it seems for them.
    You're comparing two people in a knife fight with both knives, and saying they're not bringing a knife to a gun fight so they're not really fighting. In essence, that's it. "They're not fighting the same level we are."
    News flash, they're fighting the same challenges. Same Nodes, same time to do it in, same scoring. I feel like I'm repeating myself but it's still ignored, so here we are.
    At the risk of being torn by the math aficionados here, I'll use a numerical example.
    Let's say the strength of the Rosters of Players at the lower end are represented by 3. They're fighting people within the 2, 3, and 4 range.
    You have people at the higher end, and we'll say they're 8 "power". They're fighting people in the 7, 8, 9 range.
    You can say "I'm an 8, and they're a 3. I'm fighting harder fights.". The reality is, it's a one point range, or equal, on both sides. You can't say because an 8 could overpower a 3, that the 3 is not fighting as hard. They are fighting just as hard, with different tools, against different tools.
    What you call preferential treatment is the antithesis of that. What people expect and call fair, is preferential treatment based on the size of their Roster. Which is all fine and well in the GC. I can't believe people are claiming that in the VT. Nevertheless, I've played ball and agreed to a number of suggestions.
    What I will debate until the end of time, is how people are not earning their way up because they haven't engaged in a hypothetical ego trip.


    In one breath you’re saying you can’t just give out rewards but in the next breath, you’re arguing for fairness in rosters in essence, helping just give out rewards lesser rosters,. You should not be able to progress to higher tiers if you are not as strong as the next guy progressing farther than somebody that has a far superior roster and just as much skill as you because they are facing the lesser opponents affording them more rewards. Explain how it makes sense that I can move much further in the victory track with my cavalier account that is barely 1,000,000 hero rating. But can’t stream together three wins with my paragon account and it’s almost 4,000,000? The account that I have worked so hard on should not be able to get the same rewards or better than my cavalier account? The same skill person playing both of them why should my stronger account be penalized?
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    MusikmenMusikmen Posts: 64
    I'm just tired of the constant dex into special that the AI has seemingly perfected this season...
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    JefechutaJefechuta Posts: 1,212 ★★★★
    Ill only do one post since there's no sense on discussing something that its mainly logic:

    Similar rosters should play with similar rosters in VT, since it doesnt work with an individiual rank like GC, and everybody can get all the rewards, in VT you should win if you play better, not if you play vs someone that has a weak roster.


    Main problem is that the matchmaking is bad, because while having 3 R4 maybe at sig 20 if they are even awakened, you are playing vs players with more R4, with way more sigs, you are going to lose mainly because the difference between the stats of the champions instead of how well you played, so for VT it should be similar roster strenght.


    In GC is different since everyone has a determinated position in the ranking, so you should just player everyone in your tier, here is where you have to invest greatly on ranking up every champion you need the higher you can, because there is a lot of difference each tier rewards, and not everybody can get them.



    If Kabam fixes the bugs, and makes matchmaking work properly on VT, BGs will be saved
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    IvarTheBonelessIvarTheBoneless Posts: 1,251 ★★★★

    DNA3000 said:

    DNA3000 said:

    @DNA3000 in regards to your comment, I think part of the problem is everyone has to slog through VT from the bottom each time and go thorough each rank. Maybe starting people in different tiers in relation to where they finished the season prion could help.

    I think this is an independent problem. Which is to say, even if you implement a way to start people higher based on their prior achieved tiers, there’s still the question of how frustrating and/or time consuming it is to get there on the first place. So it would still think there was value in reviewing the trophy scoring system.

    Conversely, starting people at higher start points creates other problems that need solving, namely how to award players the rewards they would have had the opportunity to get had they started lower and would now miss out on. Simply giving the players those rewards is unlikely to be acceptable, so another mechanism would have to be implemented.

    All theoretically solvable to be sure, but the more things you have to do, the less likely the devs would have the time and resources to implement such a solution.
    I'm not sure why "giving" the previous milestone rewards from a staggered start is considered such a taboo thing personally.
    Because then a player wouldn't have to do anything at all to gain those rewards. In the extreme case you could choose to play every other season and still get basically twice the rewards. Suppose you implement season decay where every season you start one track lower. You could then play all the way up to Vibranium, then in the next season throw a single match and still get all the rewards up to Vibranium and be placed in Diamond, then throw one match next season and get all the rewards up to Diamond and be placed in Platinum, and so on. Fundamentally, it is too exploitable.

    And even though I ought not to speak on behalf of the developers, in this case I am 99% certain I know what their reasoning would be. VT rewards are *specifically* there to encourage participation: that's why the Victory track even exists. Without this need to promote participation, BG would just be one big GC. So giving VT rewards out without needing to participate would be a direct contradiction of its reason for existing. That's not just unpalatable, that would be in this specific context nonsensical.
    I'm not saying start people the following season in the GC but I don't see the harm in starting the people that finish VT in a week or two at the bottom of Platinum and giving those rewards personally. People playing enough to finish VT that quickly aren't just going to stop playing as those are your most competitive players.

    If it's truly this crazy idea of just giving out the previous milestones in that case (which I find ridiculous), then just make win objectives with those rewards for those players and have them take enough wins for them to possibly be out of VT again.

    I think VT as a whole is an awful idea personally. It's caused nothing but grief over matchmaking bc everyone who can enter it feels like they're entitled to get everything from it bc players have somehow been led to believe that the competitive aspect of the mode doesn't start until GC, which I wholly blame Kabam for causing with this asinine matching setup we have currently and not coming out and saying it's a competition some people just aren't going to finish. On top of that, it's just a total waste of time for the competitive players that are stuck being bored out of their minds with nukefest nothing nodes (bc players threw a giant tantrum last season when we got nodes that heaven forbid players actually had to think about and plan for) just having to ride out the grindfest every single season.
    This seems like the obvious solution imo. Based on previous season let the fastest people start at gold 1 and down from there. Couple an objective to it that you can claim the previous rewards only when you have played 3 GC matches. Ensures participation, counters exploitation and gives other accounts some sort of protection from the biggest accounts. Can't see how wrong this system would be or why anyone would be so against this.

    -btw I'm not one of the best BG's players so this wouldn't benefit me (disclaimer before arguments of greed and such come at me)
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    Soumemiakas1926Soumemiakas1926 Posts: 320 ★★★

    So not exactly sure how I want to start this post as there is so many factors to consider. The over arching theme is night after night when I finally have a stretch of time to sit and play BGs (after getting up, situating kids, going to work, coming home, dinner, kids to bed) what ends up happening is I alternate wins and losses, make no progress on victory track advancement and just feel like I wasted 30 mins to an hour of play time. Having this happen over and over it just really kills your drive, makes you feel like **** in terms of being able to improve your roster with the tokens in the store and just a frustrating state of mind in regards to BGs.

    I’m paragon with a roster of R4s/R3 6*s and can’t get out of silver III atm. I loose matches for various reasons; playing poorly, bad draft, better competition ect. Having to string the 3x wins together is what is really killing things for me and wish there was a better way for progression outside of buying shields for every single match.

    Idk, just my stream of thoughts about where I am at with BGs in general. Feel free to reply with good, bad, ugly ect; I’m open for a good discussion to see how other ppl are feeling with BGs.

    That's exactly my thoughts. If I were writing this though people would rudely respond to me "skill issues". And I'm a Paragon too.
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    DNA3000 said:

    I'm not saying start people the following season in the GC but I don't see the harm in starting the people that finish VT in a week or two at the bottom of Platinum and giving those rewards personally.

    I think you'll find if you talk to people who's job it is to design a game economy, you'll discover that they will see the harm. Its their job to see the harm in all reward flow changes.

    But more to the point, those rewards only exist at all because of a specific reason: to promote participation. If you say we're not going to promote participation with those rewards anymore, it doesn't matter if it "does no harm" to give them away, you've knocked out the reason for them to even exist. Either your argument fails and they do nothing, or your argument succeeds and the rewards disappear. There's no version of "let's give the rewards away for doing nothing" that ends up winning anything.

    The law of unintended consequences is not to be trifled with.


    If it's truly this crazy idea of just giving out the previous milestones in that case (which I find ridiculous), then just make win objectives with those rewards for those players and have them take enough wins for them to possibly be out of VT again.

    That's what I said. But that's also non-trivial, because making those objectives is not about making the objectives. You've now proposed a solution that requires the game economy people to sign off on, among other people.

    And while you find the idea of not giving rewards out for free ridiculous, as I said I think the game economy designers would (off the record) look you dead in the eye and say "it is equally ridiculous to give out participation rewards for not doing anything. And also absurd." And to be frank, they would have the stronger position here.
    Ultimately it all comes back to the same thing - a flawed structure except for the elite, and oddly, the noobs/beginners.

    You shouldn’t get anything for free but my presence in the VT is probably causes more harm than good and ultimately my only real concern is in the circuit where things actually matter.
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    DrZolaDrZola Posts: 8,553 ★★★★★
    For the first time this season, I ran into a couple of completely overmatched accounts in Gold. Our prestige was more than 2K apart and it wasn’t a close match (even though I did somehow get clipped by a special near fight end during one fight).

    Then I ran into the nodeless bug for several fights. Won a few just nuking my way through before I returned to my normal zero sum, war of attrition game matches.

    The mode is super weird right now. Bugs abound. It’s sometimes a total slog and most times feels like a terrible investment of time. But I know others in GC love it. I have to imagine the team knows all of this and is gauging whether or not to respond in any meaningful way.

    Dr. Zola
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    A good stop gap fix is to remove penalization of losses. Remove the fact that you lose progress by losing. That will help the initial problem of not being able to "progress".
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    CoppinCoppin Posts: 2,601 ★★★★★

    A good stop gap fix is to remove penalization of losses. Remove the fact that you lose progress by losing. That will help the initial problem of not being able to "progress".

    U really don't lose progress... U can't be dropped from Bronze 1 to Bronze 2 even if u lose 5 in a row...
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    GroundedWisdomGroundedWisdom Posts: 36,261 ★★★★★
    Coppin said:

    A good stop gap fix is to remove penalization of losses. Remove the fact that you lose progress by losing. That will help the initial problem of not being able to "progress".

    U really don't lose progress... U can't be dropped from Bronze 1 to Bronze 2 even if u lose 5 in a row...
    I believe they meant Victory Tokens.
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    CoppinCoppin Posts: 2,601 ★★★★★

    Coppin said:

    A good stop gap fix is to remove penalization of losses. Remove the fact that you lose progress by losing. That will help the initial problem of not being able to "progress".

    U really don't lose progress... U can't be dropped from Bronze 1 to Bronze 2 even if u lose 5 in a row...
    I believe they meant Victory Tokens.
    I understood that part.. but losing 5 in a row doesnt keep u at -5 tokens...
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    GivMeABeerGivMeABeer Posts: 202 ★★
    @DNA @Worknprogress @DrZola @GroundedWisdom you all have been providing a lot of feed back, what are your thoughts about my above post?
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    Ironman3000Ironman3000 Posts: 1,919 ★★★★★

    DNA3000 said:

    DNA3000 said:

    @DNA3000 in regards to your comment, I think part of the problem is everyone has to slog through VT from the bottom each time and go thorough each rank. Maybe starting people in different tiers in relation to where they finished the season prion could help.

    I think this is an independent problem. Which is to say, even if you implement a way to start people higher based on their prior achieved tiers, there’s still the question of how frustrating and/or time consuming it is to get there on the first place. So it would still think there was value in reviewing the trophy scoring system.

    Conversely, starting people at higher start points creates other problems that need solving, namely how to award players the rewards they would have had the opportunity to get had they started lower and would now miss out on. Simply giving the players those rewards is unlikely to be acceptable, so another mechanism would have to be implemented.

    All theoretically solvable to be sure, but the more things you have to do, the less likely the devs would have the time and resources to implement such a solution.
    I'm not sure why "giving" the previous milestone rewards from a staggered start is considered such a taboo thing personally.
    Because then a player wouldn't have to do anything at all to gain those rewards. In the extreme case you could choose to play every other season and still get basically twice the rewards. Suppose you implement season decay where every season you start one track lower. You could then play all the way up to Vibranium, then in the next season throw a single match and still get all the rewards up to Vibranium and be placed in Diamond, then throw one match next season and get all the rewards up to Diamond and be placed in Platinum, and so on. Fundamentally, it is too exploitable.

    And even though I ought not to speak on behalf of the developers, in this case I am 99% certain I know what their reasoning would be. VT rewards are *specifically* there to encourage participation: that's why the Victory track even exists. Without this need to promote participation, BG would just be one big GC. So giving VT rewards out without needing to participate would be a direct contradiction of its reason for existing. That's not just unpalatable, that would be in this specific context nonsensical.
    I'm not saying start people the following season in the GC but I don't see the harm in starting the people that finish VT in a week or two at the bottom of Platinum and giving those rewards personally. People playing enough to finish VT that quickly aren't just going to stop playing as those are your most competitive players.

    If it's truly this crazy idea of just giving out the previous milestones in that case (which I find ridiculous), then just make win objectives with those rewards for those players and have them take enough wins for them to possibly be out of VT again.

    I think VT as a whole is an awful idea personally. It's caused nothing but grief over matchmaking bc everyone who can enter it feels like they're entitled to get everything from it bc players have somehow been led to believe that the competitive aspect of the mode doesn't start until GC, which I wholly blame Kabam for causing with this asinine matching setup we have currently and not coming out and saying it's a competition some people just aren't going to finish. On top of that, it's just a total waste of time for the competitive players that are stuck being bored out of their minds with nukefest nothing nodes (bc players threw a giant tantrum last season when we got nodes that heaven forbid players actually had to think about and plan for) just having to ride out the grindfest every single season.
    Agreed. It feels like the only reason to have the VT where everyone starts at 0 and not just have all rewards dispersed among rank rewards in the GC is to sell Victory Sheilds.

    If it were just in rank rewards they could put a fight minimum to be eligible for rewards (like AW). Drop everyone a certain number of tiers each season so they still have to build back up but can't just have one big season and coast.
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    DrZolaDrZola Posts: 8,553 ★★★★★
    edited February 2023

    @DNA @Worknprogress @DrZola @GroundedWisdom you all have been providing a lot of feed back, what are your thoughts about my above post?

    I think anything that changes the dynamic of +1/-1 in a tier is worth looking at.

    At a visceral level, I dislike the sense that the structure *feels* like and excuse to sell Shields for struggling accounts.

    But I like the idea of 3 consecutive or X total as a concept. Also like the idea of valuing 2-1 and 2-0 matches differently.

    But I especially like the idea of the team rolling up sleeves and figuring out why this season has been as buggy as it has. ;) And coming on here to discuss it with players who obviously relish this game.

    Dr. Zola
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