What accounts for players who do not want to learn, or do not have the time/patience for, etc, a new node set and rebuild their deck/roster every week but still regularly make it to GC and beyond by the end of season? Are they no longer able to stroll through VT at their own pace, are they forced to actually sandbag and throw matches so they do not advance into GC within a week, every season?
Part of Bgs monetization is the cost of matches (energy, marks, time) making players spend to advance through the VT, essentially trading them for the rewards. How does the game recover that loss of trade for those resources?
To add more, if a player makes GC they are guaranteed to start the next season at or near the top of VT?
Does this force/punish players who excelled in one seasons VT to playing at the top of the next season until they reach GC? Does this not deny them the choice of largely opting out of GC (the actual competition)?
Wouldn’t this also decrease player engagement by forcing them to play at a higher level constantly based on performance under the entirely different challenges of last season?
The nodes change and being able to even play can largely depend on roster. Wouldn’t this doom players without the roster to treading water or even just outright drown them?
I think Kabam needs to explicitly state the purpose of VT and GC matchmaking so that players can better understand their purpose and goals. That alone would go a long way towards the complaints about the perceived disparities of VT and GC matchmaking.
Don't hide this thread in 'Suggestion And Request' tab. Nobody comes here. This thread is a better discussion point than the daily rant threads that turn into same name calling debate between two parties at opposite ends.
Just a hypothetical question. Don't think it's useful, but is it possible that in this current setup, there's say 2 people who constantly match with each other but both win and lose alternatively, so they're both stuck at the same place perpetually?
Is it possible that this scenario can be happening on a larger scale?
To add more, if a player makes GC they are guaranteed to start the next season at or near the top of VT?
I've had other people suggest a larger decay, and the amount of the decay is negotiable. For the most part, Kabam is unlikely to lose significant revenue in either event from higher placement, as the players being placed higher were unlikely to expend significant resources climbing to the point of their placement. In either case, this would be something that if the devs considered doing at all, would tune along with the need to increase trophy count to progress, to ensure that players do not advance faster than the mode was intended to allow.
In other words, my numbers are for context, but even if Kabam was convinced I was on the right track all my numbers would go out the window. They would recalculate and/or adjust them from scratch.
The question of monetization is a valid one, because like it or not we all live in the real world where money pays for the stuff we use. But I believe there's a greater risk of revenue drop off under the current system or any reasonable tweak of it, because it is precisely those players more likely to spend to advance that would also be the first to frustrate-out and quit or severely curtail their participation. If they believe advancement is futile, then they will likely do the smart thing and skim rewards - play only enough to accumulate the objectives while forgoing significant VT progress. This would, in effect, be a net negative because they would be injecting more rewards into the game than before BG even existed, while spending trivial rewards and no monetization expenses on it.
You can grow revenue in two ways: make it more expensive, or convince more players to play. The reverse is also true, you can lose money while charging more, if people simply choose not to buy what you're selling.
Well, yes and no. Yes, I called it a suggestion, so the mods have the right to move it here. But no, this was a way to direct the discussion of battlegrounds in a specific direction within the framework of a suggestion. If I have a straight up actual suggestion or request, I would just tell the devs directly. If I post it here, then whether it is called a suggestion or a roadmap or a banana wagon, it is really a call for discussion.
I don't care where the post is, but if it can't be located for discussion purposes by its intended audience, then that will compel me, under the rules of the forum, to recontextualize my discussion in a less neutral way. A suggestion provides the framework for follow up posts to be constructive. Saying exactly the same things but within the context of criticizing why the game mode works in the way it does as opposed to something else like for example what I mention here directs the discussion to be more negative, to direct emotions in a less productive, if more satisfying way that skewers the game rather than tries to improve it.
And I am exceedingly good at going both ways within the rules of the forum.
To add more, if a player makes GC they are guaranteed to start the next season at or near the top of VT?
The question of monetization is a valid one, because like it or not we all live in the real world where money pays for the stuff we use. But I believe there's a greater risk of revenue drop off under the current system or any reasonable tweak of it, because it is precisely those players more likely to spend to advance that would also be the first to frustrate-out and quit or severely curtail their participation. If they believe advancement is futile, then they will likely do the smart thing and skim rewards - play only enough to accumulate the objectives while forgoing significant VT progress. This would, in effect, be a net negative because they would be injecting more rewards into the game than before BG even existed, while spending trivial rewards and no monetization expenses on it.
I quit my sigil renewal of more than two years because of BG. I initially liked it for the extra energy (the store is actually secondary to me as I farm revives before BG started and need energy more) but not now. And while my $10 a month isn't going to move their revenue needle at all, it is something.
Just a hypothetical question. Don't think it's useful, but is it possible that in this current setup, there's say 2 people who constantly match with each other but both win and lose alternatively, so they're both stuck at the same place perpetually?
Is it possible that this scenario can be happening on a larger scale?
Short answer: maybe.
Longer and actually wrong answer: probably not, because random chance will prevent that from happening.
Actual answer: we don't know. Although I've been thinking about BG for a while and put a significant amount of thought into it, my time is limited so there's certain things I can't do, like literally record every single BG match I fight to analyze every aspect of the match maker. So take this for what it is worth: this is anecdotal, not statistical data.
I win more at certain times of the day.
How is that possible? Well, the obvious answer is: I'm matching against different people. The match maker, regardless of algorithm, can only match me against people who are actually playing at that moment in time. Different people play at different times. If I play at all kinds of random times, my matches will change depending on who's on then. There are very specific times, and I won't elaborate, when my record is significantly better.
Maybe that's random chance. But maybe not. When we analyze these kinds of systems, we often presume that all variables we don't know happen randomly. People match against random opponents. But we know that's not literally true. So is it possible that, completely separate from what the match maker is doing, there are players who are seeing highly advantageous or disadvantageous matches? Possibly. And is it possible that trading wins and losses in an alternating fashion is happening more often than random chance would suggest? Again: possibly. Only the BG history data would be able to tell us if the behavior of player wins and losses actually appears random (relative to all other variables) or exhibits weird correlations that can cause very weird problems to happen.
Well, yes and no. Yes, I called it a suggestion, so the mods have the right to move it here. But no, this was a way to direct the discussion of battlegrounds in a specific direction within the framework of a suggestion. If I have a straight up actual suggestion or request, I would just tell the devs directly. If I post it here, then whether it is called a suggestion or a roadmap or a banana wagon, it is really a call for discussion.
I don't care where the post is, but if it can't be located for discussion purposes by its intended audience, then that will compel me, under the rules of the forum, to recontextualize my discussion in a less neutral way. A suggestion provides the framework for follow up posts to be constructive. Saying exactly the same things but within the context of criticizing why the game mode works in the way it does as opposed to something else like for example what I mention here directs the discussion to be more negative, to direct emotions in a less productive, if more satisfying way that skewers the game rather than tries to improve it.
And I am exceedingly good at going both ways within the rules of the forum.
Understandable, but within the context of proposing a system, I can see how it falls under suggestion. I'm pretty impartial either way where it is. I always open to Recent Discussions. Not General.
I was convinced I was crazy but certain periods of time are far better for me, I generally play at the same times every day so it was easy to measure win rate against it.
All sensible and thoughtful suggestions. At minimum there definitely needs to be some level of elo/bg rating and/or losing needs to be way less punishing than currently.
The current setup just doesn't work at all for a very large number of players and it'll kill what was a fun and rewarding mode.
Well, yes and no. Yes, I called it a suggestion, so the mods have the right to move it here. But no, this was a way to direct the discussion of battlegrounds in a specific direction within the framework of a suggestion. If I have a straight up actual suggestion or request, I would just tell the devs directly. If I post it here, then whether it is called a suggestion or a roadmap or a banana wagon, it is really a call for discussion.
I don't care where the post is, but if it can't be located for discussion purposes by its intended audience, then that will compel me, under the rules of the forum, to recontextualize my discussion in a less neutral way. A suggestion provides the framework for follow up posts to be constructive. Saying exactly the same things but within the context of criticizing why the game mode works in the way it does as opposed to something else like for example what I mention here directs the discussion to be more negative, to direct emotions in a less productive, if more satisfying way that skewers the game rather than tries to improve it.
And I am exceedingly good at going both ways within the rules of the forum.
Understandable, but within the context of proposing a system, I can see how it falls under suggestion. I'm pretty impartial either way where it is. I always open to Recent Discussions. Not General.
Me too. Why do people even go to general discussion. Recent is much more useful
Threads like this provide a really constructive discussion. I never understand why they move it to bury it. All we get left are the threads that are highly charged and turn to into fighting, sniping and pitchforks towards Kabam.
On the balance of what is a reasonable solution for Kabam to implement this appears to be the most sensible and balanced option. It would get my vote.
Well thought out. Tbh the starting at bottom each season doesn't bother me to much. Get the rewards you actually play for. I might have everything needed for node x this season and absolutely nothing for node y next so starting at bottom isn't bad because of that. It gives me a chance to match other people in same boat trying to get champs for that node during the season.
Your win lose idea though is awesome. Having some way to not lose tokens is awesome. The ability to fly up the circuit if I win 2-0 would get me past the weaker accounts faster but having the opportunity not to fall down as long as I get 1 win is an amazing idea.
The PGA doesn’t make Tiger Woods do all the qualifying tournaments to get on tour before each tournament. No, because he’s proven to be good enough to jump right into the PGA Tour events. Is that unfair to the guys who have to play all those tournaments before belig allowed on tour?
Can you imagine if every PGA golfer had to play qualifying matches each weekend to be allowed to play the next tour tourney? Would that make sense in anyway? That is essentially what Kabam is doing with BGs.
The VT and the GC are part of the same competition. You want to get to the GC, you have to finish the VT. That's how it goes. That doesn't change just because some people feel they're above it. It's a competition, not a class separator. Not explicitly anyway.
Now, what I could get behind is perhaps winning some sort of chits that exempt Players from Brackets, at the highest payouts. They would likely have to be limited, though. Let's say, 3rd top-most Bracket earns the right to skip the first 3 Brackets, 2nd highest skips 4, Top skips 5. Something along those lines. The highest Ranking could earn bypass as a part of their Rewards for the next Season. They would be limited to the following Season only. I just can't get behind shifting everyone before the Season even starts.
Huh so they moved this here. The most usefully constructive thread on this subject. Maybe technically the right place for it, but pointless if you actually want to promote positive member engagement.
Threads like this provide a really constructive discussion. I never understand why they move it to bury it.
. Well, that's actually on all of us (all the Forum users), if certain useful categories are seldom looked at. That is because too many of us decide NOT to look at those categories.
As earlier commented, going to the “multi-category” RECENT DISCUSSIONS is the best way to see posts. **the only useless category I believe that gets lumped into RECENT that probably shouldn’t be is the Alliance Recruiting, but you pretty much get used to automatically scanning your eyes right past any of those (mostly all have similar style Titles to them). If Kabam would remove “Alliance” category posts from the “multi-category” RECENT list, then people would have even less reason to go to specific categories instead of RECENT.
And for those that don’t realize that exists, it is the 3rd Labeled word going left to right at top of forums (maybe different on Mobile/Phone version of forum ?) LANGUAGE — CATEGORIES — DISCUSSIONS — BEST OF — (etc….) That “Discussions” tab is the multi-category RECENT DISCUSSIONS list.
I'm sure this has been recommended before (so many suggestions past few months I've lost track) and maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't a fix be as simple as replication of the AW system?
I rarely hear fairness complaint issues on there and if there is, it's as simple of an answer of what are the AW ratings.
Why not have the same basic thing where the majority of the rewards are in season completion (increase end of season rewards to balance out removal of advancing tiers). Of course keep participation objectives (maybe even increase them in offset of tier advancement rewards).
The first couple weeks of season 1 would be a mess (much like it was when aw reset happened and everyone started at zero) but it would soon balance out. And it would stay balanced out every season u til when or if Kabam ever decides to do a reset like they did in AW couple years back.
Without resets people would find themselves around where they belong just like in AW. If they lose or just don't play, they fall down the ranking just like AW, they win, their competition gets stronger against others who are winning. They would have a BG rating similar to an alliance AW rating. This BG rating would be primary factor in matchups like in AW.
To me this is the fairest and simplest way to fix this, but maybe I'm missing something.
Huh so they moved this here. The most usefully constructive thread on this subject. Maybe technically the right place for it, but pointless if you actually want to promote positive member engagement.
Threads like this provide a really constructive discussion. I never understand why they move it to bury it.
. Well, that's actually on all of us (all the Forum users), if certain useful categories are seldom looked at. That is because too many of us decide NOT to look at those categories.
As earlier commented, going to the “multi-category” RECENT DISCUSSIONS is the best way to see posts. **the only useless category I believe that gets lumped into RECENT that probably shouldn’t be is the Alliance Recruiting, but you pretty much get used to automatically scanning your eyes right past any of those (mostly all have similar style Titles to them). If Kabam would remove “Alliance” category posts from the “multi-category” RECENT list, then people would have even less reason to go to specific categories instead of RECENT.
And for those that don’t realize that exists, it is the 3rd Labeled word going left to right at top of forums (maybe different on Mobile/Phone version of forum ?) LANGUAGE — CATEGORIES — DISCUSSIONS — BEST OF — (etc….) That “Discussions” tab is the multi-category RECENT DISCUSSIONS list.
Huh what do you know. Didn't know everyone was doing the same thing. Brain just filters anything with 'lfg'. The only times i do open is when there's titles like " Look what we have here" or " Opportunity of a lifetime".
Ive found that when i search for mcoc forums recent is the one that pops first. But i don't know if that's just for me. So the only times i go to genral us when i click the back button on the forum UI on a post which even though i accessed from recent was posted in general. So instead i just use the system back toggle
I'm sure this has been recommended before (so many suggestions past few months I've lost track) and maybe I'm missing something, but shouldn't a fix be as simple as replication of the AW system?
To give Kabam some credit, they recognized that the "AW system" makes sense for a competitive mode, which is why the GC essentially implements the same competitive system as AW: match based on ELO rating, which depends on wins and losses and nothing else. Winners face winners, losers face winners, and if you want to climb you have to win, period, against all other competition.
However, BG is not like AW in many respects that make it hard to leave it at that. A key one is that unlike AW which uses a slow enlistment system and which has a relatively glacial pace, BG is a voluntary turnstile based real time competitive mode. In war we can just see who wants to play and match everyone against each other accordingly. We cannot match players in BG in the same way: they have to come to us to find a match, and we have to find them a match in real time among the other players who happen to want to play right now.
This means while AW can survive with 50,000 alliances or 5,000 alliances or even 500 alliances in theory (although that would be a catastrophic loss of participation, alliance war would still *work*) BG requires a lot of individual player participation to function, or the whole thing falls apart. So targeting BG at only the hardcore competitors is taking a huge risk of the whole endeavor collapsing and being a waste of resources.
The VT was created to accommodate this recognition. The GC sorts the hard core competitors by strength. The VT allows players to participate even if they are not the best and most competitive players. The *idea* was that hopefully some percentage of the VT would "graduate" to the ranks of the GC. GC-caliber players don't just grow on trees, any more than tier 1 war players just materialize. They have to come from somewhere, they have to have an environment where they can learn and grow. If we don't make a BG easy mode, few players will have an opportunity to grow into hard mode competitors.
From there, the rules and rewards of VT were created to try to balance the need to attract players to the mode with the desire to foster the strongest possible competition. So the idea of making VT and making different rules for VT was not in and of itself a wrong or bad idea. It was the implementation and evolution of that idea that in my opinion simply jumped off the tracks. There are a lot of different requirements pulling the mode in different directions that are often incompatible. Its like that scene in Robocop 2 where Robocop has 342 directives. He starts singing in the patrol car and shooting smokers, because why not.
@Kabam Jax I appreciate you probably won't reply here, but is there any chance of having a dev diary type of clarification on the intent behind BGs as a whole?
I.e. what were BGs meant to achieve, what was the intent behind the two different forms of matchmaking and even... dare I ask... A response to DNA's suggestions?
Totally not a post to make sure this thread doesn't disappear into the quantum realm but I am officially done with BG's beyond objectives until I see something official regarding the matchmaking situation and the future of BG's
I probably got further than a lot of more developed rosters and while that doesn't sit well with me I can count on one hand the amount of matches I didn't rage at seeing their roster knowing I would need a magical draft and flawless play to be competitive. That <5 is probably around 7% of the matches I've played if it matters.
The amount of 50k point rounds I've put up and still lost would make your eyes water.
Its a bit sooky la la of me but just like gambling, the only sure way not to lose is to not play at all.
@DNA3000 do you have any feedback to share or changes to your suggestions since the OP?
I know the developers took note of the thread, both the OP and responses. I know they believe that from their perspectives changes should be made to improve the mode. I know they believe there are multiple pain points, not just one, analogous to how I presented multiple avenues of improvement. Precisely how they want to approach tackling those is probably beyond my horizon of commenting on. But I can say there was thoughtful discussion of the thread among the developers and other content creators that provide feedback to the developers. As is generally the case, there were multiple interesting agreement and contrary opinions on the best way forward.
Given that, would I change any of these suggestions? Probably not, although I am now more aware of the friction they would cause if implemented. There are no perfect solutions, and sometimes the difference between what you would do and what someone else would do comes down to what you’d be willing to compromise verse what they would, and there’s no perfect compromise there. But the case was made, the devs themselves believe something should be done, and although I’m not going to just walk away from this, at the end of the day sometimes that’s the best result you can hope for. I can’t tell the devs what to do (of course) but I can ask them to look at what I point at, and hope that they see what we see.
Nothing happens overnight, but I will keep watching. And we should keep in mind that other changes, like those for alliance war, were not driven by one thread. One thread is just one thread. All threads eventually die (except for the meme thread). If this is important to players, this will come up again, and again, and again. My thread is just one thread contributing to the cause. The players can’t, nor shouldn’t be asked, to push the same idea forever. We can all take a break and discuss the March champs and pineapple on pizza for a while, and return to this topic again.
Brilliant (especially the trophies)....if they made it even 5 this is still 10x better. This was obviously well thought up and well explained. Kudos and even though a bunch will nitpick issues with this, your plan in general is infinitely better than the current state of bg
Comments
Part of Bgs monetization is the cost of matches (energy, marks, time) making players spend to advance through the VT, essentially trading them for the rewards. How does the game recover that loss of trade for those resources?
Does this force/punish players who excelled in one seasons VT to playing at the top of the next season until they reach GC? Does this not deny them the choice of largely opting out of GC (the actual competition)?
Wouldn’t this also decrease player engagement by forcing them to play at a higher level constantly based on performance under the entirely different challenges of last season?
The nodes change and being able to even play can largely depend on roster. Wouldn’t this doom players without the roster to treading water or even just outright drown them?
I think Kabam needs to explicitly state the purpose of VT and GC matchmaking so that players can better understand their purpose and goals. That alone would go a long way towards the complaints about the perceived disparities of VT and GC matchmaking.
Nobody comes here.
This thread is a better discussion point than the daily rant threads that turn into same name calling debate between two parties at opposite ends.
@Kabam Jax can you look into this.
Is it possible that this scenario can be happening on a larger scale?
In other words, my numbers are for context, but even if Kabam was convinced I was on the right track all my numbers would go out the window. They would recalculate and/or adjust them from scratch.
The question of monetization is a valid one, because like it or not we all live in the real world where money pays for the stuff we use. But I believe there's a greater risk of revenue drop off under the current system or any reasonable tweak of it, because it is precisely those players more likely to spend to advance that would also be the first to frustrate-out and quit or severely curtail their participation. If they believe advancement is futile, then they will likely do the smart thing and skim rewards - play only enough to accumulate the objectives while forgoing significant VT progress. This would, in effect, be a net negative because they would be injecting more rewards into the game than before BG even existed, while spending trivial rewards and no monetization expenses on it.
You can grow revenue in two ways: make it more expensive, or convince more players to play. The reverse is also true, you can lose money while charging more, if people simply choose not to buy what you're selling.
I don't care where the post is, but if it can't be located for discussion purposes by its intended audience, then that will compel me, under the rules of the forum, to recontextualize my discussion in a less neutral way. A suggestion provides the framework for follow up posts to be constructive. Saying exactly the same things but within the context of criticizing why the game mode works in the way it does as opposed to something else like for example what I mention here directs the discussion to be more negative, to direct emotions in a less productive, if more satisfying way that skewers the game rather than tries to improve it.
And I am exceedingly good at going both ways within the rules of the forum.
Longer and actually wrong answer: probably not, because random chance will prevent that from happening.
Actual answer: we don't know. Although I've been thinking about BG for a while and put a significant amount of thought into it, my time is limited so there's certain things I can't do, like literally record every single BG match I fight to analyze every aspect of the match maker. So take this for what it is worth: this is anecdotal, not statistical data.
I win more at certain times of the day.
How is that possible? Well, the obvious answer is: I'm matching against different people. The match maker, regardless of algorithm, can only match me against people who are actually playing at that moment in time. Different people play at different times. If I play at all kinds of random times, my matches will change depending on who's on then. There are very specific times, and I won't elaborate, when my record is significantly better.
Maybe that's random chance. But maybe not. When we analyze these kinds of systems, we often presume that all variables we don't know happen randomly. People match against random opponents. But we know that's not literally true. So is it possible that, completely separate from what the match maker is doing, there are players who are seeing highly advantageous or disadvantageous matches? Possibly. And is it possible that trading wins and losses in an alternating fashion is happening more often than random chance would suggest? Again: possibly. Only the BG history data would be able to tell us if the behavior of player wins and losses actually appears random (relative to all other variables) or exhibits weird correlations that can cause very weird problems to happen.
The current setup just doesn't work at all for a very large number of players and it'll kill what was a fun and rewarding mode.
Maybe technically the right place for it, but pointless if you actually want to promote positive member engagement.
On the balance of what is a reasonable solution for Kabam to implement this appears to be the most sensible and balanced option. It would get my vote.
Your win lose idea though is awesome. Having some way to not lose tokens is awesome. The ability to fly up the circuit if I win 2-0 would get me past the weaker accounts faster but having the opportunity not to fall down as long as I get 1 win is an amazing idea.
Can you imagine if every PGA golfer had to play qualifying matches each weekend to be allowed to play the next tour tourney? Would that make sense in anyway? That is essentially what Kabam is doing with BGs.
The highest Ranking could earn bypass as a part of their Rewards for the next Season. They would be limited to the following Season only.
I just can't get behind shifting everyone before the Season even starts.
AGREE
. .
Well, that's actually on all of us (all the Forum users), if certain useful categories are seldom looked at.
That is because too many of us decide NOT to look at those categories.
As earlier commented, going to the “multi-category” RECENT DISCUSSIONS is the best way to see posts.
**the only useless category I believe that gets lumped into RECENT that probably shouldn’t be is the Alliance Recruiting, but you pretty much get used to automatically scanning your eyes right past any of those (mostly all have similar style Titles to them). If Kabam would remove “Alliance” category posts from the “multi-category” RECENT list, then people would have even less reason to go to specific categories instead of RECENT.
And for those that don’t realize that exists, it is the 3rd Labeled word going left to right at top of forums (maybe different on Mobile/Phone version of forum ?)
LANGUAGE — CATEGORIES — DISCUSSIONS — BEST OF — (etc….)
That “Discussions” tab is the multi-category RECENT DISCUSSIONS list.
I rarely hear fairness complaint issues on there and if there is, it's as simple of an answer of what are the AW ratings.
Why not have the same basic thing where the majority of the rewards are in season completion (increase end of season rewards to balance out removal of advancing tiers). Of course keep participation objectives (maybe even increase them in offset of tier advancement rewards).
The first couple weeks of season 1 would be a mess (much like it was when aw reset happened and everyone started at zero) but it would soon balance out. And it would stay balanced out every season u til when or if Kabam ever decides to do a reset like they did in AW couple years back.
Without resets people would find themselves around where they belong just like in AW. If they lose or just don't play, they fall down the ranking just like AW, they win, their competition gets stronger against others who are winning. They would have a BG rating similar to an alliance AW rating. This BG rating would be primary factor in matchups like in AW.
To me this is the fairest and simplest way to fix this, but maybe I'm missing something.
Ive found that when i search for mcoc forums recent is the one that pops first. But i don't know if that's just for me. So the only times i go to genral us when i click the back button on the forum UI on a post which even though i accessed from recent was posted in general. So instead i just use the system back toggle
However, BG is not like AW in many respects that make it hard to leave it at that. A key one is that unlike AW which uses a slow enlistment system and which has a relatively glacial pace, BG is a voluntary turnstile based real time competitive mode. In war we can just see who wants to play and match everyone against each other accordingly. We cannot match players in BG in the same way: they have to come to us to find a match, and we have to find them a match in real time among the other players who happen to want to play right now.
This means while AW can survive with 50,000 alliances or 5,000 alliances or even 500 alliances in theory (although that would be a catastrophic loss of participation, alliance war would still *work*) BG requires a lot of individual player participation to function, or the whole thing falls apart. So targeting BG at only the hardcore competitors is taking a huge risk of the whole endeavor collapsing and being a waste of resources.
The VT was created to accommodate this recognition. The GC sorts the hard core competitors by strength. The VT allows players to participate even if they are not the best and most competitive players. The *idea* was that hopefully some percentage of the VT would "graduate" to the ranks of the GC. GC-caliber players don't just grow on trees, any more than tier 1 war players just materialize. They have to come from somewhere, they have to have an environment where they can learn and grow. If we don't make a BG easy mode, few players will have an opportunity to grow into hard mode competitors.
From there, the rules and rewards of VT were created to try to balance the need to attract players to the mode with the desire to foster the strongest possible competition. So the idea of making VT and making different rules for VT was not in and of itself a wrong or bad idea. It was the implementation and evolution of that idea that in my opinion simply jumped off the tracks. There are a lot of different requirements pulling the mode in different directions that are often incompatible. Its like that scene in Robocop 2 where Robocop has 342 directives. He starts singing in the patrol car and shooting smokers, because why not.
I.e. what were BGs meant to achieve, what was the intent behind the two different forms of matchmaking and even... dare I ask... A response to DNA's suggestions?
I probably got further than a lot of more developed rosters and while that doesn't sit well with me I can count on one hand the amount of matches I didn't rage at seeing their roster knowing I would need a magical draft and flawless play to be competitive. That <5 is probably around 7% of the matches I've played if it matters.
The amount of 50k point rounds I've put up and still lost would make your eyes water.
Its a bit sooky la la of me but just like gambling, the only sure way not to lose is to not play at all.
@DNA3000 do you have any feedback to share or changes to your suggestions since the OP?
Given that, would I change any of these suggestions? Probably not, although I am now more aware of the friction they would cause if implemented. There are no perfect solutions, and sometimes the difference between what you would do and what someone else would do comes down to what you’d be willing to compromise verse what they would, and there’s no perfect compromise there. But the case was made, the devs themselves believe something should be done, and although I’m not going to just walk away from this, at the end of the day sometimes that’s the best result you can hope for. I can’t tell the devs what to do (of course) but I can ask them to look at what I point at, and hope that they see what we see.
Nothing happens overnight, but I will keep watching. And we should keep in mind that other changes, like those for alliance war, were not driven by one thread. One thread is just one thread. All threads eventually die (except for the meme thread). If this is important to players, this will come up again, and again, and again. My thread is just one thread contributing to the cause. The players can’t, nor shouldn’t be asked, to push the same idea forever. We can all take a break and discuss the March champs and pineapple on pizza for a while, and return to this topic again.