**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Options
Fix Battlegrounds in three easy steps (that we can argue about until the end of time)
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Comments
VT.. it is not difficult to progress, don’t mind the tokens.. but it does take a long time play time. I normally get there about 2.5 weeks into season. A good strategy as the first 5/10 fights in GC are pretty straightforward.
All I want to change is some honesty and transparency. I just cannot see why we cannot have clear rules for match making and understand what the system is.. it would stop 90% of complaints. Yes people might not
Like it, but at least understand it.
Now is a constant cycle of ideas, suggestions and theories..
When you're talking about creating a system that makes it impossible for anyone else to progress, that's equally as broken.
1. Good scoring system, not bad at all. Alternatively, they can reduce the cost of victory shield reasonably and increase the cap per purchase which will allow players to sacrifice tokens (which could buy shards and rankup resources) for the shield. Assuming Kabam are okay with current system and view victory shield as a way of monetization. They could still keep it but reduce the frustration and pain.
2. I don’t agree with the second point. Reasons:
- some players actually enjoy playing through VT, and you’ll take that away from them. They may enjoy figuring best champs, play style and stuff like that.
- Also, every new season is a new meta. Nodes are different and best champs may vary. Finishing higher one season doesn’t necessarily mean finishing higher the next season. One’s roster may be idle for season A and may not for season B, which may cause them not to do so well.
3. The last point, I have mix feelings. The “strength of a player” imo is his fighting skills, knowledge of the game and his roster as well. Account strength plays a huge role in advancement or progression in this game. So that should also be a factor in determining matchmaking. If you have this huge account and can’t do anything with it then that’s partly your problem.
Also, if we’re playing for the same rewards then everyone should be play everyone and that’s fair, small or large account. I’ve played members of all the top alliances, some I’ve beat and others have beaten me. That’s cool, I’m fighting for the same rewards they’re seeking, the best player wins. I know if I have the account or roster they have I’ll be menace.
Something that might help: there are progression levels in the game and even in some contents there are specific requirements, eg Incursion: you need a min hero rating to play certain sectors with varying rewards. So maybe this might be a good way to solve or group matchmaking accompanied by it appropriate rewards. Like Football (soccer) divisions; first division, second division, etc.
Just my 2cents.
In my reply to @phillgreen I stated that I wouldn't change anything myself, but I've learned more about the relative importance of some of my compromises. This would be one of them. I was perfectly willing to trade this strategic option away for the counter benefits I was trying to engineer, but there are many players who wouldn't, or would at least feel the pain more than I had originally anticipated.
The loss of strategic options in a competition is always something to mourn, and I should have given this more consideration. I would still choose to lose it in a compromise, and I'm not sure how I would have fit a discussion of this option in my original post, but it is worth noting now that as I've stated, no compromise is perfect, and it is only when you stick your neck out and lay out the details of an idea that the imperfections of your brilliant ideas start to show their cracks. I consider this to be one of those cracks I can't repair at the moment.
As I see it, this change adds nuance to this strategic situation. Do you go for the guaranteed match win by throwing one match and gaining one trophy or shoot for the chance at two trophies by going all out in all three matches. But the counter-position is that this eliminates the strategic option to find the optimal way to win period. I find I personally cannot adopt the latter position, but I know it exists.
Again, I would be willing to implement the compromise, but I fully acknowledge there are entirely fair-minded and thoughtful players that would come to the opposite conclusion. I think my suggestion(s) are a solution but not the solution that makes everyone perfectly happy.
It is the very nature of a competition that causes the same people to tend to be in the same brackets, because ultimately the stronger players go higher. That's a truism of competitions you cannot avoid, so even complaining about it is misleading: it implies this is a unique problem of the proposed changes when the current system and all conceivable alternatives would have the same problem.
Because it isn't even a "problem." The very definition of competitions is to sort players by competitive strength. A competition that fails to do this is broken. The same players should rise to the higher levels because if they were strong enough to do it last time, they are probably strong enough to do it this time. The question is not *whether* they will get there, but rather *how* they will get there.
The way they are getting there now is, I believe, ultimately unacceptable to a very high percentage of the players who care at all, and it is contrary to how competitions should work. Allowing this type of thing to happen in the very early going is a reasonable compromise to lower competition pressures to encourage participation, but it cannot be allowed to continue beyond a certain point.
Again, I don't believe the current system is sustainable in its current form. It will become a poison that will steadily weaken the mode, just as it was for Alliance War. So there's no debate about whether to keep it or not, only how to change it. We *won't* be matching the way we are now indefinitely (if Kabam was willing to die on this hill, we'd still be doing it for AW), and we *won't* be progressing the way we are indefinitely (because any change anywhere will necessitate reviewing the way progress in the system works), but the stronger players will be consistently rising higher (or the mode will become a mockery). "How" is the question. "If" is something I think most people understand is not a question.
This is because I think a trap many fall into is failing to see the forest for the trees. What this thread and many other threads are complaining about or highlighting is the difference between a match being fair, and the competition as a whole being fair. All other things being equal, we want matches to be fair, and many people claiming that roster matching is fair are relying on this assumption: that fairness means "fairness in matches."
But that's not the only fairness. The competition as a whole is not automatically fair if all individual matches are fair, and March Madness is an example that highlights why. If we care about competition as a whole we can't match the best teams against each other, because this means there's no advantage to having the best record. March Madness is not a thing unto itself. It is the culmination of a season of basketball. The idea that it doesn't matter what your record is during the regular season, because whether you have a good record or a lesser one, so long as you make it into the tournament you will only be matched against teams like you violates the spirit of competition that says every win matters. Allowing #1 to match against #2 and #63 to match against #64 means the "reward" for having the best record and being rated #1 is you're forced to play against the strongest team, out there (other than yourself). That's not a reward, that's a penalty. We'd be saying the regular season not only doesn't matter, it might make things worse. We're ignoring the progress of regular season victories entirely when we match.
That's what's happening in BG now. The game is prioritizing match fairness at the expense of global competitive fairness. It is matching #1 vs #2 because the match is fair, and as a result making a mockery of having higher ratings. If March Madness matched #1 against #2 everyone would deliberately lose games to jockey for 43rd place. Which would be a farce. And that's what some people are saying now. They wish they could delevel their roster for BG (which is impossible, and would also hurt their performance in other game modes) to jockey for easier matches, which is equally ridiculous.
I should also point out it doesn't matter if they are right or not. Some people claim that the people who wish they could play lower rosters aren't strictly speaking correct. But that's missing the point. If this was also not a viable strategy in college basketball but enough teams did it anyway the fact that it didn't work would be irrelevant. It would still imply there was something so broken with the competition that something would have to change. It is the competitors that must believe the competition is fairly competitive. If they don't, it doesn't matter who does.
You can't apply the exact same structure to a PVP mode. It's just not feasible without making it grossly detrimental to anyone who isn't the highest. You can't stay progress of Players to make the Top happy and expect it to continue.
Is this analogous to starting players off with more points in arena? Let's take this apart carefully.
First, what would the benefits even be if the game decided to start me off with more points? Suppose the game decided that since I can regularly get to at least 12 million points in the featured arena, it would just start me at 12 million. Great. Except, now what? Although some people say "and just hand the players the rewards for free" I don't. So let's say I tell the devs to start *you* at 12 million points in the featured, but skip all the milestone rewards up to 12 million. Happy? How are you going to earn all those milestones from the arena? If you do nothing, sure you will get the automatic rank reward for being maybe 60%, but that's trivial. Unless you have a way to earn the milestones, which are the real source of rewards, I haven't helped you at all. I've actually hurt you.
Now, my suggestion is to then add objectives to BG to allow players to start higher to re-earn those rewards by competing. So in our arena analogy I will give you objectives to win those arena milestones you now can't win because you bypassed them. So all you have to do is grind the arena to get them all again. Guess how much points you will probably have to put up to get them.
Now, we wouldn't do this in the arena for the simple reason that there's no point to doing it. My participation in the arena does not affect anyone else's participation. There would be no obvious benefit. But in BG, we are talking about structural changes where there would be benefits. You say those changes are unfair because starting them higher would be like starting players in the arena higher. I've just demonstrated that there is actually almost no advantage to doing that in the arena. So what precisely would the harm be, given the reward protections I've specified.
Also, isn't the point of BGs to benefit those who have taken the time to become strong to be able to crush those who aren't on their level? Afterall, they have probably dedicated more time and money to the game, so why shouldn't they have an advantage?
If Kabam wanted to make a truly fair PVP mode, then they'd copy Clash royale where there is a gamemode where everyone is put on the same level and have access to the same cards. This is truly what you're asking for is a mode where everyone is on the same playing field. You want a mode where everyone has the same deck options, and the same mastery options. This would be the only way to have "fair" competition, because then it is truly the most skilled summoner that will win.
Now, if they removed the Seasonal aspect of it, that could be more feasible in my mind.
They could restructure the Rewards, keeping the Brackets, and switch to a Points system. Mitigate the starting Matches like you outlined, and switch to ELO when progress takes over. Just make it a continuous competition. You don't lose Points, but if you're not active, you go down by default because others are active and earning.
Without the Seasonal aspect, I would have no qualms with that. Starting a Season where Players begin halfway up is skewed results.
The biggest fallacy in GWs 'argument' is that starting the best players higher doesn't change who ends at the top in the end, it just makes those players unhappy. Regardless of where we start players a Cav is not going to be able to compete in the GC.
Meanwhile the shortcut Player is going up and up.
How I would have an implementation of this is anyone who has 200+ points in GC by the end of the season would be reset to Diamond. These are going to be top players they'll get through VT anyways.
As mentioned, these people are going to get through VT anyways. Most of them will probably do so with ease. It isn't a competition for them.
As I have also mentioned before, a headstart to GC isn't going to affect the season end, it just means they get to GC 8 hours sooner than they probably would have anyways. As anyone in GC who actually competes, your placement the first 3 weeks doesn't matter at all, it is purely based on how good can you do the last meta of the season, that is the only meta that matters for the competition.
What I don't think you're comprehending is Victory Track isn't the competition, it is just an nuisance in the way of where the competition actually is.
I was mostly just stating that it's probably far less rare than you were originally suggesting that some and possibly even lots of high win rate players do in fact win 2-1 and actually do so purposely.