1. Remove dirt-gold tiers, move the rewards into milestones 2. Use common leaderboard matchmaking with elo or any similar system. Cut the ratings by 1/2 or 3/4 or whatever, wich will compress players, making it more likely for players to win a match within some rating range basically for everyone except the very weakest players
That's it. Done. No need to random walk x steps to the right. To punish tanking, use not only final leaderboard position, but also lowest and highest ones, maybe add some natural rating decay.
Also thanks for quoting kbam, I day a good laugh reading it
Then perhaps I'm misunderstanding your suggestion about the Trophies. I read it as, if you win 2 Trophies to your opponent's 0, you win 2 more. Perhaps you could elaborate. I saw the 1/2 as a Win, with no Trophies added.
These numbers refer to fights, not matches. A BG match is a best out of three. At the moment two wins gains a trophy in the match and two losses costs you a trophy. The proposed system adds two possibilities: you can win by skunking your opponent two to zero, or you can win with a split result winning two while your opponent wins one. The stronger win earns you two trophies instead of one. Meanwhile two losses and no wins still costs a trophy, but one win and two losses - meaning you won at least one of the first two fights - will allow you to retain your trophies and not lose any. So you slide backwards only when you get creamed. If you at least put up a decent fight, you can at least stay where you are and avoid losing trophies.
Winning the match either earns you one trophy or two. Losing either costs you a trophy or allows you to stay even. No player would be worse off under this scoring system under any circumstances, at least in a per fight sense.
The one type of person that might not benefit would be if someone out there is always winning but always winning 2-1. Such a person is currently advancing as fast as possible but under the proposed system they would not gain any of the benefits of winning 2-0 but would have to progress through a longer trophy track. This is not impossible, but I think such people would be very rare.
Ah, so I misunderstood. That sounds like an interesting concept. I don't really have any arguments that I can see with that.
@GroundedWisdom Starting out at some level based on previous season does NOT mean it is so locked in like AW is, where AW Tiers heavily dictate how many points you get (Tier Multiplier) compared to others, which yes is purely based on War Rating (and so in a sense, prior seasons play).
Everyone who was in GC in previous season would *ALL* start out at a relative 0 compared to each other. None of them start in GC (and definitely not higher than any others who also finished in GC too), they still have to all start out in the bracket below GC, and fight their way back into GC. Where they also do not have an advantage versus others based on previous year's GC rank.
They have to re-earn their GC Rank from scratch every season.
This I can't get behind no matter how you put it on paper. You're starting the Season with skewed results before it even begins. I've seen the result of that system before, and progress is minimal if any. People always end where they began and become entitled to keep that Ranking. That's not a competition. That's a combination of AQ and AW. It's a monopoly on Brackets. Sorry, but I disagree with that model.
I find it odd that you can be so against this stance. The people who are getting to the high tiers are the ones who are statistically most likely to have the highest win rates in the lower tiers. So the people that you are fast tracking in the competition, are the ones most likely to just stomp whoever they face in the early brackets anyway. Only a 1 Tier drop as suggested in the post is a little generous imo but the principle of it is absolutely fine. It's also a fantastic way to get people to continue to participate in the game mode because the work they put in this season can also help next season. Think of it this way, what if some of the rewards for coming GC were Victory Shields. The fundamental outcome of that wouldn't be any differentv than what this suggests. A proposal like this just removes grind, time sink, and frustration from everyone who participates in the game mode regardless if you are good or not. Plus you've been incredibly vocal that the competition doesn't start until GC anyway.
I'm against it because we've seen the results of that.
That's actually one of my original motivators for looking at this in the first place. We've seen this before, so we know where it ultimately ends. It ends with the players and the devs concluding something needs to change, after many many seasons of pain first. That pain is the cost of convincing the minority that their version of fairness is unreasonable to enough players to compel estopping it, and lacks sufficient justification to swing people towards it. Even after years.
First of all, it's a measurement of progress within the Season. Not progress from where you left off, minus one. Secondly, that locks (at the very least stunts) people from going past a certain point. Season after Season, the same people will occupy the top Brackets, progressing from that, gaining a leg up because of where they begin the next Season, and using the Rewards to maintain that spot. I'm all for people earning what they earn. I'm not supporting a repeat of a system that stunts growth on an individual Account level. Not by way of appeasing Players.
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.
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.
The top players aren't the ones complaining. The top players just steal trophies from any poor soul who decided to start matchmaking the same time they did and get to GC no problem. You probably haven't had to run into that issue of being steamrolled by a top player though since the system currently benefits those who aren't in range to be matched with them.
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.
What level? You're talking about people arguing that others don't even belong 2 or 3 Brackets up in the VT. It's grossly exaggerated by their own position.
So you think it is perfectly fine for Beroman to start in Bronze and just steal victories all the way to GC ruining the experience for those he faces just so he can get back to the point where he should be competing every single season? Wouldn't it be better if Beroman started much higher because he is going to get back to where he is supposed to be competing anyways, so give the dude a headstart so he can compete where he is supposed to be competing sooner and not spending so long stealing trophies from all in his path.
I think you have a Seaaon, from start to finish, that measures how you do within the Season. Not how well you did last Season.
The issue is the season doesn't matter in Victory track. You get NOTHING from the season in Victory Track. Only the last week of GC decides your placement in GC. People who are competing high in GC are competing high every single season. Doesn't matter the nodes, doesn't matter the bugs. These people will always be up there. If these people started in diamond each season, then guess what, there is more opportunity for people to get through victory track and more people will get more rewards because the top players aren't going to be in their way. Everyone wins with this idea.
The current structure means the Victory Track is part of the Season. You don't get to the GC without it. I've offered a couple suggestions that I think are reasonable. I don't agree with a free pass every Season. That's a monopoly. Period.
My issue with your statement is people who are high up in GC are going to get through VT no matter what. DNA has said it a million times now, it isn't a matter of if, it is a matter of how. He isn't saying anyone who gets to GC should have a free pass to GC every season, everyone is going to be reset back to somewhere in VT based on where they ended last season on.
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.
Yes. They will. However they earn it NO MATTER WHAT. They don't just get it given no matter what. There's no circumnavigating Losses with any system.
Sure there is. Under the current system lower progress accounts avoid losses all the time, because we currently protect them from having to match against larger rosters, because as you put it such matches would not be “fair.” So you’re willing to allow players to “circumnavigate” losses if you think they don’t “deserve” them, but object to players avoiding losses they won’t likely even experience either way if you think they do, based on nothing more than your subjective opinion of who deserves a curated competition experience.
The problem with this objection to allowing players to bypass tiers is that *first* you hand players the unfair advantage of avoiding match ups they don’t want, then say the advantage store is closed and no one else gets to shop. That’s intrinsically unfair. The fair thing to do if we are going to judge who is getting unfair advantages is take *everything* off the table first, and then decide what fair distribution of advantages and disadvantages is. That means we remove the roster protections for lower progress players, and then we ask them what they are willing to give up to get it back.
In game theory there is the thought experiment of the fair cake cut. Two people want to share a cake but neither one trusts the other to divide the cake fairly. The solution to the problem is to flip a coin (it doesn’t even need to be an especially fair coin) to decide who cuts the cake. But whoever cuts the cake in half, the other one chooses which side they get first.
The person cutting the cake is claiming their cut is fair. If so, they cannot object to the other person picking either side. Meanwhile the person picking gets to choose which side they get, so they can’t object that their side is unfairly small. Starting from zero, we build up the process of creating a fair division.
Fair is no one gets any special consideration. We don’t look at anything, and everyone matches against everyone else. This is ultimately what a full round robin tournament would do, and is completely fair. We can’t match everyone against everyone practically, so we’d do it randomly.
Every divergence from this is then a negotiated trade off. If you give anything to anyone, either you have to compensate elsewhere, or admit you’re deliberately putting your thumb on the scale and making things unfair for someone. Which is fine, if that’s your intent, but at least it forced you to be honest about it. Giving strong players a higher starting point is only an unfair advantage if you don’t count the other unfair advantages other players are already getting from the current structure.
Then perhaps I'm misunderstanding your suggestion about the Trophies. I read it as, if you win 2 Trophies to your opponent's 0, you win 2 more. Perhaps you could elaborate. I saw the 1/2 as a Win, with no Trophies added.
These numbers refer to fights, not matches. A BG match is a best out of three. At the moment two wins gains a trophy in the match and two losses costs you a trophy. The proposed system adds two possibilities: you can win by skunking your opponent two to zero, or you can win with a split result winning two while your opponent wins one. The stronger win earns you two trophies instead of one. Meanwhile two losses and no wins still costs a trophy, but one win and two losses - meaning you won at least one of the first two fights - will allow you to retain your trophies and not lose any. So you slide backwards only when you get creamed. If you at least put up a decent fight, you can at least stay where you are and avoid losing trophies.
Winning the match either earns you one trophy or two. Losing either costs you a trophy or allows you to stay even. No player would be worse off under this scoring system under any circumstances, at least in a per fight sense.
The one type of person that might not benefit would be if someone out there is always winning but always winning 2-1. Such a person is currently advancing as fast as possible but under the proposed system they would not gain any of the benefits of winning 2-0 but would have to progress through a longer trophy track. This is not impossible, but I think such people would be very rare.
Ah, so I misunderstood. That sounds like an interesting concept. I don't really have any arguments that I can see with that.
@GroundedWisdom Starting out at some level based on previous season does NOT mean it is so locked in like AW is, where AW Tiers heavily dictate how many points you get (Tier Multiplier) compared to others, which yes is purely based on War Rating (and so in a sense, prior seasons play).
Everyone who was in GC in previous season would *ALL* start out at a relative 0 compared to each other. None of them start in GC (and definitely not higher than any others who also finished in GC too), they still have to all start out in the bracket below GC, and fight their way back into GC. Where they also do not have an advantage versus others based on previous year's GC rank.
They have to re-earn their GC Rank from scratch every season.
This I can't get behind no matter how you put it on paper. You're starting the Season with skewed results before it even begins. I've seen the result of that system before, and progress is minimal if any. People always end where they began and become entitled to keep that Ranking. That's not a competition. That's a combination of AQ and AW. It's a monopoly on Brackets. Sorry, but I disagree with that model.
I find it odd that you can be so against this stance. The people who are getting to the high tiers are the ones who are statistically most likely to have the highest win rates in the lower tiers. So the people that you are fast tracking in the competition, are the ones most likely to just stomp whoever they face in the early brackets anyway. Only a 1 Tier drop as suggested in the post is a little generous imo but the principle of it is absolutely fine. It's also a fantastic way to get people to continue to participate in the game mode because the work they put in this season can also help next season. Think of it this way, what if some of the rewards for coming GC were Victory Shields. The fundamental outcome of that wouldn't be any differentv than what this suggests. A proposal like this just removes grind, time sink, and frustration from everyone who participates in the game mode regardless if you are good or not. Plus you've been incredibly vocal that the competition doesn't start until GC anyway.
I'm against it because we've seen the results of that.
That's actually one of my original motivators for looking at this in the first place. We've seen this before, so we know where it ultimately ends. It ends with the players and the devs concluding something needs to change, after many many seasons of pain first. That pain is the cost of convincing the minority that their version of fairness is unreasonable to enough players to compel estopping it, and lacks sufficient justification to swing people towards it. Even after years.
First of all, it's a measurement of progress within the Season. Not progress from where you left off, minus one. Secondly, that locks (at the very least stunts) people from going past a certain point. Season after Season, the same people will occupy the top Brackets, progressing from that, gaining a leg up because of where they begin the next Season, and using the Rewards to maintain that spot. I'm all for people earning what they earn. I'm not supporting a repeat of a system that stunts growth on an individual Account level. Not by way of appeasing Players.
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.
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.
The top players aren't the ones complaining. The top players just steal trophies from any poor soul who decided to start matchmaking the same time they did and get to GC no problem. You probably haven't had to run into that issue of being steamrolled by a top player though since the system currently benefits those who aren't in range to be matched with them.
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.
What level? You're talking about people arguing that others don't even belong 2 or 3 Brackets up in the VT. It's grossly exaggerated by their own position.
So you think it is perfectly fine for Beroman to start in Bronze and just steal victories all the way to GC ruining the experience for those he faces just so he can get back to the point where he should be competing every single season? Wouldn't it be better if Beroman started much higher because he is going to get back to where he is supposed to be competing anyways, so give the dude a headstart so he can compete where he is supposed to be competing sooner and not spending so long stealing trophies from all in his path.
I think you have a Seaaon, from start to finish, that measures how you do within the Season. Not how well you did last Season.
The issue is the season doesn't matter in Victory track. You get NOTHING from the season in Victory Track. Only the last week of GC decides your placement in GC. People who are competing high in GC are competing high every single season. Doesn't matter the nodes, doesn't matter the bugs. These people will always be up there. If these people started in diamond each season, then guess what, there is more opportunity for people to get through victory track and more people will get more rewards because the top players aren't going to be in their way. Everyone wins with this idea.
The current structure means the Victory Track is part of the Season. You don't get to the GC without it. I've offered a couple suggestions that I think are reasonable. I don't agree with a free pass every Season. That's a monopoly. Period.
My issue with your statement is people who are high up in GC are going to get through VT no matter what. DNA has said it a million times now, it isn't a matter of if, it is a matter of how. He isn't saying anyone who gets to GC should have a free pass to GC every season, everyone is going to be reset back to somewhere in VT based on where they ended last season on.
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.
Yes. They will. However they earn it NO MATTER WHAT. They don't just get it given no matter what. There's no circumnavigating Losses with any system.
Sure there is. Under the current system lower progress accounts avoid losses all the time, because we currently protect them from having to match against larger rosters, because as you put it such matches would not be “fair.” So you’re willing to allow players to “circumnavigate” losses if you think they don’t “deserve” them, but object to players avoiding losses they won’t likely even experience either way if you think they do, based on nothing more than your subjective opinion of who deserves a curated competition experience.
The problem with this objection to allowing players to bypass tiers is that *first* you hand players the unfair advantage of avoiding match ups they don’t want, then say the advantage store is closed and no one else gets to shop. That’s intrinsically unfair. The fair thing to do if we are going to judge who is getting unfair advantages is take *everything* off the table first, and then decide what fair distribution of advantages and disadvantages is. That means we remove the roster protections for lower progress players, and then we ask them what they are willing to give up to get it back.
In game theory there is the thought experiment of the fair cake cut. Two people want to share a cake but neither one trusts the other to divide the cake fairly. The solution to the problem is to flip a coin (it doesn’t even need to be an especially fair coin) to decide who cuts the cake. But whoever cuts the cake in half, the other one chooses which side they get first.
The person cutting the cake is claiming their cut is fair. If so, they cannot object to the other person picking either side. Meanwhile the person picking gets to choose which side they get, so they can’t object that their side is unfairly small. Starting from zero, we build up the process of creating a fair division.
Fair is no one gets any special consideration. We don’t look at anything, and everyone matches against everyone else. This is ultimately what a full round robin tournament would do, and is completely fair. We can’t match everyone against everyone practically, so we’d do it randomly.
Every divergence from this is then a negotiated trade off. If you give anything to anyone, either you have to compensate elsewhere, or admit you’re deliberately putting your thumb on the scale and making things unfair for someone. Which is fine, if that’s your intent, but at least it forced you to be honest about it. Giving strong players a higher starting point is only an unfair advantage if you don’t count the other unfair advantages other players are already getting from the current structure.
I've already presented a solution. Remove the Season aspect, and institute an ongoing rating system with mitigation to start. What you call unfair advantage is the absence of an unfair disadvantage. Certainly at the start of the competition. The suggestion is essentially, let us dominate Players that have no chance of winning, or let us roadblock progress for everyone under by staking claim on spots before the competing begins. That's not a competition. That's a dictatorship.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
It really isn't an exaggeration at all, it is reality. There are people who are scared of having prestige because if you have higher prestige, you're going to go against much stronger people.
There have been numerous complaints about this.
It goes the other way too, there are cav players who complain about matchmaking in GC because they're no longer just being matched with their roster protections they had in VT. These roster protections have allowed them an easier pass to GC than fresh paragons who are stuck fighting people like me who have 15+ r4s to crush them with.
I've already presented a solution. Remove the Season aspect, and institute an ongoing rating system with mitigation to start. What you call unfair advantage is the absence of an unfair disadvantage. Certainly at the start of the competition. The suggestion is essentially, let us dominate Players that have no chance of winning, or let us roadblock progress for everyone under by staking claim on spots before the competing begins. That's not a competition. That's a dictatorship.
That’s not a solution to the general problem being discussed in the referenced post.
This discussion keeps flipping between general complaints and specific complaints. You’re arguing that the complaints people are making are wrong in general then claiming to have proposed solutions that also don’t work in general, they only work in very specific circumstances. If someone says roster matching is unfair you say they are wrong and it is non-roster matching is unfair, then you claim it would be fair if it was done in a limited fashion. Which means you do think it’s fair, but you still want to object to anyone claiming it’s unfair.
One of the reasons for my post was to attempt to avoid these kinds of slippery debates. Instead of discussing whether certain ideas work in general, we can all agree to discuss whether they work in a specific configuration or not. I content that ELO matching (ignoring roster) is fair, regardless of how people attempt to portray it. If someone wants to attack it, they should attack how I suggest using it specifically. If the argument is “it’s just an attempt to allow stronger rosters to beat up weaker ones” they should attempt to make that argument in the context of how I suggest using it, if they can. Anyone who has to resort to “of course it is” without being able to construct examples that make sense in the context of this thread can be judged accordingly by the readers of the thread.
I believe this kind of specificity can focus the discussion, not just around my ideas but around everyone’s productive ideas. If someone has an idea they think is better, they don’t need to come up with a gigantic justification for it. They can simply try to show how it does something better than mine, or avoids a problem mine has. And then see how many people agree with them.
Specificity matters here, and I think it will help keep the conversation on a constructive track. There might be much better ideas out there, and if so maybe this is where they get a chance to show themselves.
And now I have to ready myself for take off (literally). Let’s see how things continue on now that we’ve bought ourselves some additional spotlight attention. Let’s try to keep things focused. A lot of people who don’t necessarily agree with me all that often seem to think these ideas, however imperfect they might be, are worth at least thinking about. That’s promising in and of itself, even if I don’t get perfect agreement everywhere.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
I've already presented a solution. Remove the Season aspect, and institute an ongoing rating system with mitigation to start. What you call unfair advantage is the absence of an unfair disadvantage. Certainly at the start of the competition. The suggestion is essentially, let us dominate Players that have no chance of winning, or let us roadblock progress for everyone under by staking claim on spots before the competing begins. That's not a competition. That's a dictatorship.
That’s not a solution to the general problem being discussed in the referenced post.
This discussion keeps flipping between general complaints and specific complaints. You’re arguing that the complaints people are making are wrong in general then claiming to have proposed solutions that also don’t work in general, they only work in very specific circumstances. If someone says roster matching is unfair you say they are wrong and it is non-roster matching is unfair, then you claim it would be fair if it was done in a limited fashion. Which means you do think it’s fair, but you still want to object to anyone claiming it’s unfair.
One of the reasons for my post was to attempt to avoid these kinds of slippery debates. Instead of discussing whether certain ideas work in general, we can all agree to discuss whether they work in a specific configuration or not. I content that ELO matching (ignoring roster) is fair, regardless of how people attempt to portray it. If someone wants to attack it, they should attack how I suggest using it specifically. If the argument is “it’s just an attempt to allow stronger rosters to beat up weaker ones” they should attempt to make that argument in the context of how I suggest using it, if they can. Anyone who has to resort to “of course it is” without being able to construct examples that make sense in the context of this thread can be judged accordingly by the readers of the thread.
I believe this kind of specificity can focus the discussion, not just around my ideas but around everyone’s productive ideas. If someone has an idea they think is better, they don’t need to come up with a gigantic justification for it. They can simply try to show how it does something better than mine, or avoids a problem mine has. And then see how many people agree with them.
Specificity matters here, and I think it will help keep the conversation on a constructive track. There might be much better ideas out there, and if so maybe this is where they get a chance to show themselves.
And now I have to ready myself for take off (literally). Let’s see how things continue on now that we’ve bought ourselves some additional spotlight attention. Let’s try to keep things focused. A lot of people who don’t necessarily agree with me all that often seem to think these ideas, however imperfect they might be, are worth at least thinking about. That’s promising in and of itself, even if I don’t get perfect agreement everywhere.
I agree with a number of your points. What I fundamentally disagree with is:
a. Keeping the highest Accounts from decimating the lowest in the beginning Tiers is somehow unfair. b. Starting people ahead in a Season that is designed to measure progress within a Season is a fair measurement.
We can debate the term fair ad infinitum, but it's not a vague term.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
I literally have no idea what this means.
It means you are lying with your comparisons in support of envious players who believe VT is a competition for placement where they should be able to use smaller accounts as stepping stones.
In the victory track the game is matching NBA teams with NBA teams, college teams with college teams, high school teams with high school teams. Not #1 with #2.
I’d like to also have the option to pick any of our champion in the deck. I hate the randomness of champ drafting. I just completed 4 straight matches, even when my best champs weren’t banned, I still didn’t get a chance to draft them. When certain defenders have specific counters, when you can’t draft the right counter, you already know that one fight is lost.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
I literally have no idea what this means.
It means you are lying with your comparisons in support of envious players who believe VT is a competition for placement where they should be able to use smaller accounts as stepping stones.
In the victory track the game is matching NBA teams with NBA teams, college teams with college teams, high school teams with high school teams. Not #1 with #2.
What you don’t get is that half NBA teams are being eliminated before reaching GC, while half high school teams are getting to GC. You think these high school teams are better, and deserve to place higher than the eliminated NBA teams?
I've already presented a solution. Remove the Season aspect, and institute an ongoing rating system with mitigation to start. What you call unfair advantage is the absence of an unfair disadvantage. Certainly at the start of the competition. The suggestion is essentially, let us dominate Players that have no chance of winning, or let us roadblock progress for everyone under by staking claim on spots before the competing begins. That's not a competition. That's a dictatorship.
That’s not a solution to the general problem being discussed in the referenced post.
This discussion keeps flipping between general complaints and specific complaints. You’re arguing that the complaints people are making are wrong in general then claiming to have proposed solutions that also don’t work in general, they only work in very specific circumstances. If someone says roster matching is unfair you say they are wrong and it is non-roster matching is unfair, then you claim it would be fair if it was done in a limited fashion. Which means you do think it’s fair, but you still want to object to anyone claiming it’s unfair.
One of the reasons for my post was to attempt to avoid these kinds of slippery debates. Instead of discussing whether certain ideas work in general, we can all agree to discuss whether they work in a specific configuration or not. I content that ELO matching (ignoring roster) is fair, regardless of how people attempt to portray it. If someone wants to attack it, they should attack how I suggest using it specifically. If the argument is “it’s just an attempt to allow stronger rosters to beat up weaker ones” they should attempt to make that argument in the context of how I suggest using it, if they can. Anyone who has to resort to “of course it is” without being able to construct examples that make sense in the context of this thread can be judged accordingly by the readers of the thread.
I believe this kind of specificity can focus the discussion, not just around my ideas but around everyone’s productive ideas. If someone has an idea they think is better, they don’t need to come up with a gigantic justification for it. They can simply try to show how it does something better than mine, or avoids a problem mine has. And then see how many people agree with them.
Specificity matters here, and I think it will help keep the conversation on a constructive track. There might be much better ideas out there, and if so maybe this is where they get a chance to show themselves.
And now I have to ready myself for take off (literally). Let’s see how things continue on now that we’ve bought ourselves some additional spotlight attention. Let’s try to keep things focused. A lot of people who don’t necessarily agree with me all that often seem to think these ideas, however imperfect they might be, are worth at least thinking about. That’s promising in and of itself, even if I don’t get perfect agreement everywhere.
I agree with a number of your points. What I fundamentally disagree with is:
a. Keeping the highest Accounts from decimating the lowest in the beginning Tiers is somehow unfair. b. Starting people ahead in a Season that is designed to measure progress within a Season is a fair measurement.
We can debate the term fair ad infinitum, but it's not a vague term.
Another difference in your perspective: you believe competition should be fair, while most of us do not believe competition can ever be fair.
You mean fair in the sense that someone wins and someone loses? Obviously. Fair means a fair competition for everyone. As close to it as possible. It means the playing field is not based on people taking advantage of others, or the system. It means not setting people up for Matches that guarantee their Loss through no doing of their own, at the gate. That's not based on Win/Loss ratio. That's based on Rosters they literally have no chance of winning against. Fair means they reasonably meet that after climbing as far as they can, not being placed in that situation from the beginning by a system that uses them as fuel for the highest Players. Fair means if you're going to have a measurement of Rankings from the beginning of the Season to the end, those Rankings aren't predetermined by placing people higher before it starts. Fair isn't that subjective. People just don't like when fair doesn't come at the expense of others.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
I literally have no idea what this means.
It means you are lying with your comparisons in support of envious players who believe VT is a competition for placement where they should be able to use smaller accounts as stepping stones.
In the victory track the game is matching NBA teams with NBA teams, college teams with college teams, high school teams with high school teams. Not #1 with #2.
How could I possibly have missed that analogy.
As I said in my previous post, the reason why I’m not fond of sports analogies is because they lead to side tracks that aren’t always productive. But, my fault for mentioning them in the first place, so let’s dive in.
I did not, and was pretty clear about it, attempt to compare the specific methodology of matching in March Madness and how BG works, nor do I know how anyone who actually read my post could conclude that. I specifically stated for purpose of discussion that competitions do not always equate fair individual match ups with fair competitions overall, and I used the analogy of March Madness tournaments to discuss this within a framework that many people would likely be familiar with. In particular, people are likely to be familiar with the concept of tournament seeding, where in a presumably fair competition competitors are matched up against each other not in ways designed to match them against the most likely equal competition, but in almost the exact opposite of that. These competitions are nevertheless generally seen as fair.
In basketball tournaments where #1 faces #TheLast the justification for this is that the tournament is a continuation of the regular season, and the point of the regular season is to win seeding. There is thus the belief that high seeding can legitimately offer an advantage without being an unfair advantage. There is thus a motivation to do well during the regular season. If this incentive didn’t exist, the notion goes, this would devalue the competition during the regular season. So global competitive goals can, and often do, override local competitive match concerns.
While the mechanics are completely different, the analogous force operating in BG is that players who develop roster - something the game incentivizes as a foundational aspect of the game, underpinning pretty much all aspects of the game modes and the monetization that supports the game itself - do not get any advantage for doing so. Instead, they are disadvantaged by facing stronger opponents in lock step with that roster development.
I believe this is sufficiently analogous to *describe* the situation to others in a way they would understand. However, the very nature of analogies also makes them vulnerable to being nit picked by people who aren’t interesting in understanding but rather refuting, and can’t refute the argument so they instead target a softer explanation of the argument that isn’t intended to be a strong argument but rather is intended to be expository. That’s why, as I said, I’m not fond of the sports analogies when it comes to BG. They are useful to trade ideas among those interested in trading them, but aren’t suitable for making cases in otherwise hostile environments.
Setting all of that aside, the VT is not matching the NBA against the NBA and the college teams against the college teams. The reason why the NBA doesn’t play college teams is because the NBA as a sports league supports a competitive environment that is completely separate from the NCAA. They are playing under different rules, in different circumstances, and for different prizes and awards. No college team, however good, is ever going to be declared NBA champion. It doesn’t matter how good they are, it doesn’t matter what their record it, it doesn’t matter how many games they win. They are literally ineligible to get first place, last place, or anything in between. They can’t win draft picks, trophies, rings, nothing. Similarly, no NBA team can become NCAA champion. NCAA basketball and NBA basketball share similarities, but they are different sports played in different leagues for different prizes. They are mutually exclusive competitions. The NBA doesn’t only match against NBA because it would be unfair to match against college teams. The NBA matches against NBA because the NBA is a sport which contains competitors all of which are NBA teams, which have NBA requirements, and play by NBA rules, and they are the only competitors eligible to compete in the NBA. Fairness has nothing to do with it. To compete in the NBA, you must be an NBA team. To compete in the NCAA tournament, you must be an NCAA college basketball team.
There is no “mostly 5* with a couple 6s” Battlegrounds league. So there shouldn’t be a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring. Unless Kabam wants to make one. And I am on sufficiently good terms with the Law of Unintended Consequences that he tells me the mostly 5* crowd is unlikely to appreciate what would happen if Kabam chooses that route. They have no idea what Mr. Law intends to put in their bowl, but I can tell without looking that it is not going to be as much as everyone else’s.
I've already presented a solution. Remove the Season aspect, and institute an ongoing rating system with mitigation to start. What you call unfair advantage is the absence of an unfair disadvantage. Certainly at the start of the competition. The suggestion is essentially, let us dominate Players that have no chance of winning, or let us roadblock progress for everyone under by staking claim on spots before the competing begins. That's not a competition. That's a dictatorship.
That’s not a solution to the general problem being discussed in the referenced post.
This discussion keeps flipping between general complaints and specific complaints. You’re arguing that the complaints people are making are wrong in general then claiming to have proposed solutions that also don’t work in general, they only work in very specific circumstances. If someone says roster matching is unfair you say they are wrong and it is non-roster matching is unfair, then you claim it would be fair if it was done in a limited fashion. Which means you do think it’s fair, but you still want to object to anyone claiming it’s unfair.
One of the reasons for my post was to attempt to avoid these kinds of slippery debates. Instead of discussing whether certain ideas work in general, we can all agree to discuss whether they work in a specific configuration or not. I content that ELO matching (ignoring roster) is fair, regardless of how people attempt to portray it. If someone wants to attack it, they should attack how I suggest using it specifically. If the argument is “it’s just an attempt to allow stronger rosters to beat up weaker ones” they should attempt to make that argument in the context of how I suggest using it, if they can. Anyone who has to resort to “of course it is” without being able to construct examples that make sense in the context of this thread can be judged accordingly by the readers of the thread.
I believe this kind of specificity can focus the discussion, not just around my ideas but around everyone’s productive ideas. If someone has an idea they think is better, they don’t need to come up with a gigantic justification for it. They can simply try to show how it does something better than mine, or avoids a problem mine has. And then see how many people agree with them.
Specificity matters here, and I think it will help keep the conversation on a constructive track. There might be much better ideas out there, and if so maybe this is where they get a chance to show themselves.
And now I have to ready myself for take off (literally). Let’s see how things continue on now that we’ve bought ourselves some additional spotlight attention. Let’s try to keep things focused. A lot of people who don’t necessarily agree with me all that often seem to think these ideas, however imperfect they might be, are worth at least thinking about. That’s promising in and of itself, even if I don’t get perfect agreement everywhere.
I agree with a number of your points. What I fundamentally disagree with is:
a. Keeping the highest Accounts from decimating the lowest in the beginning Tiers is somehow unfair. b. Starting people ahead in a Season that is designed to measure progress within a Season is a fair measurement.
We can debate the term fair ad infinitum, but it's not a vague term.
Another difference in your perspective: you believe competition should be fair, while most of us do not believe competition can ever be fair.
You mean fair in the sense that someone wins and someone loses? Obviously. Fair means a fair competition for everyone. As close to it as possible. It means the playing field is not based on people taking advantage of others, or the system. It means not setting people up for Matches that guarantee their Loss through no doing of their own, at the gate. That's not based on Win/Loss ratio. That's based on Rosters they literally have no chance of winning against. Fair means they reasonably meet that after climbing as far as they can, not being placed in that situation from the beginning by a system that uses them as fuel for the highest Players. Fair means if you're going to have a measurement of Rankings from the beginning of the Season to the end, those Rankings aren't predetermined by placing people higher before it starts. Fair isn't that subjective. People just don't like when fair doesn't come at the expense of others.
Another small item you're taking for granted is that the highest players would automatically be fighting lower ranked accounts every time, and vice versa. It would be totally conceivable that a player could match approximations of their own level for a whole season, in that scenario. The average player would be more likely to face someone slightly above or slightly below, so that'd be most matches in a season. And would your concerns about advanced seeding be alleviated if there were a threshold in place to qualify a player to receive that spot and rewards? So say you finished in whatever tier, and start the next season if you hit a certain number of points in the solo event in seven days or something you qualify for that tier and can try to go higher as usual? This way if you don't perform then you don't get the rewards and you don't occupy a tier spot.
In my actual suggestion, the notion that very strong Paragons could or would be destroying weak UC players is mostly a hallucination. That can’t happen except in some unusual glitch. Which is why I think discussing specifics matters.
In my specific suggestion, Paragons and UCs will not initially meet at all. They would be segregated by roster strength, per the suggestion. This is not out of fairness, this is out of the need to compromise the competition to promote participation, and it is considered a small price to pay initially, and by “initially” I mean in the case where both players have never played BG before, and we thus know nothing about their playing strength.
Over time both players will shift from matching by roster to matching by rating. During this shift, lower roster players will begin to get exposed to higher roster players. But this will start out infrequently, and it will tend to be the stronger low roster players facing the weaker high roster players. These will still be reasonably close matches only instead of “close” in terms of roster, they will be “close” in terms of ELO, and ELO is designed to match opponents at near 50% win rates. So low roster players will see their match ups shift from equally strong roster to equally strong player, and their win rates shift from whatever they start off with towards 50%, either going up or down to converge.
Low roster players with low win rates are not going to ever see Paragons of any kind. High win rate low roster players will start off seeing higher rosters, then higher, then even higher, but only until they start to lose to them, whereupon they will stop seeing increasingly higher competition. At no point will a low roster player get “stomped on” consistently by higher roster players. First, because they will never see them, and then later because the only high roster players they will see will be ones they can beat, high roster or not.
In successive seasons stronger high roster players are not just going to have higher ELO, they will be starting in higher tracks, which means the low roster players aren’t just unlikely to match against them, they are unlikely to be the same track as them to get matched at all. So once again, there’s no opportunity for strong high roster players to “beat up” lower roster players.
Nothing is perfect, and even ELO takes time to converge, and ELO presumes strength is transitive (in BG, that’s not established) so players will sometimes see overwhelming competition. But in general, that’s not going to happen. It is actually roster matching that can cause a player to get stomped on over and over and over again. It is happening now. This is impossible with my roster x ELO match proposal. The only low roster players that will be facing high roster players are low roster players so strong they regularly beat high roster players in actual fact, and high roster players that are so bad that they can be beaten by average low roster players. ELO prevents anything else from ever happening.
In this sense, my suggestion is even better than the AW system. A brand new alliance starts at ELO zero. This alliance *must* beat up lower alliances to climb in ratings and reach their intrinsic ELO. In my suggestion, a player new to BG won’t start at ELO zero and immediately start beating up low rosters. Instead, they will be matched against equal strength roster players until the game gathers enough data on them to begin matching them against more appropriate opponents.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
The NBA matches against NBA because the NBA is a sport which contains competitors all of which are NBA teams, which have NBA requirements, and play by NBA rules, and they are the only competitors eligible to compete in the NBA. Fairness has nothing to do with it. To compete in the NBA, you must be an NBA team. To compete in the NCAA tournament, you must be an NCAA college basketball team.
There is no “mostly 5* with a couple 6s” Battlegrounds league. So there shouldn’t be a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring. Unless Kabam wants to make one. And I am on sufficiently good terms with the Law of Unintended Consequences that he tells me the mostly 5* crowd is unlikely to appreciate what would happen if Kabam chooses that route. They have no idea what Mr. Law intends to put in their bowl, but I can tell without looking that it is not going to be as much as everyone else’s.
As an analogy, qualifying tournament structures for international tournaments might offer a better parallel? International teams have a wider range in terms of abilities, Asian teams do not have to play European teams to qualify to the World Cup. When Italy missed out on qualifying for the World Cup, there were no complaints that Tunisia or Egypt qualified by playing a weaker competition and were taking a better team's spot. Different zones have some allotted spots in the WC (the number of spots maybe weighted by team strength), VT is more or less that right? It's not a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring but a path for a few “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” to also be represented in the competition. GC is the competition. There are similar parallels in all sports or most other things in life. Brackets and qualifiers are common way of funneling competition, it is just undeclared in BG.
We can debate the representation looks like (or if it even needed), but to assume that players with lower progression will invest time in BG without having any hopes of representation is optimistic. And there will never be a point where the top title alone will be able to a PVP mode in the game, at least not on current numbers.
The NBA matches against NBA because the NBA is a sport which contains competitors all of which are NBA teams, which have NBA requirements, and play by NBA rules, and they are the only competitors eligible to compete in the NBA. Fairness has nothing to do with it. To compete in the NBA, you must be an NBA team. To compete in the NCAA tournament, you must be an NCAA college basketball team.
There is no “mostly 5* with a couple 6s” Battlegrounds league. So there shouldn’t be a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring. Unless Kabam wants to make one. And I am on sufficiently good terms with the Law of Unintended Consequences that he tells me the mostly 5* crowd is unlikely to appreciate what would happen if Kabam chooses that route. They have no idea what Mr. Law intends to put in their bowl, but I can tell without looking that it is not going to be as much as everyone else’s.
As an analogy, qualifying tournament structures for international tournaments might offer a better parallel? International teams have a wider range in terms of abilities, Asian teams do not have to play European teams to qualify to the World Cup. When Italy missed out on qualifying for the World Cup, there were no complaints that Tunisia or Egypt qualified by playing a weaker competition and were taking a better team's spot. Different zones have some allotted spots in the WC (the number of spots maybe weighted by team strength), VT is more or less that right? It's not a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring but a path for a few “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” to also be represented in the competition. GC is the competition. There are similar parallels in all sports or most other things in life. Brackets and qualifiers are common way of funneling competition, it is just undeclared in BG.
We can debate the representation looks like (or if it even needed), but to assume that players with lower progression will invest time in BG without having any hopes of representation is optimistic. And there will never be a point where the top title alone will be able to a PVP mode in the game, at least not on current numbers.
BGs is more of a Poker Tournament than a playoff bracket. Anyone can play as long as you pay the entrance fee (energy/elders marks) but if you'll likely face better players, especially the longer you last.
Sometimes you'll have a surprise winner and sometimes you'll have an expected winner.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
Wut?
I think he may be quoting White Goodman from the movie Dodgeball.
Just think DNA, if you are gifted 12M in the arena, how is someone who never gets 12M in the arena supposed to compete with you?
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.
Actually it does. It shortcuts one Player's journey up, and no one ever catches up because they have more hoops to jump through to get there. Meanwhile the shortcut Player is going up and up.
Ok, answer my question I've asked a few times.
Should Tiger Woods have to re-qualify for every PGA tournament or should he be able to join whichever PGA tournament he wants to because of his past performances?
I suspect Tiger Woods is busy with his settlement. How does that relate to the game? It doesn't.
Avoiding the question just makes you look bad GW. It's a simple 'yes' or 'no'. It isn't hard.
I'm talking about this game. Sports analogies might be comparative examples, but they're not directly related to what we're talking about. Ask me if a Player should have to qualify every Season, my answer is yes. As long as there's a Season, everyone should jump through the same hoops.
Fine, everyone starts at zero but we have to drop the roster bands that keep players like you from facing players like me. You can't have everyone start at 0 AND avoid fighting the top players.
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.
This is flat out exaggeration to an extreme.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
Wrong. It is a factual statement.
And your analogy is meaningless unless you're in some sort of bowl-size competition w/ your neighbor.
I don't like many sports analogies because they open the door to very weird tangents about what works and what doesn't work. But I think it is worth noting the fact that all sports competitions have differences in how they conduct competition, and yet they all (to varying degrees) are considered fair. How can March Madness, where the weakest teams face the strongest teams, and yet still be considered fair?.
The point I was illustrating is that many competition constructs have pre-qualification in place and it doesn't make them innately non-competitive, which was GroundedWisdom's counterpoint to your proposal of players starting ahead of the pack based on previous performance.
On whether sports analogies are helpful. You can discount that it exists in sports and restrict the discussion to "gaming" only for the sake of this conversation - it may be personally helpful to you but may not be helpful to others. Not all of us think in exactly the same way, which is the crux of the debate about "fairness".
In many cases, solutions to complex problems come from outside the specific domain.
Your original post was well constructed and addresses most if not all of the concerns I have with battleground's design.
The NBA matches against NBA because the NBA is a sport which contains competitors all of which are NBA teams, which have NBA requirements, and play by NBA rules, and they are the only competitors eligible to compete in the NBA. Fairness has nothing to do with it. To compete in the NBA, you must be an NBA team. To compete in the NCAA tournament, you must be an NCAA college basketball team.
There is no “mostly 5* with a couple 6s” Battlegrounds league. So there shouldn’t be a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring. Unless Kabam wants to make one. And I am on sufficiently good terms with the Law of Unintended Consequences that he tells me the mostly 5* crowd is unlikely to appreciate what would happen if Kabam chooses that route. They have no idea what Mr. Law intends to put in their bowl, but I can tell without looking that it is not going to be as much as everyone else’s.
As an analogy, qualifying tournament structures for international tournaments might offer a better parallel? International teams have a wider range in terms of abilities, Asian teams do not have to play European teams to qualify to the World Cup. When Italy missed out on qualifying for the World Cup, there were no complaints that Tunisia or Egypt qualified by playing a weaker competition and were taking a better team's spot. Different zones have some allotted spots in the WC (the number of spots maybe weighted by team strength), VT is more or less that right? It's not a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring but a path for a few “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” to also be represented in the competition. GC is the competition. There are similar parallels in all sports or most other things in life. Brackets and qualifiers are common way of funneling competition, it is just undeclared in BG.
We can debate the representation looks like (or if it even needed), but to assume that players with lower progression will invest time in BG without having any hopes of representation is optimistic. And there will never be a point where the top title alone will be able to a PVP mode in the game, at least not on current numbers.
BGs is more of a Poker Tournament than a playoff bracket. Anyone can play as long as you pay the entrance fee (energy/elders marks) but if you'll likely face better players, especially the longer you last.
Sometimes you'll have a surprise winner and sometimes you'll have an expected winner.
Poker is way too random to be a good analogy. The US Open is a much better analogy. The seasoned Pros, who have proven to be the best week after week, get automatic bids and the lower Pros or amateurs can earn a spot by winning lower tournaments along the way. Again, making Tiger Woods qualify for the US Open makes zero sense.
Just think DNA, if you are gifted 12M in the arena, how is someone who never gets 12M in the arena supposed to compete with you?
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.
Actually it does. It shortcuts one Player's journey up, and no one ever catches up because they have more hoops to jump through to get there. Meanwhile the shortcut Player is going up and up.
Ok, answer my question I've asked a few times.
Should Tiger Woods have to re-qualify for every PGA tournament or should he be able to join whichever PGA tournament he wants to because of his past performances?
I suspect Tiger Woods is busy with his settlement. How does that relate to the game? It doesn't.
Avoiding the question just makes you look bad GW. It's a simple 'yes' or 'no'. It isn't hard.
I'm talking about this game. Sports analogies might be comparative examples, but they're not directly related to what we're talking about. Ask me if a Player should have to qualify every Season, my answer is yes. As long as there's a Season, everyone should jump through the same hoops.
Fine, everyone starts at zero but we have to drop the roster bands that keep players like you from facing players like me. You can't have everyone start at 0 AND avoid fighting the top players.
I'm sorry, what? If you think my concern is me fighting Players like you, you're not following. You can certainly avoid them meeting Top Players AT 0. I am so tired of the hypocrisy of this entire subject. I'm going to lay it out flat. This whole excuse about people being given an easy street because they can't take advantage of the system is just plain manipulation. People can twist perspectives until they become Popples, but the only people who want easy Wins are the ones pushing to bash people about "starting from 0". What's more is they actually have the nerve to call that a fair system because it's random. I've had enough of the Sports analogies. This is nothing short of arrogant entitlement. You want to beat the lowest Players? Do it when they fight their way up. Not at the door, so you can fast track your way to the GC. That's the exact problem with the system that currently resides in War. People have become so entitled to overpowering others and calling it skill that they're thoroughly offended at the thought of fighting someone their own size. There are enough Alliances in War that they still play but stopped caring, to make that system possible. Wait until that happens to BGs, and people stop caring. Good luck running the system with those few numbers caring. You'd have the same people coming up against each other either way because it's become so isolated. You talk about silos. Let's talk about the silo of "Top" vs. anyone else scavenging for enjoyment when the entire game mode serves ONE demographic. Go ahead and silo progress into homeostasis and see how long Players bother with it. I guarantee I've seen it happen before. There is a range of Players to account for, and their progress and experience matters just as much as the "Top". Which only exists because the numbers of everyone else support them. I'm not concerned about coming up against anyone's Account. I'm not the one that's offended by losing Fights I could reasonably win. When I'm beat, I'm beat. When the system ensures a guaranteed Loss because the numbers alone mean I'm so overpowered that no amount of skill will make a difference, at the START of a competition, that's not skill, buds. That's a set-up.
The NBA matches against NBA because the NBA is a sport which contains competitors all of which are NBA teams, which have NBA requirements, and play by NBA rules, and they are the only competitors eligible to compete in the NBA. Fairness has nothing to do with it. To compete in the NBA, you must be an NBA team. To compete in the NCAA tournament, you must be an NCAA college basketball team.
There is no “mostly 5* with a couple 6s” Battlegrounds league. So there shouldn’t be a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring. Unless Kabam wants to make one. And I am on sufficiently good terms with the Law of Unintended Consequences that he tells me the mostly 5* crowd is unlikely to appreciate what would happen if Kabam chooses that route. They have no idea what Mr. Law intends to put in their bowl, but I can tell without looking that it is not going to be as much as everyone else’s.
As an analogy, qualifying tournament structures for international tournaments might offer a better parallel? International teams have a wider range in terms of abilities, Asian teams do not have to play European teams to qualify to the World Cup. When Italy missed out on qualifying for the World Cup, there were no complaints that Tunisia or Egypt qualified by playing a weaker competition and were taking a better team's spot. Different zones have some allotted spots in the WC (the number of spots maybe weighted by team strength), VT is more or less that right? It's not a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring but a path for a few “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” to also be represented in the competition. GC is the competition. There are similar parallels in all sports or most other things in life. Brackets and qualifiers are common way of funneling competition, it is just undeclared in BG.
We can debate the representation looks like (or if it even needed), but to assume that players with lower progression will invest time in BG without having any hopes of representation is optimistic. And there will never be a point where the top title alone will be able to a PVP mode in the game, at least not on current numbers.
If I’m asked to choose a sports analogy, the best one I am aware of is the MLB. The MLB, unlike the NFL, has no salary cap. This means teams with three hundred million dollar rosters play against teams with forty million dollar rosters and this is considered fair, within the sport of Major League Baseball. No one would suggest that the As and the Orioles can only match against each other because it would be unfair for them to face the Yankees since the Yankees clearly have too much of a roster advantage.
We don’t match MLB teams by roster cost and let the best record go to the World Series. That would be absurd. If you don’t want to face the Yankees or the Mets, you don’t ask to be matched against more fair teams. You just don’t play MLB baseball. You play all of them, or you play none of them.
World Cup competition is a bit different, because stronger and weaker regions are a matter of circumstance. In other words, we don’t write it into the bylaws of the WC that Asian teams always get to face easier competition. That’s happenstance. We match Asian teams against other Asian teams because they are in Asia. If I decide to play at 10pm HST I only match against other people playing at the same time. For all you know, that might be when stronger players happen to be playing, or that could be when much weaker players are playing. That could offer me a substantial advantage or disadvantage. But I think either way few people would consider that to be a fairness issue. It’s simply a practical necessity. Asian teams have to play teams regionally convenient, and BG players have to play players temporally present. Advantages might exist, but we usually consider that a concession to real world practical realities.
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2. Use common leaderboard matchmaking with elo or any similar system. Cut the ratings by 1/2 or 3/4 or whatever, wich will compress players, making it more likely for players to win a match within some rating range basically for everyone except the very weakest players
That's it. Done. No need to random walk x steps to the right. To punish tanking, use not only final leaderboard position, but also lowest and highest ones, maybe add some natural rating decay.
Also thanks for quoting kbam, I day a good laugh reading it
The problem with this objection to allowing players to bypass tiers is that *first* you hand players the unfair advantage of avoiding match ups they don’t want, then say the advantage store is closed and no one else gets to shop. That’s intrinsically unfair. The fair thing to do if we are going to judge who is getting unfair advantages is take *everything* off the table first, and then decide what fair distribution of advantages and disadvantages is. That means we remove the roster protections for lower progress players, and then we ask them what they are willing to give up to get it back.
In game theory there is the thought experiment of the fair cake cut. Two people want to share a cake but neither one trusts the other to divide the cake fairly. The solution to the problem is to flip a coin (it doesn’t even need to be an especially fair coin) to decide who cuts the cake. But whoever cuts the cake in half, the other one chooses which side they get first.
The person cutting the cake is claiming their cut is fair. If so, they cannot object to the other person picking either side. Meanwhile the person picking gets to choose which side they get, so they can’t object that their side is unfairly small. Starting from zero, we build up the process of creating a fair division.
Fair is no one gets any special consideration. We don’t look at anything, and everyone matches against everyone else. This is ultimately what a full round robin tournament would do, and is completely fair. We can’t match everyone against everyone practically, so we’d do it randomly.
Every divergence from this is then a negotiated trade off. If you give anything to anyone, either you have to compensate elsewhere, or admit you’re deliberately putting your thumb on the scale and making things unfair for someone. Which is fine, if that’s your intent, but at least it forced you to be honest about it. Giving strong players a higher starting point is only an unfair advantage if you don’t count the other unfair advantages other players are already getting from the current structure.
What you call unfair advantage is the absence of an unfair disadvantage. Certainly at the start of the competition. The suggestion is essentially, let us dominate Players that have no chance of winning, or let us roadblock progress for everyone under by staking claim on spots before the competing begins. That's not a competition. That's a dictatorship.
The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.
There have been numerous complaints about this.
It goes the other way too, there are cav players who complain about matchmaking in GC because they're no longer just being matched with their roster protections they had in VT. These roster protections have allowed them an easier pass to GC than fresh paragons who are stuck fighting people like me who have 15+ r4s to crush them with.
This discussion keeps flipping between general complaints and specific complaints. You’re arguing that the complaints people are making are wrong in general then claiming to have proposed solutions that also don’t work in general, they only work in very specific circumstances. If someone says roster matching is unfair you say they are wrong and it is non-roster matching is unfair, then you claim it would be fair if it was done in a limited fashion. Which means you do think it’s fair, but you still want to object to anyone claiming it’s unfair.
One of the reasons for my post was to attempt to avoid these kinds of slippery debates. Instead of discussing whether certain ideas work in general, we can all agree to discuss whether they work in a specific configuration or not. I content that ELO matching (ignoring roster) is fair, regardless of how people attempt to portray it. If someone wants to attack it, they should attack how I suggest using it specifically. If the argument is “it’s just an attempt to allow stronger rosters to beat up weaker ones” they should attempt to make that argument in the context of how I suggest using it, if they can. Anyone who has to resort to “of course it is” without being able to construct examples that make sense in the context of this thread can be judged accordingly by the readers of the thread.
I believe this kind of specificity can focus the discussion, not just around my ideas but around everyone’s productive ideas. If someone has an idea they think is better, they don’t need to come up with a gigantic justification for it. They can simply try to show how it does something better than mine, or avoids a problem mine has. And then see how many people agree with them.
Specificity matters here, and I think it will help keep the conversation on a constructive track. There might be much better ideas out there, and if so maybe this is where they get a chance to show themselves.
And now I have to ready myself for take off (literally). Let’s see how things continue on now that we’ve bought ourselves some additional spotlight attention. Let’s try to keep things focused. A lot of people who don’t necessarily agree with me all that often seem to think these ideas, however imperfect they might be, are worth at least thinking about. That’s promising in and of itself, even if I don’t get perfect agreement everywhere.
a. Keeping the highest Accounts from decimating the lowest in the beginning Tiers is somehow unfair.
b. Starting people ahead in a Season that is designed to measure progress within a Season is a fair measurement.
We can debate the term fair ad infinitum, but it's not a vague term.
In the victory track the game is matching NBA teams with NBA teams, college teams with college teams, high school teams with high school teams. Not #1 with #2.
You think these high school teams are better, and deserve to place higher than the eliminated NBA teams?
Fair means a fair competition for everyone. As close to it as possible. It means the playing field is not based on people taking advantage of others, or the system. It means not setting people up for Matches that guarantee their Loss through no doing of their own, at the gate. That's not based on Win/Loss ratio. That's based on Rosters they literally have no chance of winning against. Fair means they reasonably meet that after climbing as far as they can, not being placed in that situation from the beginning by a system that uses them as fuel for the highest Players. Fair means if you're going to have a measurement of Rankings from the beginning of the Season to the end, those Rankings aren't predetermined by placing people higher before it starts. Fair isn't that subjective. People just don't like when fair doesn't come at the expense of others.
As I said in my previous post, the reason why I’m not fond of sports analogies is because they lead to side tracks that aren’t always productive. But, my fault for mentioning them in the first place, so let’s dive in.
I did not, and was pretty clear about it, attempt to compare the specific methodology of matching in March Madness and how BG works, nor do I know how anyone who actually read my post could conclude that. I specifically stated for purpose of discussion that competitions do not always equate fair individual match ups with fair competitions overall, and I used the analogy of March Madness tournaments to discuss this within a framework that many people would likely be familiar with. In particular, people are likely to be familiar with the concept of tournament seeding, where in a presumably fair competition competitors are matched up against each other not in ways designed to match them against the most likely equal competition, but in almost the exact opposite of that. These competitions are nevertheless generally seen as fair.
In basketball tournaments where #1 faces #TheLast the justification for this is that the tournament is a continuation of the regular season, and the point of the regular season is to win seeding. There is thus the belief that high seeding can legitimately offer an advantage without being an unfair advantage. There is thus a motivation to do well during the regular season. If this incentive didn’t exist, the notion goes, this would devalue the competition during the regular season. So global competitive goals can, and often do, override local competitive match concerns.
While the mechanics are completely different, the analogous force operating in BG is that players who develop roster - something the game incentivizes as a foundational aspect of the game, underpinning pretty much all aspects of the game modes and the monetization that supports the game itself - do not get any advantage for doing so. Instead, they are disadvantaged by facing stronger opponents in lock step with that roster development.
I believe this is sufficiently analogous to *describe* the situation to others in a way they would understand. However, the very nature of analogies also makes them vulnerable to being nit picked by people who aren’t interesting in understanding but rather refuting, and can’t refute the argument so they instead target a softer explanation of the argument that isn’t intended to be a strong argument but rather is intended to be expository. That’s why, as I said, I’m not fond of the sports analogies when it comes to BG. They are useful to trade ideas among those interested in trading them, but aren’t suitable for making cases in otherwise hostile environments.
Setting all of that aside, the VT is not matching the NBA against the NBA and the college teams against the college teams. The reason why the NBA doesn’t play college teams is because the NBA as a sports league supports a competitive environment that is completely separate from the NCAA. They are playing under different rules, in different circumstances, and for different prizes and awards. No college team, however good, is ever going to be declared NBA champion. It doesn’t matter how good they are, it doesn’t matter what their record it, it doesn’t matter how many games they win. They are literally ineligible to get first place, last place, or anything in between. They can’t win draft picks, trophies, rings, nothing. Similarly, no NBA team can become NCAA champion. NCAA basketball and NBA basketball share similarities, but they are different sports played in different leagues for different prizes. They are mutually exclusive competitions. The NBA doesn’t only match against NBA because it would be unfair to match against college teams. The NBA matches against NBA because the NBA is a sport which contains competitors all of which are NBA teams, which have NBA requirements, and play by NBA rules, and they are the only competitors eligible to compete in the NBA. Fairness has nothing to do with it. To compete in the NBA, you must be an NBA team. To compete in the NCAA tournament, you must be an NCAA college basketball team.
There is no “mostly 5* with a couple 6s” Battlegrounds league. So there shouldn’t be a “mostly 5* with a couple of 6s” isolated competition ring. Unless Kabam wants to make one. And I am on sufficiently good terms with the Law of Unintended Consequences that he tells me the mostly 5* crowd is unlikely to appreciate what would happen if Kabam chooses that route. They have no idea what Mr. Law intends to put in their bowl, but I can tell without looking that it is not going to be as much as everyone else’s.
In my specific suggestion, Paragons and UCs will not initially meet at all. They would be segregated by roster strength, per the suggestion. This is not out of fairness, this is out of the need to compromise the competition to promote participation, and it is considered a small price to pay initially, and by “initially” I mean in the case where both players have never played BG before, and we thus know nothing about their playing strength.
Over time both players will shift from matching by roster to matching by rating. During this shift, lower roster players will begin to get exposed to higher roster players. But this will start out infrequently, and it will tend to be the stronger low roster players facing the weaker high roster players. These will still be reasonably close matches only instead of “close” in terms of roster, they will be “close” in terms of ELO, and ELO is designed to match opponents at near 50% win rates. So low roster players will see their match ups shift from equally strong roster to equally strong player, and their win rates shift from whatever they start off with towards 50%, either going up or down to converge.
Low roster players with low win rates are not going to ever see Paragons of any kind. High win rate low roster players will start off seeing higher rosters, then higher, then even higher, but only until they start to lose to them, whereupon they will stop seeing increasingly higher competition. At no point will a low roster player get “stomped on” consistently by higher roster players. First, because they will never see them, and then later because the only high roster players they will see will be ones they can beat, high roster or not.
In successive seasons stronger high roster players are not just going to have higher ELO, they will be starting in higher tracks, which means the low roster players aren’t just unlikely to match against them, they are unlikely to be the same track as them to get matched at all. So once again, there’s no opportunity for strong high roster players to “beat up” lower roster players.
Nothing is perfect, and even ELO takes time to converge, and ELO presumes strength is transitive (in BG, that’s not established) so players will sometimes see overwhelming competition. But in general, that’s not going to happen. It is actually roster matching that can cause a player to get stomped on over and over and over again. It is happening now. This is impossible with my roster x ELO match proposal. The only low roster players that will be facing high roster players are low roster players so strong they regularly beat high roster players in actual fact, and high roster players that are so bad that they can be beaten by average low roster players. ELO prevents anything else from ever happening.
In this sense, my suggestion is even better than the AW system. A brand new alliance starts at ELO zero. This alliance *must* beat up lower alliances to climb in ratings and reach their intrinsic ELO. In my suggestion, a player new to BG won’t start at ELO zero and immediately start beating up low rosters. Instead, they will be matched against equal strength roster players until the game gathers enough data on them to begin matching them against more appropriate opponents.
We can debate the representation looks like (or if it even needed), but to assume that players with lower progression will invest time in BG without having any hopes of representation is optimistic. And there will never be a point where the top title alone will be able to a PVP mode in the game, at least not on current numbers.
Sometimes you'll have a surprise winner and sometimes you'll have an expected winner.
Dr. Zola
And your analogy is meaningless unless you're in some sort of bowl-size competition w/ your neighbor.
On whether sports analogies are helpful. You can discount that it exists in sports and restrict the discussion to "gaming" only for the sake of this conversation - it may be personally helpful to you but may not be helpful to others. Not all of us think in exactly the same way, which is the crux of the debate about "fairness".
In many cases, solutions to complex problems come from outside the specific domain.
Your original post was well constructed and addresses most if not all of the concerns I have with battleground's design.
If you think my concern is me fighting Players like you, you're not following.
You can certainly avoid them meeting Top Players AT 0. I am so tired of the hypocrisy of this entire subject. I'm going to lay it out flat.
This whole excuse about people being given an easy street because they can't take advantage of the system is just plain manipulation. People can twist perspectives until they become Popples, but the only people who want easy Wins are the ones pushing to bash people about "starting from 0". What's more is they actually have the nerve to call that a fair system because it's random.
I've had enough of the Sports analogies. This is nothing short of arrogant entitlement. You want to beat the lowest Players? Do it when they fight their way up. Not at the door, so you can fast track your way to the GC.
That's the exact problem with the system that currently resides in War. People have become so entitled to overpowering others and calling it skill that they're thoroughly offended at the thought of fighting someone their own size. There are enough Alliances in War that they still play but stopped caring, to make that system possible. Wait until that happens to BGs, and people stop caring. Good luck running the system with those few numbers caring. You'd have the same people coming up against each other either way because it's become so isolated.
You talk about silos. Let's talk about the silo of "Top" vs. anyone else scavenging for enjoyment when the entire game mode serves ONE demographic. Go ahead and silo progress into homeostasis and see how long Players bother with it. I guarantee I've seen it happen before. There is a range of Players to account for, and their progress and experience matters just as much as the "Top". Which only exists because the numbers of everyone else support them.
I'm not concerned about coming up against anyone's Account. I'm not the one that's offended by losing Fights I could reasonably win. When I'm beat, I'm beat.
When the system ensures a guaranteed Loss because the numbers alone mean I'm so overpowered that no amount of skill will make a difference, at the START of a competition, that's not skill, buds. That's a set-up.
We don’t match MLB teams by roster cost and let the best record go to the World Series. That would be absurd. If you don’t want to face the Yankees or the Mets, you don’t ask to be matched against more fair teams. You just don’t play MLB baseball. You play all of them, or you play none of them.
World Cup competition is a bit different, because stronger and weaker regions are a matter of circumstance. In other words, we don’t write it into the bylaws of the WC that Asian teams always get to face easier competition. That’s happenstance. We match Asian teams against other Asian teams because they are in Asia. If I decide to play at 10pm HST I only match against other people playing at the same time. For all you know, that might be when stronger players happen to be playing, or that could be when much weaker players are playing. That could offer me a substantial advantage or disadvantage. But I think either way few people would consider that to be a fairness issue. It’s simply a practical necessity. Asian teams have to play teams regionally convenient, and BG players have to play players temporally present. Advantages might exist, but we usually consider that a concession to real world practical realities.