Let's look at this logically. Let's say the system has...oh, I don't know....50k Players competing in a Season. It's hard to say how many are TB and Paragon, which is probably lower than 50%, but let's say 50%. Even split. 25k in one, 25k in the other. We're not considering Alts because one Account is being used at any time, unless Uri Geller is competing. 25k that are running BGs in each BG. Factor in the Brackets for the VT, and the GC. That's a number, with multiple Tiers each. You have to Match Players within due time within each of them. Not to mention timing. It's in real time, so those Players have to be active at the same times, dependent on how active they are in BGs. Some play hard, some occasionally. You also have to factor in time zones and scheduling. Tell me again how you can successfully run Matches that don't have irritating wait times with those numbers and factors. I'm dying to know.
Logically, the answer would be to ensure that the match making system had the minimum number of restrictions on who could match against who, because the more restrictions you place, the more people you eliminate from competing with each other, the more likely it is that someone will fail to get a match in a reasonable amount of time.
The *minimum* match restriction would be to match opponents of roughly equal strength, where strength was defined to be their relative ability to win against comparable competition. All other match restrictions would be a luxury, that someone would have to justify given the potential turnstile match rate penalty those additional restrictions would impose.
This would seem to be a strong argument for ensuring that Paragons and TBs are not restricted to only matching with each other.
Nor have I argued for that as a base. I simply stated there needs to be some kind of kicker to the process until such metric reflects equal strength. Otherwise, it's just a losing start at the expense of the lowest demographic, and you're scarce to have them motivated to play. Which I'm sure is fine, and in some cases the objective of, some people in the discussion. I'm not so quick to accept that.
All in the context of the proposed system: It wouldn't be an auto loss for the lower demographic as they wouldn't be likely to face the toughest opponents, rather they'd be most likely to face a middle of the road player whose strength is higher but not out of reach. Youre talking about handing them participation trophies so they play. But they should have to face a challenge and overcome it to progress, the reward for that is growth in skill and strength. Are you under the impression that battlegrounds is designed to be a mode where it's human vs human with no inherent advantage be it via roster variety or strength, or a mode where folks can measure their skill and strength against everyone else in the game? In the former, the solution is to assign a set team to every player and place all the same masteries, and let players go for it (seen this fail in games before). In the latter, what's the point if the rewards you get aren't reflecting the work you've put in over the years because they're attainable (or beatable) for someone who's done 25% of that?
I've been over and over this, and quite frankly I'm not a fan of chewing my cud twice. No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl. If we were going to go that route, I'd rather see Players earn more Tokens in the VT, based on Titles. Limited only to the VT. Then even-keel in the GC. At least then they're still earning their own way out every Season, as opposed to starting Brackets ahead.
Let's look at this logically. Let's say the system has...oh, I don't know....50k Players competing in a Season. It's hard to say how many are TB and Paragon, which is probably lower than 50%, but let's say 50%. Even split. 25k in one, 25k in the other. We're not considering Alts because one Account is being used at any time, unless Uri Geller is competing. 25k that are running BGs in each BG. Factor in the Brackets for the VT, and the GC. That's a number, with multiple Tiers each. You have to Match Players within due time within each of them. Not to mention timing. It's in real time, so those Players have to be active at the same times, dependent on how active they are in BGs. Some play hard, some occasionally. You also have to factor in time zones and scheduling. Tell me again how you can successfully run Matches that don't have irritating wait times with those numbers and factors. I'm dying to know.
Logically, the answer would be to ensure that the match making system had the minimum number of restrictions on who could match against who, because the more restrictions you place, the more people you eliminate from competing with each other, the more likely it is that someone will fail to get a match in a reasonable amount of time.
The *minimum* match restriction would be to match opponents of roughly equal strength, where strength was defined to be their relative ability to win against comparable competition. All other match restrictions would be a luxury, that someone would have to justify given the potential turnstile match rate penalty those additional restrictions would impose.
This would seem to be a strong argument for ensuring that Paragons and TBs are not restricted to only matching with each other.
Nor have I argued for that as a base. I simply stated there needs to be some kind of kicker to the process until such metric reflects equal strength. Otherwise, it's just a losing start at the expense of the lowest demographic, and you're scarce to have them motivated to play. Which I'm sure is fine, and in some cases the objective of, some people in the discussion. I'm not so quick to accept that.
All in the context of the proposed system: It wouldn't be an auto loss for the lower demographic as they wouldn't be likely to face the toughest opponents, rather they'd be most likely to face a middle of the road player whose strength is higher but not out of reach. Youre talking about handing them participation trophies so they play. But they should have to face a challenge and overcome it to progress, the reward for that is growth in skill and strength. Are you under the impression that battlegrounds is designed to be a mode where it's human vs human with no inherent advantage be it via roster variety or strength, or a mode where folks can measure their skill and strength against everyone else in the game? In the former, the solution is to assign a set team to every player and place all the same masteries, and let players go for it (seen this fail in games before). In the latter, what's the point if the rewards you get aren't reflecting the work you've put in over the years because they're attainable (or beatable) for someone who's done 25% of that?
I've been over and over this, and quite frankly I'm not a fan of chewing my cud twice. No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl. If we were going to go that route, I'd rather see Players earn more Tokens in the VT, based on Titles. Limited only to the VT. Then even-keel in the GC. At least then they're still earning their own way out every Season, as opposed to starting Brackets ahead.
I believe they are already giving them participation trophies. Other than that you didn't respond to anything in my post, which is disappointing.
Participation "Trophies" is different than "participation trophies". The latter is what I was referring to. Do I think they should give everyone an even playing field? I'd love to see the results of that. I'd hate to be on the Forum that day. Do I think Players should have an advantage for years of work? Sure. Do I think that makes them entitled to Matches that overpower Players beyond what they have a chance of competing with? Not on the principle of sport, no.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
Let's look at this logically. Let's say the system has...oh, I don't know....50k Players competing in a Season. It's hard to say how many are TB and Paragon, which is probably lower than 50%, but let's say 50%. Even split. 25k in one, 25k in the other. We're not considering Alts because one Account is being used at any time, unless Uri Geller is competing. 25k that are running BGs in each BG. Factor in the Brackets for the VT, and the GC. That's a number, with multiple Tiers each. You have to Match Players within due time within each of them. Not to mention timing. It's in real time, so those Players have to be active at the same times, dependent on how active they are in BGs. Some play hard, some occasionally. You also have to factor in time zones and scheduling. Tell me again how you can successfully run Matches that don't have irritating wait times with those numbers and factors. I'm dying to know.
Logically, the answer would be to ensure that the match making system had the minimum number of restrictions on who could match against who, because the more restrictions you place, the more people you eliminate from competing with each other, the more likely it is that someone will fail to get a match in a reasonable amount of time.
The *minimum* match restriction would be to match opponents of roughly equal strength, where strength was defined to be their relative ability to win against comparable competition. All other match restrictions would be a luxury, that someone would have to justify given the potential turnstile match rate penalty those additional restrictions would impose.
This would seem to be a strong argument for ensuring that Paragons and TBs are not restricted to only matching with each other.
Nor have I argued for that as a base. I simply stated there needs to be some kind of kicker to the process until such metric reflects equal strength. Otherwise, it's just a losing start at the expense of the lowest demographic, and you're scarce to have them motivated to play. Which I'm sure is fine, and in some cases the objective of, some people in the discussion. I'm not so quick to accept that.
All in the context of the proposed system: It wouldn't be an auto loss for the lower demographic as they wouldn't be likely to face the toughest opponents, rather they'd be most likely to face a middle of the road player whose strength is higher but not out of reach. Youre talking about handing them participation trophies so they play. But they should have to face a challenge and overcome it to progress, the reward for that is growth in skill and strength. Are you under the impression that battlegrounds is designed to be a mode where it's human vs human with no inherent advantage be it via roster variety or strength, or a mode where folks can measure their skill and strength against everyone else in the game? In the former, the solution is to assign a set team to every player and place all the same masteries, and let players go for it (seen this fail in games before). In the latter, what's the point if the rewards you get aren't reflecting the work you've put in over the years because they're attainable (or beatable) for someone who's done 25% of that?
I've been over and over this, and quite frankly I'm not a fan of chewing my cud twice. No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl. If we were going to go that route, I'd rather see Players earn more Tokens in the VT, based on Titles. Limited only to the VT. Then even-keel in the GC. At least then they're still earning their own way out every Season, as opposed to starting Brackets ahead.
I believe they are already giving them participation trophies. Other than that you didn't respond to anything in my post, which is disappointing.
Participation "Trophies" is different than "participation trophies". The latter is what I was referring to. Do I think they should give everyone an even playing field? I'd love to see the results of that. I'd hate to be on the Forum that day. Do I think Players should have an advantage for years of work? Sure. Do I think that makes them entitled to Matches that overpower Players beyond what they have a chance of competing with? Not on the principle of sport, no.
Great argument... Yeah i guess when i play games with my 2 year old nephew I let him win so he doesn't cry...
Let's look at this logically. Let's say the system has...oh, I don't know....50k Players competing in a Season. It's hard to say how many are TB and Paragon, which is probably lower than 50%, but let's say 50%. Even split. 25k in one, 25k in the other. We're not considering Alts because one Account is being used at any time, unless Uri Geller is competing. 25k that are running BGs in each BG. Factor in the Brackets for the VT, and the GC. That's a number, with multiple Tiers each. You have to Match Players within due time within each of them. Not to mention timing. It's in real time, so those Players have to be active at the same times, dependent on how active they are in BGs. Some play hard, some occasionally. You also have to factor in time zones and scheduling. Tell me again how you can successfully run Matches that don't have irritating wait times with those numbers and factors. I'm dying to know.
Logically, the answer would be to ensure that the match making system had the minimum number of restrictions on who could match against who, because the more restrictions you place, the more people you eliminate from competing with each other, the more likely it is that someone will fail to get a match in a reasonable amount of time.
The *minimum* match restriction would be to match opponents of roughly equal strength, where strength was defined to be their relative ability to win against comparable competition. All other match restrictions would be a luxury, that someone would have to justify given the potential turnstile match rate penalty those additional restrictions would impose.
This would seem to be a strong argument for ensuring that Paragons and TBs are not restricted to only matching with each other.
Nor have I argued for that as a base. I simply stated there needs to be some kind of kicker to the process until such metric reflects equal strength. Otherwise, it's just a losing start at the expense of the lowest demographic, and you're scarce to have them motivated to play. Which I'm sure is fine, and in some cases the objective of, some people in the discussion. I'm not so quick to accept that.
All in the context of the proposed system: It wouldn't be an auto loss for the lower demographic as they wouldn't be likely to face the toughest opponents, rather they'd be most likely to face a middle of the road player whose strength is higher but not out of reach. Youre talking about handing them participation trophies so they play. But they should have to face a challenge and overcome it to progress, the reward for that is growth in skill and strength. Are you under the impression that battlegrounds is designed to be a mode where it's human vs human with no inherent advantage be it via roster variety or strength, or a mode where folks can measure their skill and strength against everyone else in the game? In the former, the solution is to assign a set team to every player and place all the same masteries, and let players go for it (seen this fail in games before). In the latter, what's the point if the rewards you get aren't reflecting the work you've put in over the years because they're attainable (or beatable) for someone who's done 25% of that?
I've been over and over this, and quite frankly I'm not a fan of chewing my cud twice. No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl. If we were going to go that route, I'd rather see Players earn more Tokens in the VT, based on Titles. Limited only to the VT. Then even-keel in the GC. At least then they're still earning their own way out every Season, as opposed to starting Brackets ahead.
I believe they are already giving them participation trophies. Other than that you didn't respond to anything in my post, which is disappointing.
Participation "Trophies" is different than "participation trophies". The latter is what I was referring to. Do I think they should give everyone an even playing field? I'd love to see the results of that. I'd hate to be on the Forum that day. Do I think Players should have an advantage for years of work? Sure. Do I think that makes them entitled to Matches that overpower Players beyond what they have a chance of competing with? Not on the principle of sport, no.
Great argument... Yeah i guess when i play games with my 2 year old nephew I let him win so he doesn't cry...
I bet if you asked him the definition of a fair fight, he'd come up with an answer.
You can keep exaggerating my point, but I'm pretty sure I've made it countless times. DNA and I both agree with the fact that something would have to intervene until the system reflects ELO results. That was always my main point. You can't throw Players in carte blanche without something giving it something to go on. If you think this is just about giving people a cookie for playing, you're ignorant to the fact that they have the right to play the competition just like anyone else. Sorry you think BGs are just for the "big boys". Perhaps they can design a Paragon MCOC, and graduate people to that.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
Let's look at this logically. Let's say the system has...oh, I don't know....50k Players competing in a Season. It's hard to say how many are TB and Paragon, which is probably lower than 50%, but let's say 50%. Even split. 25k in one, 25k in the other. We're not considering Alts because one Account is being used at any time, unless Uri Geller is competing. 25k that are running BGs in each BG. Factor in the Brackets for the VT, and the GC. That's a number, with multiple Tiers each. You have to Match Players within due time within each of them. Not to mention timing. It's in real time, so those Players have to be active at the same times, dependent on how active they are in BGs. Some play hard, some occasionally. You also have to factor in time zones and scheduling. Tell me again how you can successfully run Matches that don't have irritating wait times with those numbers and factors. I'm dying to know.
Logically, the answer would be to ensure that the match making system had the minimum number of restrictions on who could match against who, because the more restrictions you place, the more people you eliminate from competing with each other, the more likely it is that someone will fail to get a match in a reasonable amount of time.
The *minimum* match restriction would be to match opponents of roughly equal strength, where strength was defined to be their relative ability to win against comparable competition. All other match restrictions would be a luxury, that someone would have to justify given the potential turnstile match rate penalty those additional restrictions would impose.
This would seem to be a strong argument for ensuring that Paragons and TBs are not restricted to only matching with each other.
Nor have I argued for that as a base. I simply stated there needs to be some kind of kicker to the process until such metric reflects equal strength. Otherwise, it's just a losing start at the expense of the lowest demographic, and you're scarce to have them motivated to play. Which I'm sure is fine, and in some cases the objective of, some people in the discussion. I'm not so quick to accept that.
All in the context of the proposed system: It wouldn't be an auto loss for the lower demographic as they wouldn't be likely to face the toughest opponents, rather they'd be most likely to face a middle of the road player whose strength is higher but not out of reach. Youre talking about handing them participation trophies so they play. But they should have to face a challenge and overcome it to progress, the reward for that is growth in skill and strength. Are you under the impression that battlegrounds is designed to be a mode where it's human vs human with no inherent advantage be it via roster variety or strength, or a mode where folks can measure their skill and strength against everyone else in the game? In the former, the solution is to assign a set team to every player and place all the same masteries, and let players go for it (seen this fail in games before). In the latter, what's the point if the rewards you get aren't reflecting the work you've put in over the years because they're attainable (or beatable) for someone who's done 25% of that?
I've been over and over this, and quite frankly I'm not a fan of chewing my cud twice. No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl. If we were going to go that route, I'd rather see Players earn more Tokens in the VT, based on Titles. Limited only to the VT. Then even-keel in the GC. At least then they're still earning their own way out every Season, as opposed to starting Brackets ahead.
I believe they are already giving them participation trophies. Other than that you didn't respond to anything in my post, which is disappointing.
Participation "Trophies" is different than "participation trophies". The latter is what I was referring to. Do I think they should give everyone an even playing field? I'd love to see the results of that. I'd hate to be on the Forum that day. Do I think Players should have an advantage for years of work? Sure. Do I think that makes them entitled to Matches that overpower Players beyond what they have a chance of competing with? Not on the principle of sport, no.
Great argument... Yeah i guess when i play games with my 2 year old nephew I let him win so he doesn't cry...
I bet if you asked him the definition of a fair fight, he'd come up with an answer.
You can keep exaggerating my point, but I'm pretty sure I've made it countless times. DNA and I both agree with the fact that something would have to intervene until the system reflects ELO results. That was always my main point. You can't throw Players in carte blanche without something giving it something to go on. If you think this is just about giving people a cookie for playing, you're ignorant to the fact that they have the right to play the competition just like anyone else. Sorry you think BGs are just for the "big boys". Perhaps they can design a Paragon MCOC, and graduate people to that.
DNA made great points and ideas, u haven't They have a right to compete, not to complain about not winning cause they are 2 vor 3 progression levels behind
I am not a Hearthstone player, so I am not an expert on Ranked. However, it comes up frequently in conversation regarding BG design, at least in other discussion venues besides the forums, so I am passingly familiar.
Well, I wanted to provide a bridge to concepts. So that those with the relevant interest, could have awareness and access to it.
I feel pretty good that has now been done. So I am good on my goal.
I am happy to provide various forms of input should anyone be interested, but otherwise I am content at this time to leave it here.
I suspect BG does take inspiration from Hearthstone as there are a lot of clear similarities, although other competitive environments likely implement similar concepts.
I would be very interested to learn of any other sources that BG or Hearthstone's Ranked pulled from. If anyone has such information, please share it.
I like to study design, and such information would be very helpful to me to figure out and further study etymology of systems and how that plays into design process and outcome. So stuff like that is a gold mine for me.
Hearthstone has two differences to BG that we have to keep in mind. The first is that its been around for many years, and that means it has had a chance to evolve along with its player community.
The current system is a much more complex system than it had at launch, when it had a need to present a system that players could rapidly acclimate themselves to and navigate. BG is still an infant relatively speaking, and would not be able to accommodate the kind of systems Hearthstone currently has. So we can't simply look to a well-established system like Hearthstone for inspiration as if they "did the work" for us, because in a sense any game trying to follow in its footsteps would need to literally follow in their footsteps to some degree, to ensure their playerbase could keep up with the growing system complexity.
I don't think that conclusion holds for me. At least not in full. I think we just have some difference of perspective.
I think the notion is very good. Of understanding that a thing is more than just its current axis coordinates. And this is also something that should be considered more often and by more groups. It's a keen observation. That the developed form of a system is often its history as much as its present (and other things besides). And likewise, the developed culture over time will contain different degrees of sophistication and relation to the product.
Also, tied to your observation of maturation over time, the community public knowledge, public tools, etc. also factor in. MCOC got much easier to play for a sizeable chunk of the community after auntm.ai was made public. And currently Battlegrounds tools are very poor. This is one of the driving reasons why Battlegrounds struggles... even though most players don't realize it (or at least don't voice it publicly).
But why I don't think it holds is to an extent tied to: 1) BG already has features it took HS Ranked years to implement 2) Many of the potential changes do not require years of play to acclimate to or appreciate 3) HS Ranked (at all iterations) is also built to be New Player Friendly, such that a new player can come in with 0 hours of history with HS and still acclimate quickly and well to it. Not even BGs tries to be New Player friendly (just new mode friendly).
A review of Hearthstone's Ranked's own history via Patch Notes. And the quick realization that many of the changes HS Ranked experienced have already been built or added into MCOC Battlegrounds already. Not requiring the years for players to acclimate to. And typically involving concepts that aren't especially requiring of sophistication to grasp.
But need breeds motivation to learn and motivation to accept changes as solutions (crisis economics, shock doctrine). So maybe by making Battlegrounds a pain point for players, it is also creating the ideal fertile landscape for the designers to implement changes to a receptive playerbase. Perhaps Kabam devs will use that crucible to fast track BG's evolution through the HS Ranked Patch Notes (or implement whatever schedule of system changes they choose).
The second is that Hearthstone is a bigger game than the Battleground game mode. It has at least an order of magnitude more players.
Leaves one scratching one's head: will we see this type of gameplay copy-and-pasted and showcased in its own game. Where it can be a "bigger game".
League Of Legends came from a Warcraft 3 mod. But Blizzard didn't respond in time to a breakthrough in their own game's ecosystem. Will Kabam be left in the cold if or when someone else creates a better BG mousetrap.
This ties somewhat into the etymology gold mine I mentioned earlier.
Most groups that develop something are too conflicted to harness it. It's why many star employees have to leave to get promoted. It's why places like Xerox's PARC had to have their ideas poached and developed by other companies.
This means they not only can accommodate more player partitioning, they are almost compelled to do so. A thousand players competing within the same competitive group is a disaster for a turnstile based game that needs to real time match, because that's too few. But a million players all competing within the same competitive group can also be a disaster because it can become too unwieldy. So while some of the changes Hearthstone has made over time has been due to gaining the experience to develop more sophisticated systems (changes in how MMR is calculated, say) many of them are responses to their own game data
Game data can be a powerful tool to shape game design.
And user pools typically have a huge impact on matchmaking systems.
But I think the feature sets from HS Ranked's different Patches and overhauls could be isolated in singletons or groups, and tested inside BG via concepting or mockup. Or even just floated into the public discussion (or private dev discussion) as brainstorming or lobbying considerations.
The old HS Ranked added the feature of players starting each season higher up based on their performance in the last season. This is already in discussion in BG public brainstorming/lobbying. The current HS Ranked has instead a feature that gives players extra progression bonuses early on based on their performance in the last season. This also could easily enter BG public brainstorming/lobbying. Etc.
making things easier for newer players, for example, is something that probably happens as part of the evolutionary journey: the game has existed for long enough, and a veteran player base has developed over sufficient amounts of time, that years down the road there's a need to revisit the early player experience, because the early player experience didn't originally have to deal with ensconced veterans and a complex meta history.
As a side note, New Player Experience is frequently a cesspool for many games and many game developers. It's a cesspool for many governments as well.
It seems to be tied in large part to corruption. More so than its companion "incompetence". Gatekeepers of the system calibrating and re-calibrating the system to their own personal payoffs and biases.
We can take inspiration from other games, but we have to be very careful about simply adopting other game's solutions to our problems. Their problems are not our problems, even if they are described similarly, and their players are not our players and what is acceptable in one community won't necessarily be in another.
Those are all good points. And they are also things that I frequently do take into consideration.
I appreciate that HS and MCOC are not the same game. But they do share many roots, components, etc. And they definitely can borrow game feature concepts from one another... to review, consider, experiment with, test, etc.
I wouldn't recommend replicating other game's forum or gameplay information on our forums: the moderators would likely consider that off topic.
I don't know what your own experiences have been. But so far, for me, Kabam has been pretty accommodating to constructive posts that break ground (or retread ground) on ways to nurture and grow the game and community and Kabam.
I try to keep my content here on point to the game. Though sometimes I will make note of something else compelling in brief, typically just to acknowledge it before moving on.
However, if you have some *specific* element of Hearthstone's ranked system that you believe would be interesting to consider for Battlegrounds, feel free to mention that specific thing, and if I am qualified to express an opinion on it I will try to do so.
I appreciate that. And I appreciate you sharing your insights, review, review process, and wealth of knowledge.
Ultimately my goal with this topic is not to have me play a larger role toward "solving" BG. While that is attractive as a goal, I am far more (potentially) rewarded with the goal of seeing what Kabam, community, etc. come up with. I already can see what HS came/comes up with, I can already map out what I could come up with, but seeing what BG comes up with will be something different. Something novel, something I can learn differently from. I just wanted to make sure the BG think tank had HS Ranked as a source material they could optionally pull from.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
People start with 0 Points, but you of all people should know the Points are correlated with the Tier you're in, and that ties directly to War Rating. Not only is this carried over, but Tiers 1-5 are frozen in the Off-Season. Half-loss for anyone else. I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top. We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
But why I don't think it holds is to an extent tied to: 1) BG already has features it took HS Ranked years to implement 2) Many of the potential changes do not require years of play to acclimate to or appreciate 3) HS Ranked (at all iterations) is also built to be New Player Friendly, such that a new player can come in with 0 hours of history with HS and still acclimate quickly and well to it. Not even BGs tries to be New Player friendly (just new mode friendly).
The point was that we shouldn't presume that features in other games like Hearthstone would automatically work here, not that they couldn't work here. In other words, for a feature there to be considered a potentially good feature here would take more evidence than just the fact that it works there.
Certainly MCOC borrows a lot from other games, sometimes deliberately (through inspiration) and sometimes coincidentally (through reinventing the wheel). Way back in 2017ish I made the observation that MCOC did not appear to be a fighting game per se, it was more of an embryonic MMO. Part of that might have been biases due to the fact that I had come from very deep MMO experience, but a lot of it came from having seen MMOs evolve from the ground up during the heyday of the MMO industry. And over the years, I've seen MCOC reinvent a lot of wheels. Some that I think are just game design tropes that are just floating around out there (but that MMOs iterated) and some that seem to be convergent evolution. I think I can safely say today that observation proved to be valid.
But when we borrow, we have to borrow with caution. We still have to do the work to make sure the pieces fit together. When someone says "lets do this, it works there" there has to be more than that. We have to know why it works there, and what parts of it are specific to that game and what parts are generic enough for us to steal. So no question, something like HS is something we should look at, to get the benefit of other people's thinking. And certainly, while nothing there is guaranteed to work here, the fact that their system works somewhere is valuable information.
Kabam developers in my experience are, for the most part, game players themselves. A lot of their game design idea come not from game design school, but rather their experience playing and otherwise interacting with games. I am pretty sure Hearthstone, as a game that has come up in conversation, is one of those things the dev team is aware of. But it and other games get filtered through their collective design sensibilities, sometimes in ways that make those ideas unrecognizable in the player-facing parts of the game.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
People start with 0 Points, but you of all people should know the Points are correlated with the Tier you're in, and that ties directly to War Rating. Not only is this carried over, but Tiers 1-5 are frozen in the Off-Season. Half-loss for anyone else. I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top. We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
As I said, you simply don't understand war. If you understood it, you'd understand why we freeze war rating in the off season. This is not to give the top tier alliances an advantage. This is a limitation on them. We do this so they cannot manipulate their rating lower during the off season when it doesn't matter, to allow them to propel themselves faster during the in-season wars when it does matter.
The fact that you present this as some sort of conspiracy to keep the top at the top is why I say you don't understand war. You don't have the full story of how war is designed the way it is. You have a narrative in your head that you fit the data to. You believe a "fair" competition is one where everyone has a chance to be at the top, even though no competition works like this because the definition of competitions explicitly denies this. You have your own idea of this thing you call a "competition" that is not like any other competition on Earth, but insist on everyone else honoring. Thus you ascribe motivations to the designers of war that only make sense if you first assume that competitions are completely different things from what they are.
This sort of twisted understanding of why things are the way they are and why things work they way they work can be incredibly harmful. If we treat every design decision conspiratorially, we will penalize players in completely unnecessary ways because we ignore the benefits they will accrue and saddle them with hallucinatory penalties they wouldn't actually experience, or with entitlement ideas they think are reasonably achievable. That's a barrier to progress.
The goal of BG is ultimately to be a competition. A competition in the classical canonical sense. In a sense all competitions are about winners, because that's the intent of competitions: to find the strongest competitors. But that's neither here nor there. As I said originally, I asked you to justify the statement that preserving war rating between seasons causes rank ups to be homogenous. You've made no attempt to justify that statement.
I never said it was a conspiracy at all. I said that's the effect. You can't deny it. Look at the changes over time. Who do those changes benefit most and center around? Certainly not everyone. They benefit one demographic the most. The rest are an afterthought. Why else have a number of Players burned out and stopped caring? They're not getting anywhere for the amount of energy they put into it. It's no longer something that is worth the work. We can disagree until the cows come home. I know what it's become. I never made any conjecture about intentions or conspiracies. I can see it with my own eyes, regardless of why it is the way it is. I'm not one to be dramatic on here, so I say conservatively. The same will happen to BGs if they become the same way. So if the Players below the Top are of less consequence, then that's not a competition. That's placating.
I never said it was a conspiracy at all. I said that's the effect. You can't deny it. Look at the changes over time. Who do those changes benefit most and center around? Certainly not everyone. They benefit one demographic the most. The rest are an afterthought. Why else have a number of Players burned out and stopped caring? They're not getting anywhere for the amount of energy they put into it. It's no longer something that is worth the work. We can disagree until the cows come home. I know what it's become. I never made any conjecture about intentions or conspiracies. I can see it with my own eyes, regardless of why it is the way it is. I'm not one to be dramatic on here, so I say conservatively. The same will happen to BGs if they become the same way. So if the Players below the Top are of less consequence, then that's not a competition. That's placating.
Do you have any idea the ammount of work it takes for a f2p player to get to Paragon?.. You don't because u r not (by choice, I am not questioning your skills).. Do you have any idea how hard is to keep a fellow alliance mate motivated to play bgs for the alliance benefit (Event milestones) when they see post by UC and Cavs saying . "Fix matchmaking, I cant win 3 in a row in Platinum"... You said it yourself.. They are not getting anywhere for the ammount of energy they put... Its a competitive mode... How on earth does it make senses that UC and Paragons are playing against each other in the same competition... u don't even have to be lvl 60 to be UC.. UC can be reached at lvl 40... and they are in the SAME COMPETITION as lvl 60s...How does it make senses that the game is catering better for people that haven't put the work... U can advocate towards the lower part all you want... I can advocate the top... The truth is it hurts the top a lot more than it hurts the bottom.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
People start with 0 Points, but you of all people should know the Points are correlated with the Tier you're in, and that ties directly to War Rating. Not only is this carried over, but Tiers 1-5 are frozen in the Off-Season. Half-loss for anyone else. I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top. We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
You should elaborate on this. Are you seriously suggesting every alliance's war tier should be set to 22 and rating to zero at the beginning of each season? And over a course of 12 wars everyone tries to climb back up? You would be able to precisely rank thousands of alliances based on 12 random matchups (out of the thousands of possibilities) each season? I'm probably mistaken, but that seems to be the implication of your statement.
I never said it was a conspiracy at all. I said that's the effect. You can't deny it. Look at the changes over time. Who do those changes benefit most and center around? Certainly not everyone. They benefit one demographic the most. The rest are an afterthought. Why else have a number of Players burned out and stopped caring? They're not getting anywhere for the amount of energy they put into it. It's no longer something that is worth the work. We can disagree until the cows come home. I know what it's become. I never made any conjecture about intentions or conspiracies. I can see it with my own eyes, regardless of why it is the way it is. I'm not one to be dramatic on here, so I say conservatively. The same will happen to BGs if they become the same way. So if the Players below the Top are of less consequence, then that's not a competition. That's placating.
Do you have any idea the ammount of work it takes for a f2p player to get to Paragon?.. You don't because u r not (by choice, I am not questioning your skills).. Do you have any idea how hard is to keep a fellow alliance mate motivated to play bgs for the alliance benefit (Event milestones) when they see post by UC and Cavs saying . "Fix matchmaking, I cant win 3 in a row in Platinum"... You said it yourself.. They are not getting anywhere for the ammount of energy they put... Its a competitive mode... How on earth does it make senses that UC and Paragons are playing against each other in the same competition... How does it make senses that the game is catering better for people that haven't put the work... U can advocate towards the lower part all you want... I can advocate the top... The truth is it hurts the top a lot more than it hurts the bottom.
That's the heart of the argument right there. There should be no "one is greater than the other". I never advocated for things to stay the same. I said both sides are equally valid. They're not "Accounts". They're living, breathing human beings. Playing the game just like anyone else. I don't want anyone to inherently struggle like that. I don't care what their Account looks like. My point is we all matter. No one's issues should be dismissed in this. People don't like being stuck fighting other people in their own range, fair. Imagine never getting anywhere at all, and being marginalized about it. That's not cool. My entire focus with this is to ensure their side is heard as well. Sorry if you disagree, but NO ONE'S experience and frustration playing this game is more important. There's enough room for everyone. Not "we matter and they don't".
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
People start with 0 Points, but you of all people should know the Points are correlated with the Tier you're in, and that ties directly to War Rating. Not only is this carried over, but Tiers 1-5 are frozen in the Off-Season. Half-loss for anyone else. I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top. We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
You should elaborate on this. Are you seriously suggesting every alliance's war tier should be set to 22 and rating to zero at the beginning of each season? And over a course of 12 wars everyone tries to climb back up? You would be able to precisely rank thousands of alliances based on 12 random matchups (out of the thousands of possibilities) each season? I'm probably mistaken, but that seems to be the implication of your statement.
No. I never said that at all. I'm outlining the problems that exist.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
People start with 0 Points, but you of all people should know the Points are correlated with the Tier you're in, and that ties directly to War Rating. Not only is this carried over, but Tiers 1-5 are frozen in the Off-Season. Half-loss for anyone else. I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top. We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
You should elaborate on this. Are you seriously suggesting every alliance's war tier should be set to 22 and rating to zero at the beginning of each season? And over a course of 12 wars everyone tries to climb back up? You would be able to precisely rank thousands of alliances based on 12 random matchups (out of the thousands of possibilities) each season? I'm probably mistaken, but that seems to be the implication of your statement.
No. I never said that at all. I'm outlining the problems that exist.
What problems are those. You say rank ups are homogenous, but didn't explain why or how. You said progress is impossible, again there is no why or how. Or that the problems are obvious or clear to you. Truly, it isn't obvious to me and as far as I can see to anyone else here.
Personally, I think the changes made to war recently (free revives) make the mode more fun and I don't think they were catering to the top. Even the rewards are pretty generous to progressing accounts. Again, it would be helpful if you elaborate on your statements. Otherwise, we will see another 10 pages of you roadblocking any progress in the discussion or the thread will get locked up. Neither of those are an ideal outcome.
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration. What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
I think you need to justify this statement. This statement specifically. Because you keep saying things like this, and when challenged you say all you meant was something else entirely. But to keep the thread on a reasonably constructive stance, I think saying things like this should make the poster accountable to those statements. Name these other systems where you have a seasonal competition and start players "further up" and describe in what way people "rank the same thing over and over." I don't even understand how staggered start affects rank up decisions at all. If I'm making rank up decisions for Battlegrounds specifically, what tier I start in seems to be a non-issue.
War.
1. Everyone starts with zero season points. No one starts at a higher progress tier in war. People keep their war ratings from the previous war, but that is not the same thing.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
People start with 0 Points, but you of all people should know the Points are correlated with the Tier you're in, and that ties directly to War Rating. Not only is this carried over, but Tiers 1-5 are frozen in the Off-Season. Half-loss for anyone else. I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top. We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
You should elaborate on this. Are you seriously suggesting every alliance's war tier should be set to 22 and rating to zero at the beginning of each season? And over a course of 12 wars everyone tries to climb back up? You would be able to precisely rank thousands of alliances based on 12 random matchups (out of the thousands of possibilities) each season? I'm probably mistaken, but that seems to be the implication of your statement.
No. I never said that at all. I'm outlining the problems that exist.
What problems are those. You say rank ups are homogenous, but didn't explain why or how. You said progress is impossible, again there is no why or how. Or that the problems are obvious or clear to you. Truly, it isn't obvious to me and as far as I can see to anyone else here.
Personally, I think the changes made to war recently (free revives) make the mode more fun and I don't think they were catering to the top. Even the rewards are pretty generous to progressing accounts. Again, it would be helpful if you elaborate on your statements. Otherwise, we will see another 10 pages of you roadblocking any progress in the discussion or the thread will get locked up. Neither of those are an ideal outcome.
For now, we can agree to disagree. If we start that conversation, it would go on for said 10 pages.
It's about all outlooks being valid. Not a Dr. Phil special.
Has the outlook you're representing been verified?
Are you looking for verification that some number of players support the outlook of "There's enough room for everyone. Not 'we matter and they don't'."? Or something else?
I am just one player, but I support that point by GroundedWisdom.
Though I can also understand if Kabam decides a course of action they feel maxmizes their goals, regardless if it matches up or not with how BG is marketed and described. Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp is not about either equality or equity across people, it's about profit with a facade of equality, equity, or anything else to fit the fantasy of the product.
I also think Kabam would be well served by clarifying what they mean by "competition". I think many players are confused if competition means: 1) a player's time and knowledge and skill 2) a player's roster and progression level 3) a player's spending and content completion 4) a player's spending 5) a player's recent spending
What exactly are the things/parameters players are supposed to be competing on in this mode? Which specific parameters should be dictating outcomes?
Also, if/when that is clarified, you will likely see some degree of backlash from those who are not getting their preferred parameters catered to.
I was looking for verification from uc players or those with lower accounts in general who feel like the game mode should have protections in place to make sure they don't face any accounts much stronger than them, while still giving access to the highest reward ranks.
I am Thronebreaker. Does my opinion count on that?
Usually Kabam sets the store values lower for different Progression levels. Which it did. But maybe you want Kabam to drop them more for non-Top Progression Tier accounts. And also, maybe you would prefer them dropping the tier rewards for VT and GC for non-Top Progression Tier accounts. All of that would be fine to discuss changing.
Or do you want to see higher progression (or higher performing the prior season) accounts getting byes and seeded starting at higher tiers? Or do you want to see higher progression (or higher performing the prior season) accounts given bonus coins for wins so they can progress faster (this for higher performers the prior season is what Hearthstone is currently doing in their sister version of the progression system)? Or do you want to see high progression accounts farming lower progression accounts? Or high progression accounts griefing lower progression accounts?
What about boosts? Who should decide if players can buy and use boosts in BG?
Do you want only modes in the game that reward more based on higher account progression?
What about modes that allow for higher leaderboard standing, or milestone completion? Should that be based on higher account progression too?
I am Plat I this season. Over my last 28 VT matches, 56.8% were with accounts ~above my level, 18.9% were with accounts ~at my level, and 24.3% were with accounts ~below my level (based crudely on the Star Level of the top 4 prestige Champs).
For those 28 matches I am: 39% winrate vs. above my level (21 matches) 42% winrate vs. at my level (7 matches) 89% winrate vs. below my level (9 matches)
The bigger account is like having a faster car and a shorter track... and better tires. Especially for matches between accounts with bigger progression disparity, it can become pretty silly how easier/harder it is to get through the fights.
I'm an old school tournament player in Street Fighter 2. And in that format I generally welcome any random matchup. Even bad character tier chart matchups. But the standard play formats for that game do not have not have account disparities: each character is the ~same for everyone. (NOTE: there are disparities regarding which side you start on in terms of if you prefer playing one direction or the other, and in the first version "World Warrior" only one of each character can be played)
For a mode like BG, in a game like MCOC, with account disparities, and the stated goal of "competitive play", you really have to define what that competitive play means. You need to manage player expectations. Otherwise you're gonna get a lot of frustrated players.
So with the season nearly over, I thought I would conduct an experiment. One of the presumptions that I think people make is that, separate from all other factors, at least roster matching can't be manipulated. Theoretically speaking, you can manipulate ELO - it happens in Alliance War, which is why top tier alliances are frozen in the off season. But surely, you can't manipulate your roster composition (except to rank up) so what's there to manipulate?
So here's what my record typically looks like:
Okay, not *that* bad, I typically average around 35-40% win rate, not the dismal 29% shown there . But I show this to show that up to two days ago things were still more or less like this: there was no dramatic shuffling in VT that would suddenly make my matches easier to win. And then I changed one thing. Something I've been thinking about for a while now.
That's a 78% win rate: fourteen wins four losses. Good enough to go from Gold 3 to Platinum 2 in eighteen matches over two days. If this was sustainable, this would easily be a GC-caliber record.
[Note: the times on some of the matches look out of order because the screen caps were taken at different times: the tier of the matches and the trophy count properly follows the match order.]
Is this just luck? Probably not. This is seven wins above par, which is highly unlikely to be due to chance. Nine of fourteen wins were 2-0 sweeps (one match is a 1-0 win, but they quit out of the second fight). What's going on, and what was the one thing I did?
I changed when I played.
Matching by roster has two structural issues. The first is that when the game can't find a match, it has to start looking at significantly lower rosters. The second is roster matching cannot respond to a player that is significantly stronger than their peers. In theory, if you want to screw with the match system, you just have to pick the right set of peers, and you can beat them up over and over again and the match system is powerless to stop you. It is the problem I point out with the current roster-based match system: it doesn't give advantages to low progress players or high progress players. It doesn't actually give out advantages at all. What it does is freezes the advantages that are there, and blindly refuses to consider the strength of the player.
I cannot just choose to play better. I cannot just choose to change my roster arbitrarily. But I *can* choose my competition. And I decided to put that theory to the test. This is not a super-high sigma test, meaning this would not be a statistically conclusive test. But the test got me Plat 2 rewards, so while it isn't statistically conclusive, I don't mind collecting rewards until either the system changes or I gather a statistically definitive set of data.
Is this an exploit? Well, first try and stop it. Are you going to force me to play at another time? And second, and most apropos for this thread: don't hate the player, hate the game. There are people who think the only people who are complaining about the system are people who can't win under it and are just unhappy about it. Well, apparently I can win under it. I'm doing so by specifically leveraging the properties of the system that some people keep trying to convince me are fair. Well, if it is fair, they won't mind me using those properties for a while.
This is such a dramatically effective strategy that I'm a complete idiot for even mentioning it. What I should do is just milk it for rewards until someone notices. It is completely contrary to my own self interest to either advocate for changing the system or explaining how I can take advantage of it if I so choose.
PS: I'm not helping anyone attempt this. Don't bother asking. I'll mention it, but I won't spell out precisely how to make it work. It isn't just a question of setting an alarm.
At the end of the day, I believe in the Scientific Method. I believe the true test of any theory is the degree to which it makes predictions consistent with reality. The ones that agree with reality are the correct ones, the ones that don't are the wrong ones, period. This is me betting on me being right. I mentioned a long ways up in the thread the game theory puzzle of cutting a cake fairly. The solution to the fair cut puzzle is for player one to cut the cake and player two to pick which half they want. Both players must believe the cake was split fairly. I believe the devs cut the cake unfairly. I can convince some people the cut is unfair. For the rest, I can simply pick the larger half and eat it in front of them and dare them to complain.
Not that yours doesn't count towards this discussion, of course. The last bit of your post was the important part I think, considering none of us really know the answer to what kind of competitive its supposed to be.
Yeah, it seems strange to have a mode that is heavily marketed as "competitive", but that the players still don't know what that's supposed to mean from Kabam.
You asked a lot of other questions in there, but I don't think you intended me or anyone to answer them all.
I was trying to clarify which forms of gameplay you are potentially lobbying for. And which might not be things you care about, or that you might be against.
The moral of the story is that I'm in the group that thinks that in a head to head like this, either everyone can potentially face anyone in a given match, or the groups should be separated one way or another. I also think that either roster needs to matter in a meaningful way, or it shouldnt matter at all.
It would be nice to get clarification from Kabam in terms of what they want. Including giving feedback on your paragraph there.
Personally, I don't think they really know what they want for parameters yet. Because they are less concerned with how, and more concerned with what they can get with regards to key outcomes for things like mode popularity, motivating to spend, keeping spending players happy, trying to deliver some form of "competitive" play, etc.
With regards to roster mattering, do you specifically mean a better roster account should always get a "better" advantage over an account with a weaker roster? And should that advantage be easier fights, better rewards, and/or something else?
It also probably boils down answering these three things: 1) is it required that lesser accounts accrue lesser rewards (for the same amount of effort) 2) is it required that lesser accounts have a harder time progressing -OR- lesser accounts must progress on a separate, lower tier track (for the same amount of effort) 3) is it required that greater accounts have the option to sandbag and farm lesser accounts
The point was that we shouldn't presume that features in other games like Hearthstone would automatically work here, not that they couldn't work here. In other words, for a feature there to be considered a potentially good feature here would take more evidence than just the fact that it works there.
Gotcha.
Just to clarify, I was only suggesting the consideration of Blizzard's Hearthstone's sister mode. As a possible source for concept review and exploration.
I think I do seem to have a lower bar with regards to what I would include to consider a potentially good feature. At least when pulling from comparable systems. I tend to incorporate more scope, including less orthodox data types, in my brainstorms than my peers.
Certainly MCOC borrows a lot from other games, sometimes deliberately (through inspiration) and sometimes coincidentally (through reinventing the wheel). Way back in 2017ish I made the observation that MCOC did not appear to be a fighting game per se, it was more of an embryonic MMO. Part of that might have been biases due to the fact that I had come from very deep MMO experience, but a lot of it came from having seen MMOs evolve from the ground up during the heyday of the MMO industry. And over the years, I've seen MCOC reinvent a lot of wheels. Some that I think are just game design tropes that are just floating around out there (but that MMOs iterated) and some that seem to be convergent evolution. I think I can safely say today that observation proved to be valid.
Yeah, MCOC seems like a collection game with mini-games attached.
But when we borrow, we have to borrow with caution. We still have to do the work to make sure the pieces fit together. When someone says "lets do this, it works there" there has to be more than that. We have to know why it works there, and what parts of it are specific to that game and what parts are generic enough for us to steal. So no question, something like HS is something we should look at, to get the benefit of other people's thinking. And certainly, while nothing there is guaranteed to work here, the fact that their system works somewhere is valuable information.
I worked briefly as a video game designer on an MMO. I am not trying in any way to suggest a strategy of patching to live, blindly grafted systems. Nor in promising fortune and glory to players regarding any theoretical bandaid.
Kabam developers in my experience are, for the most part, game players themselves. A lot of their game design idea come not from game design school, but rather their experience playing and otherwise interacting with games. I am pretty sure Hearthstone, as a game that has come up in conversation, is one of those things the dev team is aware of. But it and other games get filtered through their collective design sensibilities, sometimes in ways that make those ideas unrecognizable in the player-facing parts of the game.
Most devs I've worked with or know are very derivative based. They pull their work very or fairly literally from the sources that have influenced them. Often using one method exactly from a specific source. While I can do that, that is not my preference unless the task specifically asks for or benefits most from that most.
Comments
No one said you need to give them participation trophies just because you don't agree with keeping the highest Accounts from roadblocking them in Bronze 3. That's an exaggeration.
What I said was you can't have a Seasonal competition and start Players further up than others, and call it progress. The same thing happens in other systems and all you get is people Ranking the same thing over and over. Very little changes. It's a fishbowl.
If we were going to go that route, I'd rather see Players earn more Tokens in the VT, based on Titles. Limited only to the VT. Then even-keel in the GC. At least then they're still earning their own way out every Season, as opposed to starting Brackets ahead.
Do I think they should give everyone an even playing field? I'd love to see the results of that. I'd hate to be on the Forum that day.
Do I think Players should have an advantage for years of work? Sure. Do I think that makes them entitled to Matches that overpower Players beyond what they have a chance of competing with? Not on the principle of sport, no.
You can keep exaggerating my point, but I'm pretty sure I've made it countless times.
DNA and I both agree with the fact that something would have to intervene until the system reflects ELO results. That was always my main point. You can't throw Players in carte blanche without something giving it something to go on.
If you think this is just about giving people a cookie for playing, you're ignorant to the fact that they have the right to play the competition just like anyone else.
Sorry you think BGs are just for the "big boys". Perhaps they can design a Paragon MCOC, and graduate people to that.
2. Even if we were to concede that this is remotely the same situation, preserving war rating does not directly affect war rank up decisions, except insofar as a ratings reset *might* cause some alliances to stop ranking for defender altogether, as they wouldn't need to if they were no longer going to face comparable strength alliances in war seasons. They'd just be able to destroy most of the competition with the defense they had, which is the exact opposite of what you implied.
3. I don't think you understand war at all. Whatever your feelings about it, whatever you think people like or dislike about it, which are all subjective opinions, making the statement that ratings reset would somehow promote progress and prevent people from "ranking the same thing over and over" is so far outside the boundaries of reality it falls within the scope of "not even wrong." It is objectively inconsistent with reality. If this is how you believe war works, applying that flawed reasoning to Battlegrounds would result in wildly incorrect conclusions.
I'm struggling to come up with a wrong line of thought that arrives at this conclusion, much less a logically consistent one.
They have a right to compete, not to complain about not winning cause they are 2 vor 3 progression levels behind
I feel pretty good that has now been done. So I am good on my goal.
I am happy to provide various forms of input should anyone be interested, but otherwise I am content at this time to leave it here. I would be very interested to learn of any other sources that BG or Hearthstone's Ranked pulled from. If anyone has such information, please share it.
I like to study design, and such information would be very helpful to me to figure out and further study etymology of systems and how that plays into design process and outcome. So stuff like that is a gold mine for me. Yup. Time, use, and communication. I don't think that conclusion holds for me. At least not in full. I think we just have some difference of perspective.
I think the notion is very good. Of understanding that a thing is more than just its current axis coordinates. And this is also something that should be considered more often and by more groups. It's a keen observation. That the developed form of a system is often its history as much as its present (and other things besides). And likewise, the developed culture over time will contain different degrees of sophistication and relation to the product.
Also, tied to your observation of maturation over time, the community public knowledge, public tools, etc. also factor in. MCOC got much easier to play for a sizeable chunk of the community after auntm.ai was made public. And currently Battlegrounds tools are very poor. This is one of the driving reasons why Battlegrounds struggles... even though most players don't realize it (or at least don't voice it publicly).
But why I don't think it holds is to an extent tied to:
1) BG already has features it took HS Ranked years to implement
2) Many of the potential changes do not require years of play to acclimate to or appreciate
3) HS Ranked (at all iterations) is also built to be New Player Friendly, such that a new player can come in with 0 hours of history with HS and still acclimate quickly and well to it. Not even BGs tries to be New Player friendly (just new mode friendly).
A review of Hearthstone's Ranked's own history via Patch Notes. And the quick realization that many of the changes HS Ranked experienced have already been built or added into MCOC Battlegrounds already. Not requiring the years for players to acclimate to. And typically involving concepts that aren't especially requiring of sophistication to grasp.
But need breeds motivation to learn and motivation to accept changes as solutions (crisis economics, shock doctrine). So maybe by making Battlegrounds a pain point for players, it is also creating the ideal fertile landscape for the designers to implement changes to a receptive playerbase. Perhaps Kabam devs will use that crucible to fast track BG's evolution through the HS Ranked Patch Notes (or implement whatever schedule of system changes they choose). Leaves one scratching one's head: will we see this type of gameplay copy-and-pasted and showcased in its own game. Where it can be a "bigger game".
League Of Legends came from a Warcraft 3 mod. But Blizzard didn't respond in time to a breakthrough in their own game's ecosystem. Will Kabam be left in the cold if or when someone else creates a better BG mousetrap.
This ties somewhat into the etymology gold mine I mentioned earlier.
Most groups that develop something are too conflicted to harness it. It's why many star employees have to leave to get promoted. It's why places like Xerox's PARC had to have their ideas poached and developed by other companies. Game data can be a powerful tool to shape game design.
And user pools typically have a huge impact on matchmaking systems.
But I think the feature sets from HS Ranked's different Patches and overhauls could be isolated in singletons or groups, and tested inside BG via concepting or mockup. Or even just floated into the public discussion (or private dev discussion) as brainstorming or lobbying considerations.
The old HS Ranked added the feature of players starting each season higher up based on their performance in the last season. This is already in discussion in BG public brainstorming/lobbying. The current HS Ranked has instead a feature that gives players extra progression bonuses early on based on their performance in the last season. This also could easily enter BG public brainstorming/lobbying. Etc. As a side note, New Player Experience is frequently a cesspool for many games and many game developers. It's a cesspool for many governments as well.
It seems to be tied in large part to corruption. More so than its companion "incompetence". Gatekeepers of the system calibrating and re-calibrating the system to their own personal payoffs and biases. Those are all good points. And they are also things that I frequently do take into consideration.
I appreciate that HS and MCOC are not the same game. But they do share many roots, components, etc. And they definitely can borrow game feature concepts from one another... to review, consider, experiment with, test, etc. I don't know what your own experiences have been. But so far, for me, Kabam has been pretty accommodating to constructive posts that break ground (or retread ground) on ways to nurture and grow the game and community and Kabam.
I try to keep my content here on point to the game. Though sometimes I will make note of something else compelling in brief, typically just to acknowledge it before moving on. I appreciate that. And I appreciate you sharing your insights, review, review process, and wealth of knowledge.
Ultimately my goal with this topic is not to have me play a larger role toward "solving" BG. While that is attractive as a goal, I am far more (potentially) rewarded with the goal of seeing what Kabam, community, etc. come up with. I already can see what HS came/comes up with, I can already map out what I could come up with, but seeing what BG comes up with will be something different. Something novel, something I can learn differently from. I just wanted to make sure the BG think tank had HS Ranked as a source material they could optionally pull from.
Thanks for your post.
I respect you, I really do. Don't question my intelligence concerning War. It's no secret that it's centered around the Top Players. Progress is minimal if at all for anyone else, and there is very little movement from Season to Season because it's been made a monopoly. Players earn the same thing Season after Season because it's been designed to benefit those at the top.
We will debate this ad nauseum because you have invested a great deal of energy into it, but I'm not disillusioned about it. It is what it is, but I'm not pretending it's a game mode anyone can get any farther in unless they join the Holy Grail of Alliances.
Certainly MCOC borrows a lot from other games, sometimes deliberately (through inspiration) and sometimes coincidentally (through reinventing the wheel). Way back in 2017ish I made the observation that MCOC did not appear to be a fighting game per se, it was more of an embryonic MMO. Part of that might have been biases due to the fact that I had come from very deep MMO experience, but a lot of it came from having seen MMOs evolve from the ground up during the heyday of the MMO industry. And over the years, I've seen MCOC reinvent a lot of wheels. Some that I think are just game design tropes that are just floating around out there (but that MMOs iterated) and some that seem to be convergent evolution. I think I can safely say today that observation proved to be valid.
But when we borrow, we have to borrow with caution. We still have to do the work to make sure the pieces fit together. When someone says "lets do this, it works there" there has to be more than that. We have to know why it works there, and what parts of it are specific to that game and what parts are generic enough for us to steal. So no question, something like HS is something we should look at, to get the benefit of other people's thinking. And certainly, while nothing there is guaranteed to work here, the fact that their system works somewhere is valuable information.
Kabam developers in my experience are, for the most part, game players themselves. A lot of their game design idea come not from game design school, but rather their experience playing and otherwise interacting with games. I am pretty sure Hearthstone, as a game that has come up in conversation, is one of those things the dev team is aware of. But it and other games get filtered through their collective design sensibilities, sometimes in ways that make those ideas unrecognizable in the player-facing parts of the game.
The fact that you present this as some sort of conspiracy to keep the top at the top is why I say you don't understand war. You don't have the full story of how war is designed the way it is. You have a narrative in your head that you fit the data to. You believe a "fair" competition is one where everyone has a chance to be at the top, even though no competition works like this because the definition of competitions explicitly denies this. You have your own idea of this thing you call a "competition" that is not like any other competition on Earth, but insist on everyone else honoring. Thus you ascribe motivations to the designers of war that only make sense if you first assume that competitions are completely different things from what they are.
This sort of twisted understanding of why things are the way they are and why things work they way they work can be incredibly harmful. If we treat every design decision conspiratorially, we will penalize players in completely unnecessary ways because we ignore the benefits they will accrue and saddle them with hallucinatory penalties they wouldn't actually experience, or with entitlement ideas they think are reasonably achievable. That's a barrier to progress.
The goal of BG is ultimately to be a competition. A competition in the classical canonical sense. In a sense all competitions are about winners, because that's the intent of competitions: to find the strongest competitors. But that's neither here nor there. As I said originally, I asked you to justify the statement that preserving war rating between seasons causes rank ups to be homogenous. You've made no attempt to justify that statement.
We can disagree until the cows come home. I know what it's become. I never made any conjecture about intentions or conspiracies. I can see it with my own eyes, regardless of why it is the way it is.
I'm not one to be dramatic on here, so I say conservatively. The same will happen to BGs if they become the same way. So if the Players below the Top are of less consequence, then that's not a competition. That's placating.
You don't because u r not (by choice, I am not questioning your skills).. Do you have any idea how hard is to keep a fellow alliance mate motivated to play bgs for the alliance benefit (Event milestones) when they see post by UC and Cavs saying . "Fix matchmaking, I cant win 3 in a row in Platinum"...
You said it yourself.. They are not getting anywhere for the ammount of energy they put... Its a competitive mode... How on earth does it make senses that UC and Paragons are playing against each other in the same competition... u don't even have to be lvl 60 to be UC.. UC can be reached at lvl 40... and they are in the SAME COMPETITION as lvl 60s...How does it make senses that the game is catering better for people that haven't put the work...
U can advocate towards the lower part all you want... I can advocate the top... The truth is it hurts the top a lot more than it hurts the bottom.
There should be no "one is greater than the other". I never advocated for things to stay the same. I said both sides are equally valid.
They're not "Accounts". They're living, breathing human beings. Playing the game just like anyone else.
I don't want anyone to inherently struggle like that. I don't care what their Account looks like.
My point is we all matter. No one's issues should be dismissed in this. People don't like being stuck fighting other people in their own range, fair. Imagine never getting anywhere at all, and being marginalized about it. That's not cool.
My entire focus with this is to ensure their side is heard as well. Sorry if you disagree, but NO ONE'S experience and frustration playing this game is more important.
There's enough room for everyone. Not "we matter and they don't".
Personally, I think the changes made to war recently (free revives) make the mode more fun and I don't think they were catering to the top. Even the rewards are pretty generous to progressing accounts. Again, it would be helpful if you elaborate on your statements. Otherwise, we will see another 10 pages of you roadblocking any progress in the discussion or the thread will get locked up. Neither of those are an ideal outcome.
I am just one player, but I support that point by GroundedWisdom.
Though I can also understand if Kabam decides a course of action they feel maxmizes their goals, regardless if it matches up or not with how BG is marketed and described. Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp is not about either equality or equity across people, it's about profit with a facade of equality, equity, or anything else to fit the fantasy of the product.
I also think Kabam would be well served by clarifying what they mean by "competition". I think many players are confused if competition means:
1) a player's time and knowledge and skill
2) a player's roster and progression level
3) a player's spending and content completion
4) a player's spending
5) a player's recent spending
What exactly are the things/parameters players are supposed to be competing on in this mode? Which specific parameters should be dictating outcomes?
Also, if/when that is clarified, you will likely see some degree of backlash from those who are not getting their preferred parameters catered to.
Usually Kabam sets the store values lower for different Progression levels. Which it did. But maybe you want Kabam to drop them more for non-Top Progression Tier accounts. And also, maybe you would prefer them dropping the tier rewards for VT and GC for non-Top Progression Tier accounts. All of that would be fine to discuss changing.
Or do you want to see higher progression (or higher performing the prior season) accounts getting byes and seeded starting at higher tiers? Or do you want to see higher progression (or higher performing the prior season) accounts given bonus coins for wins so they can progress faster (this for higher performers the prior season is what Hearthstone is currently doing in their sister version of the progression system)? Or do you want to see high progression accounts farming lower progression accounts? Or high progression accounts griefing lower progression accounts?
What about boosts? Who should decide if players can buy and use boosts in BG?
Do you want only modes in the game that reward more based on higher account progression?
What about modes that allow for higher leaderboard standing, or milestone completion? Should that be based on higher account progression too?
I am Plat I this season. Over my last 28 VT matches, 56.8% were with accounts ~above my level, 18.9% were with accounts ~at my level, and 24.3% were with accounts ~below my level (based crudely on the Star Level of the top 4 prestige Champs).
For those 28 matches I am:
39% winrate vs. above my level (21 matches)
42% winrate vs. at my level (7 matches)
89% winrate vs. below my level (9 matches)
The bigger account is like having a faster car and a shorter track... and better tires. Especially for matches between accounts with bigger progression disparity, it can become pretty silly how easier/harder it is to get through the fights.
I'm an old school tournament player in Street Fighter 2. And in that format I generally welcome any random matchup. Even bad character tier chart matchups. But the standard play formats for that game do not have not have account disparities: each character is the ~same for everyone. (NOTE: there are disparities regarding which side you start on in terms of if you prefer playing one direction or the other, and in the first version "World Warrior" only one of each character can be played)
For a mode like BG, in a game like MCOC, with account disparities, and the stated goal of "competitive play", you really have to define what that competitive play means. You need to manage player expectations. Otherwise you're gonna get a lot of frustrated players.
So here's what my record typically looks like:
Okay, not *that* bad, I typically average around 35-40% win rate, not the dismal 29% shown there . But I show this to show that up to two days ago things were still more or less like this: there was no dramatic shuffling in VT that would suddenly make my matches easier to win. And then I changed one thing. Something I've been thinking about for a while now.
That's a 78% win rate: fourteen wins four losses. Good enough to go from Gold 3 to Platinum 2 in eighteen matches over two days. If this was sustainable, this would easily be a GC-caliber record.
[Note: the times on some of the matches look out of order because the screen caps were taken at different times: the tier of the matches and the trophy count properly follows the match order.]
Is this just luck? Probably not. This is seven wins above par, which is highly unlikely to be due to chance. Nine of fourteen wins were 2-0 sweeps (one match is a 1-0 win, but they quit out of the second fight). What's going on, and what was the one thing I did?
I changed when I played.
Matching by roster has two structural issues. The first is that when the game can't find a match, it has to start looking at significantly lower rosters. The second is roster matching cannot respond to a player that is significantly stronger than their peers. In theory, if you want to screw with the match system, you just have to pick the right set of peers, and you can beat them up over and over again and the match system is powerless to stop you. It is the problem I point out with the current roster-based match system: it doesn't give advantages to low progress players or high progress players. It doesn't actually give out advantages at all. What it does is freezes the advantages that are there, and blindly refuses to consider the strength of the player.
I cannot just choose to play better. I cannot just choose to change my roster arbitrarily. But I *can* choose my competition. And I decided to put that theory to the test. This is not a super-high sigma test, meaning this would not be a statistically conclusive test. But the test got me Plat 2 rewards, so while it isn't statistically conclusive, I don't mind collecting rewards until either the system changes or I gather a statistically definitive set of data.
Is this an exploit? Well, first try and stop it. Are you going to force me to play at another time? And second, and most apropos for this thread: don't hate the player, hate the game. There are people who think the only people who are complaining about the system are people who can't win under it and are just unhappy about it. Well, apparently I can win under it. I'm doing so by specifically leveraging the properties of the system that some people keep trying to convince me are fair. Well, if it is fair, they won't mind me using those properties for a while.
This is such a dramatically effective strategy that I'm a complete idiot for even mentioning it. What I should do is just milk it for rewards until someone notices. It is completely contrary to my own self interest to either advocate for changing the system or explaining how I can take advantage of it if I so choose.
PS: I'm not helping anyone attempt this. Don't bother asking. I'll mention it, but I won't spell out precisely how to make it work. It isn't just a question of setting an alarm.
At the end of the day, I believe in the Scientific Method. I believe the true test of any theory is the degree to which it makes predictions consistent with reality. The ones that agree with reality are the correct ones, the ones that don't are the wrong ones, period. This is me betting on me being right. I mentioned a long ways up in the thread the game theory puzzle of cutting a cake fairly. The solution to the fair cut puzzle is for player one to cut the cake and player two to pick which half they want. Both players must believe the cake was split fairly. I believe the devs cut the cake unfairly. I can convince some people the cut is unfair. For the rest, I can simply pick the larger half and eat it in front of them and dare them to complain.
Personally, I don't think they really know what they want for parameters yet. Because they are less concerned with how, and more concerned with what they can get with regards to key outcomes for things like mode popularity, motivating to spend, keeping spending players happy, trying to deliver some form of "competitive" play, etc.
With regards to roster mattering, do you specifically mean a better roster account should always get a "better" advantage over an account with a weaker roster? And should that advantage be easier fights, better rewards, and/or something else?
It also probably boils down answering these three things:
1) is it required that lesser accounts accrue lesser rewards (for the same amount of effort)
2) is it required that lesser accounts have a harder time progressing -OR- lesser accounts must progress on a separate, lower tier track (for the same amount of effort)
3) is it required that greater accounts have the option to sandbag and farm lesser accounts
Just to clarify, I was only suggesting the consideration of Blizzard's Hearthstone's sister mode. As a possible source for concept review and exploration.
I think I do seem to have a lower bar with regards to what I would include to consider a potentially good feature. At least when pulling from comparable systems. I tend to incorporate more scope, including less orthodox data types, in my brainstorms than my peers. Yeah, MCOC seems like a collection game with mini-games attached. I worked briefly as a video game designer on an MMO. I am not trying in any way to suggest a strategy of patching to live, blindly grafted systems. Nor in promising fortune and glory to players regarding any theoretical bandaid. Most devs I've worked with or know are very derivative based. They pull their work very or fairly literally from the sources that have influenced them. Often using one method exactly from a specific source. While I can do that, that is not my preference unless the task specifically asks for or benefits most from that most.