Battlegrounds Objectives Scoring

Account: kmac_jr

I just noticed this morning that using the exit button on a finished BG match does not grant points to solo or alliance BG objectives under the criteria of "finish a match using elder marks". I assume that's intentional as a lazy form of anti-cheating.

I have put in so much effort this season and I have been put in match after match that I stand a very slim chance of winning due to roster disparity and I have fought through them regardless. The results were in. They POSTed to the Kabam servers. I know this because the game can still display in my match history that the other person won 2 rounds. After I realized this morning that despite finishing the match, I didn't get my "finish a match using elder marks" points because I didn't sit through the unnecessary animations once the match was over.

So this morning, I decided to do some testing to see just what does tally points on the objectives. First, I put in all 1* and 2* champs on my deck to speed up the rounds since I was likely going to lose anyways. Got into a match, died immediately, the other person got a kill immediately, the match ended in no time, and I brushed my teeth while the end-of-match animations played -- that did give me points towards the solo event. So then, I switched out for 4* champs still with no chance to win to see if it would create a slight time buffer to subvert any kind of time-based cheating detection. The match still gave me points, but the game did get caught in a "lost connection" loop for a little bit in the second round. Then, I did a 3rd match and tried to keep my hands off of it entirely. With an outmatched deck, I started the match, threw the phone on the bed, and ironed my pants while the timer did all the work. It still gave me points.

I half expect the response from Kabam to be "You're cheating, we're banning the account." The things that I did I've seen others do at various levels of BGs and didn't know what I was seeing. But now I know why people are engaged in the first pick or so then it just seems like they go AFK. Frankly, if I were to just leave my 6* champs in place and do exactly what was described above, I would be better off than I have been playing BGs seriously and skipping those animations. If I had to guess, I'd say I've missed out on over 50,000 solo and alliance objective rewards points because I don't want to sit through all of the animations you all put into the game.

Right now, there is probably somewhere between 30 - 60 seconds per BG match of poorly utilized time. It would take 100 wins, 200 losses, or some mix in between with Elder Marks to hit full solo objectives. That means on average, your max players are spending around 2 hours per month on the screens where the win/loss banners are displayed or where their little Aegon tokens are tallied on top of somewhere around 15 - 16 hours playing just battlegrounds. This game has Battlegrounds, Incursions, Alliance War, Alliance Quest, story mode, monthly event quest, monthly side quest, back issues, ROL/LOL/AOL, Gauntlet, EOP, Shooting Stars, and 3 arenas (did I miss anything?). I know you understand that the time thing is a problem. That's why beta options were added to skip SP3 animations and quest dialogue for finished quests. I say again, I know the results of matches I quit out of POSTed to the servers because the results are still available after the fight.

It is bad game design and it is bad quality assurance. Game design that emphasizes removing as many barriers between player and play is the most effective form of game design. It's why games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat don't have "you lost that round" animations between every round and why games like Limbo and Super Meat Boy set you right back to the beginning of the map when you die rather than asking if you want to continue or playing some kind of animation. It gives the player the sovereignty to make a choice when they want to stop playing and assumes that until that choice is made they would prefer to be playing.

Punishing players for administrative error is bad game design. No one should have to sit through all of that end-of-match nonsense to get points for something they legitimately participated in. If that is a requirement, remove the button once one player wins two rounds. Players shouldn't be punished because you have not implemented a more clever form of scorekeeping or anti-cheating.

Awarding players that do the things that I tested this morning is bad QA. There is an obvious exploit and the broad brush approach to "solving" it is lazy and ineffective. There are a number of things you can do to stop it. You use PI in incursions as an entry gate to certain levels. You can use input detection. There's a good chance that if someone didn't pick their defender, didn't pick their attacker, didn't click "I'm ready", and didn't throw a single attack during a match they aren't playing at all.

It's obvious that there's not much in the way of human capital management analysis in terms of players' time of play, amount of content, and mode-to-mode economy. We are getting pockets of improvement while some aspects of the game are gathering dust - limited XP in monthlies, anyone? - and then modes that just received revamped get quickly shoved behind the next mode to be "improved". I started playing this game on my main account when it was still an unknown quantity and I couldn't be sure that it wasn't just a way to load malware on my phone. I'm embarrassed to say, but, I've probably spent nearly $10,000 on this game over that time across a couple of accounts. Just putting it very frankly, the game has gotten WAY too big and every part of it is suffering as a result. You need to narrow the content, including probably outright dropping modes and consolidating rewards, and revisit the question "what exactly do we want this game to be?" It's better to do one or two things well than 10 things poorly. You have one of the most profitable pieces of intellectual property available to you and this game continues to have commercial success despite itself. Imagine if it were a polished and well-rounded game that gave players a chance to use their favorite champs and said champs were actually viable.

TL;DR: I could rant about this all day, but I digress. I just want my BG points for matches that had clear outcomes that I quit out of before the banner ceremony to let me know for a second time, and Aegon token screen to let me know for a third time that I lost. Take those screens out and just get to the point, please.