**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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- I agree that the alliance component of BG's need to be removed. It forces people to play which isn't a good thing. We see minimums and the constant messaging about it in LINE/Discord chats. If someone doesn't want to play a solo competitive mode, it shouldn't impact their place in their alliance. Leave alliance stuff to AQ and AW.
- Victory Track needs an overhaul, specifically the medal system. Do away with that and make a system that is based on number of wins in each level. They could even make a points a system where wins are 5 points and playing the mode gives you 1 and you need x number of points to reach the next level. That way, when a lower level account comes up against a bigger one, it becomes more of a learning experience than it does a punishment.
- With the last point in mind, they could also value wins against stronger opposition more than wins against lower tiers. Have a point multiplier based on battleground rating. This rating could be based on where you've finished in previous seasons. We have something like this in AW already. Additional points can be earned for GC wins to encourage progression from VT to GC.
- We need to have 2 BG's. One for accounts through TB and then another for Paragon and up. The gap in rosters is only going to widen when 8.4 drops. With every other solo game mode operating on progression tiers, BG's should be doing the same. Rewards can be centered around roster mats to get those lower accounts stronger. It can be an alternative to story content.
- I have said this in previous posts but having one meta for 4 weeks is a bummer. I hope they go back to the 2 meta system for the season.
- We need to have some sort of whitelist. What's the point of having the newer champs when they are always banned? Even when the opponent have them, they still ban them. We end up playing the same matches with the same matchups which makes for a not-so-fun experience.
I'll try to think of more but there's so much potential with BG's. I have gotten into the cycle of only playing when objectives reset. I do make it to GC every season (got there with 12 days remaining in the season this go round) and I was in Arcane I at the get go which isn't a good sign for participation this season.
I also think the fun factor is the issue for everyone outside the top tier of players.
In theory, everyone should naturally fall into the bracket they deserve to be in based on their roster/skill. In reality, with a limited pool of players, you can get lucky or unlucky with a string of matchmaking and move up a tier or two or get stuck for an extended period of time.
For BG purposes “stronger” means a combination of skill and roster.
In theory, stronger players will rise to the highest ranks and GC and that will allow reasonable competition in the lower brackets. In reality, people start grinding at different points in the season and the seeding system helps but still leads to strong accounts in lower brackets.
I’d like to see a casual mode with a solid matchmaking system. I know that’s what lower VT is but once you’re out of that, the fun can disappear after the 5th match in a row against a stacked roster.
We could have the competitive track for those that want to compete and be the best of the best and a casual track that people can play and expect a 50%ish win ratio all season long.
I don’t know how you keep casual/club league/amateur players interested when they could have to compete with olympians/world champions 5-10 matches in a row. That just isn’t fun in a game mode like this.
A casual mode with some reasonable participation rewards would let people fall back on something when they cap out in the competitive track and hit the point they are losing constantly. It would let them keep practicing and enjoying the mode to build their skills for the next season and maintain interest instead of them giving up on the mode all together.
If you are ok handing out 15K 7-star shares, 6-star AG and other things to UC players as rank rewards, then the economy argument doesn't hold in terms of giving the same players a few hundred shards a season. Rank rewards are not going to incentivise more play from lower progression players beyond a season or two. It will end up being dominated by modders and bots and real players will quickly realise it is one more futile effort where they are just treated as fodder to hand rewards to top end spenders.
This could also lead players who already play bgs to perhaps spend a little on the new materials, making roster progression slow slightly and make it easier to ‘punch up’ as a high tb against an average para, assuming the para spends on these mats and the tb does not. Any kind of tightening of the gap between accounts I feel would also help entice players into bgs.
Feel like you’re struggling? Don’t buy boosts (or similar) while others ahead of you do buy them and you will progress faster than you otherwise would relative to those around you.
I do not hoard EMs for future season, I'm left with ~3k marks at the end.
Solo Score have been consistent forever.
Stays in Mysterium.
Whatever the changes may be.
I don't see myself pushing much more than what I normally do. I don't get burnt out, I don't push much, I don't underscore either.
I get my required solo score during week 3 early week4. And I keep to energy after that.
Stay sane. The changes to milestones will only make me use EMs instead of energy.
I can guarantee that I probably play the same I do every season. I'm comfortably numbly satisfied where I'm at vs the sweaty pushers
So we all get the same tokens every 2 days, token based on our progression up the ladder, but a cav/TB player should get the same store as me, being Valiant?
Good way to completely shatter the game economy, and make the whole game way too easy for lower tier players is all that succeeds in doing.
Here Mr TB, here's some t6cc, t6b and t3a pretty cheap to r5 a bunch of champs to make it 150x easier to become paragon and Valiant.
Lmao
This is why I proposed nixing VT entirely in the other thread, and sticking with fairer ELO-based matchmaking mixed with a point system that rewards stronger players for facing stronger opponents, and included appropriate participation milestones along the way (some of which would be unreachable at low ELO ratings).
Because of how the rewards are currently set, Valiants can play every 48 hours and get all the wins needed to get into the GC, while hitting the objectives. The benefit of playing more matches, after getting all 4 objectives, does not outweigh the cost of playing. The most obvious solution would be to increase the solo/ally points earned in the GC as well as add additional GC-only objectives. That would give players a reason to push into the GC, opening up the top levels of the VT to lower players.
If anything this is only going to cause more complaints from lower progression titles, not to mention it won't really encourage Valiants to get to GC. I can guarantee you most of them would stay in the VT farming for points for the ranked rewards, it's already happened before it would probably happen again.
b) Kabam is absolutely HAPPY to dish out rewards. The question you should be asking is does less participation in battlegrounds affect the revenue Kabam gets from competitive players? Please allow me to quote your first paragraph because it is really eloquently put:
"I'm sure it is obvious to everyone playing BGs that participation is down, especially for lower progress players. This has made the competition skew higher, making progress more difficult for most players, and especially for lower progress players, even at lower VT tiers. And the more those players decide to opt out, the harder it becomes for those who remain, creating a positive reinforcement loop: the more players opt out, the more difficult and grindy it becomes, the more players are encouraged to opt out"
Now, what if the players who remain are the competitive monsters who have no problem spending cash on tokens, victory shields and shuffle signets? I'm sure you have already seen a piggy bank deal on these above items right now in the store. Mere coincidence? Lol
There is absolutely NO WAY, to make everyone happy on a PvP mode in a gacha game.
The thread is about how to improve BG participation. Mainly from smaller accounts. I'm telling you why they don't play the mode. Even OP agrees they aren't incentivised enough to play the mode. You can either chose to increase incentives or be comfortable with status quo (which is continued decline in participation).
None of this is a surprise, many of us predicted that BG participation from smaller accounts will go down in the current structure. Only times it improved were the two seasons where solo rewards were improved significantly.
There are only 2 ways to realistically drive participation up in a sustainable manner. Buff solo rewards a lot or reduce the gap between stores. Currently for smaller accounts, there is no progression to be had and the rewards are not worth it. Unattainable rank rewards are not going to change anything.
Heck, even real world businesses do not operate in that fashion. They do not simply directly alter the cost/benefit equation until they are equal in all cases, because they also do not operate in an world of infinite resources.
In the real world, and in game economy design, you have a resource budget. That budget is a bit more abstract and complex in game economy design than it is in most real world situations where the primary constraint is cold hard cash, but that's just a small detail. I don't know what that reward budget is specifically, but I can infer it from the game itself, which is generally operating at or near that budget. Whenever I propose a suggestion that uses rewards in any fashion, I try to do so with the minimum amount of reward increase possible, because every reward I include in a suggestion increases the probability that it will be seen as exceeding the reward budget of the game and be rejected instantly on that basis.
a) Do I think Kabam wants more participation? Actually, I don't know. I am hypothesizing that the problems many (but not all) players are facing are participation related, and increased participation would help alleviate them (I touch on that in the OP). I don't know that Kabam wants more participation directly, but I am reasonably certain that Kabam would like to address some of the problems players have been expressing in their own ways. Almost certainly any solution anyone comes up with will likely directly or indirectly act to increase overall participation.
[Incidentally, I should define "participation" here to refer to number of matches played per day, across all tiers, and across all eligible player populations. For reasons.]
b) Kabam is absolutely not happy to dish out rewards without good reason. See my previous post. In my opinion, my suggestion adds a relatively small amount of rewards to the system, compared to most other suggestions that propose adding rewards. Rank rewards are progressive, and thus are concentrated into a smaller subset of the players that qualify for them. They are therefore self-moderating, as I mention in the OP. Whether that is still too much or not is a judgment call, and one I am betting isn't budget-breaking. But I could be wrong, and I haven't specifically asked an economy designer that specific question.
It's also not just on the side of lower Players, although those are the ones who are dismissed more often. If Players higher up are trying and trying and getting nowhere, that's an issue just the same.
My concern right now is that Players have fallen into a habit of minimal effort, and that's affected everyone else. They put minimal effort in because it's worth more to do the Daily Objectives, accumulate Trophies, push at the last minute, and call it a day in Uru or higher.
Everyone else trying to advance is inevitably stopped up by this, and the system suffers. Which is why I think incentive for Players to make an effort to advance is the best approach.
Have any of Kabam's QOL changes or Rewards once participation has dropped, led to sustained increased participation in AW / AQ / Incursions? It will be interesting to see if the increased number of Valiants playing BGs due to the additions to the store, actually lead to significant sustained increases over seasons.
As an example, I have been out on AW for years, regardless of what changes Kabam makes. To begin with, I am not really aware of what 'new' rewards are available, or what changes Kabam has made. Kabam can announce what it is doing in in-game mail or forum posts regarding AW, and my eyes instantly glaze over and I just ignore it.
The separate but related issue is Kabam has now philosophically made the game a "this or that" game, instead of a 'do everything' game. Before, players could do everything, without drastically increasing the amount of time they spend on this game. In recent months, players now choose to do this or that, as there is an overabundance of content where your average player can't really do it all. As an example, I've dropped Incursions from my regular playtime so I can 'participate' in the avalanche of objectives in my queue. Kabam could choose to make BGs more enticing to increase participation there, but a lot of players will likely decrease their participation in another realm. [Of course, ultimately it depends if that is beneficial to Kabam if that is where more $$$ is made].
1. Ratcheting. Once you promote a tier, you cannot fall back down if you fall into a losing streak.
2. Acceleration. You get more medals for a win than you lose for a loss in early tiers. This is an advantage lower strength players get, but higher strength players almost never get (and do not deserve) because they start above the tier where this happens.
3. Strength matching. While it seems to be less effective in recent seasons, I tested with both a Cav alt and a UC alt, and there is still very strong protections for early low progress players in VT. You still match mostly with equal roster strength players. This encourages participation from the early to mid tiers of VT and shields *most* players from *most* wildly unbalanced match ups, allowing them to learn the mode without getting immediately killed.
None of these features can be placed in any conceivable iteration of the Gladiator Circuit.
Participation needs constant incentive as you are trying to encourage people to take the lumps… these are the players who are there for the rewards first and simply tolerate the competition. If the reward payout is infrequent you’ll likely lose their tolerance and attention.
1 & 2. If participation rewards were based on earning season points instead of graduating tiers, moving down wouldn't be so problematic.
3. With ELO based matchmaking, low accounts would have an even better chance at having matches at their own roster/skill level, and would generally always have a chance at winning. No more hitting a wall and having no fun / no motivation to continue.
The key is to make the point system incentivize facing larger accounts to earn more points, so that there's no advantage to artificially losing to lower your rating and get easy matchups. If playing against hard opponents earns you more points, then solo rewards can be structured in a way that Valients progress through them quickly and earn the best stuff, Cavs can't reach the top no matter how many matches they play, more talented players at each progression level earn more, etc.
People came in expecting A and now it’s À — similar, but not quite what people were expecting. I remember tossing my Torch on defense when my opponent had a Doom and Diablo as his only choices; that certainly isn’t a pleasant experience.
Between the horrible matchups people have to face (by design), wonky AIs that don’t always cooperate leading to even favorable matchups going sideways, and running into roadblock accounts that basically just win, and the odd match where it’s decided by horrible drafts… there isn’t one thing that’s really the problem IMO.
People were used to taking their time and planning their counters, they now have ~20 seconds to decide that now — add to this that each champ has varying animations that need to be memorized and a wall of text that needs to be looked through.. it does get challenging. A couple times I popped open aunts.ai on my tablet to look up a character’s immunities to double check. It’s like a new breed of genre — First Person RPG… all the stress and excitement of a first person shooter with the lengthy back stories of an RPG.
I wonder how the game would fare if you were able to collect 7* shards at uncollected; what incentive do you have to progress through story content? I already see a bunch of posts asking for Act 6 to be nerfed.
It is a drop in the bucket, but it is a drop that will (or rather could) ripple outward and touch a lot of parts of the mode. That doesn't mean it will then make all the problems in those parts of the mode go away. Rather, it will/would contribute to a set of solutions to those problems collectively.
They can get them now. My suggestion would simply limit the pool of players they would be competing against from everyone (now) to players at the same progression. But if a UC decides to go bananas and grind BG like there's no tomorrow now, they can get those rewards today.
Because the devs already allow everyone to get those rewards, I felt it would not be a deal breaker if those rewards were somewhat more achievable for a small number of players. That is, of course, a guess.