Battlegrounds is in Crisis
Disthene_T
Member Posts: 40 ★
TLDR - Participation is very low. I think we need participation incentives. Trophy Tokens for staying a full match.
It isn't really a new idea, complaints about BGs increase every month. Some of it is just standard complaints about not liking matchmaking or nodes being too frustrating. However at the center of it all, participation is tanking... and thats hurting everyone.
The graph above shows the points threshold for previous seasons on GC. Seasons 9 and 12 (if i recall correctly) had enhanced rewards in milestones that greatly encouraged participation. Cutoffs to get into Uru 2 were super high (150+ points). There were also an enormous number of people is Uru 3. In season 9 I ended with 17 points at rank 45501. I estimated there were in the ballpark of 70,000 people in GC that season. Season 12 was similar. It seemed like good reason to expand the amount of ranked positions so that we wouldn't see 75% of players getting consolation prizes.
Season 16 isn't over yet but as of today, GC has ~8400 players in it. There is no one in Uru 3 because Uru 2 isn't full yet. There are a few days left so I suspect quite a few will squeeze in last minute. Maybe push it to 12,000. Put this is a month with a special chase reward (Nightcrawler runestones). Interest should be much higher. The 7 star Nightcrawler event is about to become dead for a large amount of players.
Participation is hurt by:
1) Time/Effort/Reosurces IN VS Rewards OUT
2) Moral/Play Experience
Battleground rewards are good. As in, the store has a lot of great stuff to buy. There are 56,100 trophy tokens in Victory Track and up to 16,800 through objectives. What will it cost the average player to get that? If you have to start at Bronze 3, and somehow have a 50% win rate the whole time, the average number of fights to reach GC would be about 225. If you were in GC previous season, you can start in Plat 1 and cut that to 138 matches.
Do that with energy and those 138 matches with energy, and that's 2070 energy spent (Almost 30 energy refills, values at 1000 units). You can save energy with Elders marks, but the per/match cost is higher. Matches also last around 10 mins. Your 138 matches will take 23 hours over the month.
Point is, for "middle of the pack" players, it is a lot of work. The other thing is, these are percentile brackets. Where the middle is depends how many other players are present. Everytime the bottom 10% drop out of BGs (because the experience of losing 80% of matches is too frustrating) the middle moves higher up the ladder.
There is also no real incentive to move fast. Being in GC for weeks 1+2 has no advantage over getting there a few days before season ends (unless you want to climb the ranks). So many less competitive but still huge accounts are taking a leisurely stroll through VT... and then bottlenecking at the GC door. This bottleneck is creating a wall that is preventing even smaller paragon accounts from getting to the end of VT.
Solutions?
Participation rewards. I can't help but feel that BGs are a bit too brutal to losers. In AW a strong loss still gets you 50% of the loyalty prize. If you spend 15 energy and lose, in BGs, there's nothing. Yes there is the participation objective where you can just play 3 matches and get 600 trophy tokens... but thats not quite enough. Fight hard for half an hour, spend 45 energy, lose and come out with 600 tokens every other day. As a paragon that's enough for just under two 6 star sig stones. It is basically time better spent in arena.
How bad would it be if every match in VT, no matter outcome gave you a participation prize? The matches already cost energy/marks to play so you can't really exploit it too badly. Suppose matches in Bronze to Gold gave 50 each, Platinum to Vibrainium gave 100, and GC matches gave 200.
First, that creates an incentive to get to GC faster. Second, losing players can still accumulate something for their effort.
Obviously make it that you have to complete the match to get the tokens. We don't want a ton of loss farming by quitting a during draft. Another important note, it can't reward more tokens for winning because that would encourage farming of from big accounts in lower tiers.
Playing out the scenarios, it doesn't seem too bad. A player starts in Plat 1 plays 100 matches and nets an extra 10,000 tokens through the season. It's not game breaking. Still much less than what you get for starting in Plat 1. Even very big players, if they get a 75% win rate can get through VT is 50 matches (5,000 tokens) then play the rest in GC. Even if they play another 100 matches there, that is "only" another 20,000 tokens. Most importantly, The cavalier and thronebreaker players can get something out of their grind, even if they lose 80% of their matches.
In this proposed system, as a Paragon, I could grind 9 matches (over 2 hours) to buy 2000 6 star shards. Or maybe 1.25 T5B catalysts (worse time investment than getting 30 unit in arena milestones and buying it in rank up store). I've played 60 matches in Vibrainium 3 this season so far. 23 wins... and not much to show for it.
This is a rebalancing. Add some rewards to the losing side to reduce the string of defeat and encourage players to keep playing. The Battlground event is joke worthy. 300,000 points for 15,000 6 star shards is motivating no one. If you try to do it with energy, it takes 400 matches with 50% win rate. Even if you can whale, 67 Elders marks matches?
Summary
Fruitless participation of smaller accounts is leading to constant drop out of those players. It is shifting the pain of high loss rates to progressively higher accounts, stifling their participation too. We need a rewards bump for ALL Participants (not just winners) to keep people playing.
It isn't really a new idea, complaints about BGs increase every month. Some of it is just standard complaints about not liking matchmaking or nodes being too frustrating. However at the center of it all, participation is tanking... and thats hurting everyone.
The graph above shows the points threshold for previous seasons on GC. Seasons 9 and 12 (if i recall correctly) had enhanced rewards in milestones that greatly encouraged participation. Cutoffs to get into Uru 2 were super high (150+ points). There were also an enormous number of people is Uru 3. In season 9 I ended with 17 points at rank 45501. I estimated there were in the ballpark of 70,000 people in GC that season. Season 12 was similar. It seemed like good reason to expand the amount of ranked positions so that we wouldn't see 75% of players getting consolation prizes.
Season 16 isn't over yet but as of today, GC has ~8400 players in it. There is no one in Uru 3 because Uru 2 isn't full yet. There are a few days left so I suspect quite a few will squeeze in last minute. Maybe push it to 12,000. Put this is a month with a special chase reward (Nightcrawler runestones). Interest should be much higher. The 7 star Nightcrawler event is about to become dead for a large amount of players.
Participation is hurt by:
1) Time/Effort/Reosurces IN VS Rewards OUT
2) Moral/Play Experience
Battleground rewards are good. As in, the store has a lot of great stuff to buy. There are 56,100 trophy tokens in Victory Track and up to 16,800 through objectives. What will it cost the average player to get that? If you have to start at Bronze 3, and somehow have a 50% win rate the whole time, the average number of fights to reach GC would be about 225. If you were in GC previous season, you can start in Plat 1 and cut that to 138 matches.
Do that with energy and those 138 matches with energy, and that's 2070 energy spent (Almost 30 energy refills, values at 1000 units). You can save energy with Elders marks, but the per/match cost is higher. Matches also last around 10 mins. Your 138 matches will take 23 hours over the month.
Point is, for "middle of the pack" players, it is a lot of work. The other thing is, these are percentile brackets. Where the middle is depends how many other players are present. Everytime the bottom 10% drop out of BGs (because the experience of losing 80% of matches is too frustrating) the middle moves higher up the ladder.
There is also no real incentive to move fast. Being in GC for weeks 1+2 has no advantage over getting there a few days before season ends (unless you want to climb the ranks). So many less competitive but still huge accounts are taking a leisurely stroll through VT... and then bottlenecking at the GC door. This bottleneck is creating a wall that is preventing even smaller paragon accounts from getting to the end of VT.
Solutions?
Participation rewards. I can't help but feel that BGs are a bit too brutal to losers. In AW a strong loss still gets you 50% of the loyalty prize. If you spend 15 energy and lose, in BGs, there's nothing. Yes there is the participation objective where you can just play 3 matches and get 600 trophy tokens... but thats not quite enough. Fight hard for half an hour, spend 45 energy, lose and come out with 600 tokens every other day. As a paragon that's enough for just under two 6 star sig stones. It is basically time better spent in arena.
How bad would it be if every match in VT, no matter outcome gave you a participation prize? The matches already cost energy/marks to play so you can't really exploit it too badly. Suppose matches in Bronze to Gold gave 50 each, Platinum to Vibrainium gave 100, and GC matches gave 200.
First, that creates an incentive to get to GC faster. Second, losing players can still accumulate something for their effort.
Obviously make it that you have to complete the match to get the tokens. We don't want a ton of loss farming by quitting a during draft. Another important note, it can't reward more tokens for winning because that would encourage farming of from big accounts in lower tiers.
Playing out the scenarios, it doesn't seem too bad. A player starts in Plat 1 plays 100 matches and nets an extra 10,000 tokens through the season. It's not game breaking. Still much less than what you get for starting in Plat 1. Even very big players, if they get a 75% win rate can get through VT is 50 matches (5,000 tokens) then play the rest in GC. Even if they play another 100 matches there, that is "only" another 20,000 tokens. Most importantly, The cavalier and thronebreaker players can get something out of their grind, even if they lose 80% of their matches.
In this proposed system, as a Paragon, I could grind 9 matches (over 2 hours) to buy 2000 6 star shards. Or maybe 1.25 T5B catalysts (worse time investment than getting 30 unit in arena milestones and buying it in rank up store). I've played 60 matches in Vibrainium 3 this season so far. 23 wins... and not much to show for it.
This is a rebalancing. Add some rewards to the losing side to reduce the string of defeat and encourage players to keep playing. The Battlground event is joke worthy. 300,000 points for 15,000 6 star shards is motivating no one. If you try to do it with energy, it takes 400 matches with 50% win rate. Even if you can whale, 67 Elders marks matches?
Summary
Fruitless participation of smaller accounts is leading to constant drop out of those players. It is shifting the pain of high loss rates to progressively higher accounts, stifling their participation too. We need a rewards bump for ALL Participants (not just winners) to keep people playing.
50
Comments
I’m one necro path away from valiant and have a roster that can take most opposition but I lack the skill to ever get to the GC. I’d rather top out at vibranium whatever and focus time elsewhere in the game.
I really like BG, it's my favorite mode in the game. In fact, I just lost three matches in a row an hour or so ago - but I had lots of fun! Lovely opponents, lots of Captain America salutes all round. However, the progression can feel wearying at times, and I'd love to see the +2/-1 system at all pre-GC tiers.
Only reason it was so bad this month is because so many big rosters stopped playing bgs and dropped through the ranks, but then the runestones gave them something to play for again. And now everyone is here stuck inn vibranium since stringing together 5 wins in a row against these massive accounts is a high bar to reach.
My proposals: reduce vibranium to 3 or 4 wins each instead of 5. This reduces the clog in vibranium, which then relieves tension in diamond and platinum consequently.
Add a reward in direct relation to time spent in gc. Everyone has already suggested this it something similar to it. There’s no incentive to push to gc early which needs to be changed.
Lastly, change seeding slightly. I don’t see how both celestial and uru players starting in plat 1 is fair to either of them. The lower tier gc players have to wait for the higher tier players to move back into gc so that they can as well, which means the players lower than them have to wait for them to move out of vibranium, and the cycle continues.
Have everyone quantum and higher start in v3, and everyone arcane and below start in p1 as usual. Or you can separate it even further with mysterium+ in v3, arcane - quantum in p1, and uru - gamma in p2. Either one works imo, we just need more separation.
But with the design of "unavoidable damage", "undexable specials", it's just not fun.
So the people that used to play just do the bare minimum now. And the ones that did the minimum before, now just don't play.
Hoping next seasons reward changes are actually worth something.
Won the first fight. Finished the second fight first. Sitting there waiting for opponent to finish fight as the counter times down. With about 10 seconds left results flash that opponent wins.
Ok fine even though I never saw results because it’s immediately goes to fight 3 screen. At which point I have 2 solid defenders and one offensive champ left. My offensive champ is automatically chosen as my defender before I can make a move and I’m left with no options to fight with.
I understand there’s lot of complexities to making this game run smoothly but, this type of nonsense makes you want to abandon the mode completely.
I think there should be more for a win otherwise people can just let the game play and lose for rewards, idk 25 for a completed loss and 50 for a win but have that tripled GC so bug accounts want to be in it.
Only issue I see is Kabam will the devalue the store so you can't buy as much or make everything cost more since we could have endless ammount of trophy tokens
250 per league = 4.5k shards in total if you make it to Celestial 1. I don't see how this could be broken or make Titan crystals irrelevant.
The past two seasons have seen GC fill up pretty late. The BGs cash piggy bank offer appears to be an implicit acknowledgment that the mode as structured leaves a lot to be desired (although I doubt it will be said in those words).
Many of the recent competitive metas (AW/BGs) seem to be either dialed up to high pain or dialed down to nuke-ville. I’d love some freshness and new ideas that require strategy and tradeoffs, not just an AI-dependent fast draw contest.
Dr. Zola
That and rewards aren't worth time invested.
They are hitting monetization goals with it apparently, that’s all that matters.
Summoners that have 2 points and resign on ban phase to continue on same level
Tiktok really did a number
This really happens on BG.
But you must be Paragon
I see...