Why battlegrounds is still unpopular in one photo

This happens every season, push up to somewhere around diamond 1/2, then get matched against accounts with double the team rating as me, all R5 sig 200 champs with 4/5 R3 7*s mixed in.

The majority of summoners have this same experience, the matchmaking is straight up unbalanced, close games barely exist and as a result people don’t bother playing any more.

My plan now is to wait 2/3 weeks until all the better players end up in GC, then play at the end of the season when most of my matchups will be significantly worse than me. I do this because it’s the only way for me to make progress into vibranium, it works pretty well every season, and I know that all it does is make the problem worse, but what will you have me do? Not play at all, miss out on the great rewards?

When battlegrounds first came out this was a huge problem, and it’s been mitigated by introducing 2 points for a win 1 lost below plat, and seeding everyone at the start of the season. But these changes have no impact on plat, diamond, and vibranium, and we are really feeling it.

Battlegrounds is meant to be competitive and reward the biggest and highest skilled players for being the best. But summoner interest in the game mode falls season on season and the number of games people are playing per season is reducing. Simply introducing the 2/1 point mechanic into the whole of the victory track will see a huge increase in people playing and caring again about battlegrounds. It would allow kabam to put chase rewards (deathless champ pieces for example) in the highest ranks of VT again, and generally open up the game mode to those who don’t have hours a day to grind in the hopes of getting 4K tokens.

GC shouldnt be changed, the ranked system there should be competitive, and people should start to face bottlenecks there in accordance to their roster size and skill, but locking people in the victory track when clearly the intention is that the GC is where real tactical skilled gameplay is most rewarded.

Comments

xNig

VT (up to Plat 2-3) is Kabam’s way of putting participation trophies for players.

A_Fungi

While yours is better worded than most people who complain about matchmaking... your basis is still wrong

BringPopcorn

The bottleneck is at Plat2...sorry not GC rewards

PT_99

Congratulations, you have reached your LIMIT.
Now you have 3 options, that's right 3.

1. Improve your roaster by Necro 100% Act-8 100% or money
2. Improve your skill by understanding meta and imitating the plays of MSD and Beroman in BG.
3. Keep making forum posts.

But I agree about 2/1 tokens, at least till Vibranium, that'll solve many complain threads.

laserjohn26

The majority of summoners have this same experience, the matchmaking is straight up unbalanced, close games barely exist and as a result people don’t bother playing any more.

This is just mathematically false. At most 50% do. For every unskilled player blaming everyone and everything but their own abilities there is someone playing you just smiling and going through the motions because they don't have to try very hard to beat you.

ItsClobberinTime

Maybe if you stopped playing 30 matches a day and stuck to playing 3-4 for the objectives you wouldn't be having this problem.
You realize if matchmaking was "fair" you would already be in GC while the whales are stuck down here fighting each other? How is that fair? Lol why does a smaller account deserve a free pass to GC?
It's barely week one and you're already on Diamond 2, chill out 💀

DawsMan

Get two wins, victory shield, rank up

Marcus_TBD

As someone who normally gets out of victory track day 1-2 i feel what most players dont realize is since everyone who finishes GC is reset at plat 1 your not only facing randoms you're facing top players. If the game team decided to make it so if you finish M3 or higher you start in diamond 1 or vibranium it would allow for people to somewhat face equAL Matches. another benefit would be making it so that people who finish in lower teirs wouldnt struggle as much and by the time they got to diamond 1 the good players would already be fighting in gc

xLunatiXx

Didn't lose once this season.
Yes I'm valiant, but I'm f2p so there are much much bigger fish out there.
I play only my 3 win per cycle, exception today cause there was no arena. So I'm only diamond 1.
This is no brag post. But accountability doesn't exist in MCOC apparently. Improve your roster and skill it's that simple.
You said it yourself it's a competition. You only showed 3 losses in a row. Which isn't much. You expect to win all your games for free?
They should start a whining competition, some would definitely be up there.

Demonzfyre

So the problem with BGs is that it's a competition?

Trek26

This happens every season, push up to somewhere around diamond 1/2, then get matched against accounts with double the team rating as me

Don't worry, in a couple of days I'll catch up to you if you keep slipping like this and you'll be mad at my R3s and R5 ascended 😂 don't worry though, I'm just a 5mil f2p account in diamond 4 that just plays for the tokens every two days.

FlyingThursdays

I’m lower level account but I only lost 3 time

Ourobøros

So the problem with BGs is that it's a competition?

Is that because THEY lose than is a problem for everyone.... Sigh

EdisonLaw

@Charliejiggens is that you?

Ourobøros

So the problem with BGs is that it's a competition?
Is that because THEY lose than is a problem for everyone.... Sigh

*then*
Damn it.

DNA3000

Battlegrounds is meant to be competitive and reward the biggest and highest skilled players for being the best. But summoner interest in the game mode falls season on season and the number of games people are playing per season is reducing.

Actually, that does not appear to be true. Based on my analysis of solo leaderboards, a similar number of players are still playing Battlegrounds. And based on my analysis of the GC leaderboard, while the number of players that are getting into GC is much lower than it was at the peak (when Kabam added the extra milestones) it is not too far below the overall average discounting those two seasons.

What does seem to be true is that in general, players are playing fewer matches on average over the entire season, and those matches have been shifted towards the end of the season.

I believe any changes Kabam contemplates to VT should focus on enhancing incentives to participate earlier, and in a more sustained fashion. But radically changing VT at the expense of eliminating the actual competitive elements of it would cause more damage to the mode than it would be worth in the long run. You could argue those milestone boosts to rewards in two seasons did more damage than good, as it created artificially high expectations and created burnout, and the fall out from those two things caused participation density to drop in a reinforcing way.

Simply introducing the 2/1 point mechanic into the whole of the victory track will see a huge increase in people playing and caring again about battlegrounds. It would allow kabam to put chase rewards (deathless champ pieces for example) in the highest ranks of VT again, and generally open up the game mode to those who don’t have hours a day to grind in the hopes of getting 4K tokens.

What would that accomplish? That's a rhetorical question. The objective of such a scoring system would be to allow you to get to GC much easier. That's it. So why do you think Kabam only instituted it in the lower VT tiers? Because it would allow you to get to GC much easier.

If the only way to make BG popular is to allow everyone to get into GC easier, there's no point in it existing at all. It should exist for the players who actually want to compete, who are not only willing to win, but also willing to lose. If the problem to you is progress must be guaranteed, if failure is only for other people, then either the mode is not for you, or it was a mistake to introduce it in the first place. And of the two possibilities, I'm inclined to believe it is the former, because the players who are willing to expose themselves to a real competition deserve the mode whether the people who can't accept it are willing to accept it or not.

I'm not saying VT is perfect. I myself have ideas about it that differ from what Kabam has implemented. But the standard for judging it cannot be "I'm not winning often enough." If that's the standard, its hopeless. There's no way to make a real competition where everyone gets to decide what they deserve to get from their effort.

YASHNP

It blows my mind that people will be against fair matchmaking in a PvP mode. Every competitive PvP game has it. They have casual lobbies too where ranks don't matter but the competitive scene will always have fair matchmaking.
Someone literally said its unfair for whales to fight each other and be stuck in VT while smaller accounts can get to GC. Ofcourse whales have to fight each other to prove their 'skills'. A player with max 3*s rightfully deserves to be in GC if he defeats every player whos fighting with max 3*s. Skills would be decided by your competition not your roster size.
A player with big roster shouldn't get a free pass to the higher ranks. It should be a cutthroat competition to prove your skills since the first fight of the season. It is one mode where pay2win model wouldn't be able to interfere with the fun but kabam did manage to make it just that "bigger roster deserves better rewards".
I have not seen a single well put logic to not have fair matchmaking at every level. I don't spend a lot of time here. You can tag the threads where you read one.

YASHNP

A csgo analogy.
Virtus pro and Nip ruled the csgo scene for years but got absolutely destroyed by teens in the later stage of their career. Those teens where better at the games in every sense even though had played it for far lesser time. They had spent less time at each map still had better understanding of it. There aim was better than them but that could be the age. Their coordination was better and more.
If my fellow commenters where at the place of virtus pro or NiP what would they have done? Complained to valve to not allow them to enter the major competition as they have not spent enough time on the game.

We as a community took 4-5 years to learn how to reparry even though it existed since the beginning. A new comer whos interested in the game can learn it the first day. This game is not that difficult to learn. Everyone you're calling out for "skill issue" might beat you if both have the same roster.
Peace

xNig

Except this game maintains itself, at least partially, on people acquiring and ranking up champions.

RicoShay

It's a competitive mode. In order to be competitive you need to have both skill and roster. Heaven forbid it if a new uncollected player could push in Bg's because it'd be fair for them to go against other small accounts . Same applies to War. As the season progresses the distribution of players evens out and then by end of season you are where you are meant to be.

WinterFields

It blows my mind that people will be against fair matchmaking in a PvP mode. Every competitive PvP game has it. They have casual lobbies too where ranks don't matter but the competitive scene will always have fair matchmaking.
Someone literally said its unfair for whales to fight each other and be stuck in VT while smaller accounts can get to GC. Ofcourse whales have to fight each other to prove their 'skills'. A player with max 3*s rightfully deserves to be in GC if he defeats every player whos fighting with max 3*s. Skills would be decided by your competition not your roster size.
A player with big roster shouldn't get a free pass to the higher ranks. It should be a cutthroat competition to prove your skills since the first fight of the season. It is one mode where pay2win model wouldn't be able to interfere with the fun but kabam did manage to make it just that "bigger roster deserves better rewards".
I have not seen a single well put logic to not have fair matchmaking at every level. I don't spend a lot of time here. You can tag the threads where you read one.

Except that there is a noticeable difference in Cav-v-Cav with smaller rosters than Paragon+ with the latest and greatest.

In past seasons where matchmaking was different, I had also used a smaller Alt for fun. My experience (and other people's too based on forum posts at the time) was that my smaller account had a significantly easier time moving up the tiers.

When smaller accounts face off, they don't have to deal with having the most optimal counters; often times having more knowledge (like not using Nimrod on Bishop) was enough to win. At higher levels, I'm facing more people who know the intricacies of what works or not.