Battlegrounds has the most potential but......

New players have to spend a lot of time or a lot of money just to be competitive in battlegrounds if not they are just stuck at Diamond

The barrier to entry is really high for new players to get 30 champions for a competitive deck

Unlike other games where you can jump straight into the action, first you need to be uncollected den form a deck of 30 champions

Would battlegrounds fare better as a stand alone app for Kabam?

Would a stand alone new app attract millions more players than the current MCOC?

Kabam can just monetize by selling champions in the new app, no stars no ranks just selling a champion that can be used immediately

Once you have hundreds of millions of players, you can have E sports style competition with prize money for competitive players, sponsors will be willing to come onboard when the audience is hundreds of millions

If not just create a casual league for players within MCOC?

Which is a better direction for battlegrounds in the future?

Comments

JESUSCHRIST

There's only a small number of competitive players in battlegrounds currently if you just count the number of players in GC

The captive audience for battlegrounds is limited by the number of players playing MCOC

This limits the rewards for the top players, look at celestial rewards, totally unattractive

The celestial players are just competing for fame, there's no real rewards for them

When they do youtube livestream, only a few hundreds are watching, they can't earn real money from such a small audience

JESUSCHRIST

I'm reminded of how counterstrike used to be a mod in the original game half life and Dota used to be a mod within Warcraft

Both were developed into independent games and are now popular genres for E sports competitions

There are billions of audiences and players for both games

There is millions in prize money for the top players

Everyone wins when there is economics of scale with billions of people watching and playing

Friendly001

TLDR?

ahmynuts

You're not disproving my claim from that other post

JESUSCHRIST

TLDR?

Make battlegrounds as a stand alone game

Ourobøros

Every time a read a new post of yours I get speechless....

WednesdayLength

New players shouldn't be focusing on an endgame competitive mode, problem solved

JESUSCHRIST

It's really up to Kabam how they want to carry on with the game

There's only around 1 million players in the entire playerbase

Around 40,000 players should be valiant by now

Probably around 20,000+ players make it to GC every season

MCOC youtubers don't get a lot of audience for their videos bcos there's only this much players playing actively

Ayden_noah1

Why should new players be able to compete with players that have been around for awhile. New accounts need to learn some skills to become better and build their champion base before trying hard game mode. Are you mad that new players can't do AW showcase or Necropolis either. I'm confuse as to why you think new players should be able to do end game content of the bat. This is some crazy post. There are plenty of games modes for new players to develop their skills and roster before jumping into BG. You need to learn to crawl and walk before you try out for the Olympics.

FeydRautha

Modes like Battlegrounds incentivize players to keep growing their roster. If a player can't even assemble a roster of 30 strong champions then bgs shouldn't be their focus anyway.

WednesdayLength

It's really up to Kabam how they want to carry on with the game

There's only around 1 million players in the entire playerbase

Around 40,000 players should be valiant by now

Probably around 20,000+ players make it to GC every season

MCOC youtubers don't get a lot of audience for their videos bcos there's only this much players playing actively

It sounds

It's really up to Kabam how they want to carry on with the game

There's only around 1 million players in the entire playerbase

Around 40,000 players should be valiant by now

Probably around 20,000+ players make it to GC every season

MCOC youtubers don't get a lot of audience for their videos bcos there's only this much players playing actively

like kabam have decided what they want battlegrounds to be pretty clearly, you're just upset that you aren't considered in that.

Also that's a lot of statistics without any actual source?

Ironwarrior

I mean you're right about the diamond road block but bgs IS the "e sport" of mcoc, idk why you're acting like new players hoard towards bgs like it's essential to play mcoc

Herbal_Taxman

OP, I think this is a really interesting thought experiment. Would BGs be more successful as a standalone game outside the MCOC ecosystem? It’s a good question, one that’s actually much more relevant to Kabam than to current McOC players like us who are fully invested in the current game.

I’m sure Kabam has one eye on Rivals, wondering “How can we get in on something like that?” My son is 16. He messed around with MCOC at one point in the past few years, but the long on ramp and general complexity turned him off. Rivals is another story. That has completely taken over his little gaming community.

JESUSCHRIST

I'm a valiant and currently in GC

I already have the champions to be competitive but I realised that I don't have any motivation to push beyond daily objectives bcos the rewards in celestial aren't worth the effort

I see the top players pushing either bcos they are youtubers and they want to livestream something interesting or they are pushing for the fame and title and bragging rights

The rewards they get in even Celestial 1 isn't attractive enough for them to further improve their deck or even open a new titan crystal

JESUSCHRIST

I'm wondering if battlegrounds has more potential beyond MCOC if you have a global competition with example USD$100,000 prize money for the top player

You need sponsors to provide the prize money and so you need a bigger audience and more eyeballs on the competition

If battlegrounds is a stand alone game and you let players compete on an even footing based on their skills, would more players want to play battlegrounds than what we have today?

A new player joining MCOC today would take a lot of money or a lot of time to reach my level today, essentially a high barrier to entry so what we have today is the small number of players playing in battlegrounds

You are not going to attract millions of players to play battlegrounds if they have to go through such a long journey just to play battlegrounds, they would just go straight to Marvel Rivals for instant action

Demonzfyre

TLDR?

BGs should have "fair matchmaking" is what Ike assuming. I stopped after "new players".

Asher1_1

If u start learning boxing u won't just go & participate in a real tournament where many people participate will u ??

PT_99

Idek how to make fun of you anymore, you do it yourself.

Wicket329

There are a couple of pretty fundamental misunderstandings in your argument here, first and foremost of which is that gacha games aren’t esports. Just at a core level, these are contradictory things. What makes esport style games so interesting is their accessibility, the idea that anybody can pick up the game and, with enough time and skill, become competitive at it.

That’s not what gacha games are. Gacha games sell power, something antithetical to a good esport. Think about how much people hate on professional sports teams that are seen as buying championships. Now imagine if that were how the entire league operated. Nobody would want to watch that, it’s why all those sports leagues implemented things like salary caps.

Battlegrounds appeals to the players that it does because it is one of the few places in the game that allows players to flex the extent of their rosters. Endgame players enjoy the fact that decks are 30 champions deep. That’s part of the draw of the mode. It, along with pick/ban, drafts, and the gacha nature of MCOC, is what allows diversity in deck creation rather than a stagnant meta.

Comparing Battlegrounds to Marvel Rivals is not a good comparison. These are wildly different styles of games, you really can’t draw a line between them other than the fact that they both have the word “Marvel” in the title. MCOC could be better compared to like Tekken or Mortal Kombat, which do have competitive scenes, but they are also not free to play or live-service, and so don’t need to be constantly selling something.

This isn’t all to say that there isn’t some bit of useful thought in your suggestion, but it definitely requires more thought. It would require an entirely different monetization style than MCOC has, and honestly I don’t know that Battlegrounds (in its current iteration) is viable as a standalone product. I think it only works in the greater context of MCOC.

As a side note, your sense of scale in this post is way off. The most popular games in the world don’t have audiences of over a billion people, let alone multiple billions, that’s an insane number. As of August, 2024, Minecraft held the #1 spot for highest concurrent player count at 11.9 million, which is an incredible number. Most games that are considered very successful have a concurrent player count in the hundreds of thousands range. As of late 2023, Fortnite had 350 million downloads over its life, although this should not be confused with active players counts. If any game ever hit a billion active players, it would be a cultural and economic force that overtook entire social media platforms.

JESUSCHRIST

So firstly let me say what I observed

Players compete in every monthly season and asking for better rewards from battlegrounds and Kabam said "No"

Den I saw ground up grassroots organised tournament among the top players, they gathered together a small monetary prize money and they carried out the tournament using the friendly matches function

They screenshot the results to a group chat that organised the tournament so they know who won and who lost and those who won proceed forward to the next round, quarter final, semi final, final

The winner gets the small monetary prize money

So maybe there's a great desire for bigger prize money and a Kabam sanctioned tournament that is on livestream maybe on twitch with live commentators

I would love to watch the top players compete live

Currently youtubers live stream their own battlegrounds matches and I always watch but the matchmaking takes a long time at the celestial level so it gets boring waiting for the matchmaking

JESUSCHRIST

And I would like to watch both sides fight at the same time, screen by screen

The technology needed is possible for Kabam to create, essentially a spectator mode so Kabam can livestream on twitch

Frumpy_geezer

So firstly let me say what I observed

Players compete in every monthly season and asking for better rewards from battlegrounds and Kabam said "No"

Den I saw ground up grassroots organised tournament among the top players, they gathered together a small monetary prize money and they carried out the tournament using the friendly matches function

They screenshot the results to a group chat that organised the tournament so they know who won and who lost and those who won proceed forward to the next round, quarter final, semi final, final

The winner gets the small monetary prize money

So maybe there's a great desire for bigger prize money and a Kabam sanctioned tournament that is on livestream maybe on twitch with live commentators

I would love to watch the top players compete live

Currently youtubers live stream their own battlegrounds matches and I always watch but the matchmaking takes a long time at the celestial level so it gets boring waiting for the matchmaking

You should just gather some resources and do this yourself. Host a tournament with the "Friendly Matchmaking" so that it's not random and score the points with a calculator (you'll have to wait until the social bug is fixed though) and gather whoever wants to come and compete (make them pay an entry fee) and give out a prize.

*NOTE: you might want to make sure there isn't anything illegal about this but I don't see why it would be. Kabam would get free promotion and no work would be needed from them. And it's a "Friendly" tournament so it wouldn't affect anything in game.

JackTheSnack

Skill issue

I did like the BGs realm event though…and meta that season