Progression levels are not an indication of skill level...

First off, I'll start this off by saying this - I suck at this game.

Now, there's a lot of problems with the game that exacerbates that fact like frame perfect AI reaction at 60fps, and the fact that players in the top alliances are given a leg up in every other mode, the players that are top players in BGs are given a leg up in every other mode, and that those players are often the same players meaning they will always have bigger rosters at higher sigs than the average player let alone players such as myself.

Kabam has created the nine progression levels as a way to separate the player base both for content and sales. But I stand here today to say that progression levels aren't an indicator of skill level. They are an indicator of interest in the game and perserverance. Most of my alliance mates remember me spending over 10K units to get pass the Grandmaster to get Thronebreaker. Paragon was some what better but it still cost me about 4K units at the final fight. Valiant was a bit better at around 2K units. All of those units spent were after completely emptying my stash of revives and health pots both in my inventory and overflow.

I'm a Valiant player. If just being a Valiant player meant that I should do well in BGs then I would. However, I regularly go 15 to 20 losses in a row. It took me over 300 revives and countless health pots to do two lanes in Necropolis. I regularly get stopped at level 5 or 6 in Incursions even after watching all the latest "ZOMG! Do this for instant clear on Saga Incursions!!!!!!"

There's nearly 300 champs in the game now and I don't remember how to fight each one nor do I remember what each node does when combined with a specific champ. And Kabam doesn't help with that since their descriptions aren't always the most clear.

So why am I posting this? Because I'm tired of seeing posts from @Kabam Crashed, and others, that use the progression title as an assumption of what level of skill you should be considered. @Metalsonicdude and I are both Valiant players, I am no where near the same skill level as him (and how boring would that be, I often feel sorry for the lack of challenge in the game for players at his level). Kabam needs to determine a better method of deciding how hard a piece of content is and we need need ELO for AW and BGs. The current ranking system for AW keeps good alliances down. Without ELO in BGs, Kabam will continue to force BGs to be a niche mode no matter how much streams and Kabam Crashed wants it to be THE mode.

If games with PvP and ELO, I've always done well and by playing people at my initial skill level, I've consistently moved up the ranks throughout the years. Just putting me, as a Valiant player with no R4s and still needing to use 6-stars on my roster, in a game with an opponent that has 4 R4s and 26 R3s, all awakened and usually at a fairly high sig, doesn't teach me anything at all, especially if I don't have champs that work well in the meta for the season.

We may both be Valiant level progression, but we're not the same skill level. Kabam needs to acknowledge that fact and stop using progression as a stand-in for skill level.

Comments

PT_99

Then what should they use instead of progression?
Word of mouth?

Pikolu

Is this just a convoluted BG matchmaking complaint post?

If so, then matchmaking is random. If you were an Uncollected player at that same spot you are in BGs and did matchmaking at the same time, you would match the exact same opponent with all their r4s.

willrun4adonut

I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure ELO is used in GC, or will be soon per Kabam Crashed 's message.

And if you want ELO in VT, well, you just need to get gud.

Gamer

First off, I'll start this off by saying this - I suck at this game.

Now, there's a lot of problems with the game that exacerbates that fact like frame perfect AI reaction at 60fps, and the fact that players in the top alliances are given a leg up in every other mode, the players that are top players in BGs are given a leg up in every other mode, and that those players are often the same players meaning they will always have bigger rosters at higher sigs than the average player let alone players such as myself.

Kabam has created the nine progression levels as a way to separate the player base both for content and sales. But I stand here today to say that progression levels aren't an indicator of skill level. They are an indicator of interest in the game and perserverance. Most of my alliance mates remember me spending over 10K units to get pass the Grandmaster to get Thronebreaker. Paragon was some what better but it still cost me about 4K units at the final fight. Valiant was a bit better at around 2K units. All of those units spent were after completely emptying my stash of revives and health pots both in my inventory and overflow.

I'm a Valiant player. If just being a Valiant player meant that I should do well in BGs then I would. However, I regularly go 15 to 20 losses in a row. It took me over 300 revives and countless health pots to do two lanes in Necropolis. I regularly get stopped at level 5 or 6 in Incursions even after watching all the latest "ZOMG! Do this for instant clear on Saga Incursions!!!!!!"

There's nearly 300 champs in the game now and I don't remember how to fight each one nor do I remember what each node does when combined with a specific champ. And Kabam doesn't help with that since their descriptions aren't always the most clear.

So why am I posting this? Because I'm tired of seeing posts from @Kabam Crashed, and others, that use the progression title as an assumption of what level of skill you should be considered. @Metalsonicdude and I are both Valiant players, I am no where near the same skill level as him (and how boring would that be, I often feel sorry for the lack of challenge in the game for players at his level). Kabam needs to determine a better method of deciding how hard a piece of content is and we need need ELO for AW and BGs. The current ranking system for AW keeps good alliances down. Without ELO in BGs, Kabam will continue to force BGs to be a niche mode no matter how much streams and Kabam Crashed wants it to be THE mode.

If games with PvP and ELO, I've always done well and by playing people at my initial skill level, I've consistently moved up the ranks throughout the years. Just putting me, as a Valiant player with no R4s and still needing to use 6-stars on my roster, in a game with an opponent that has 4 R4s and 26 R3s, all awakened and usually at a fairly high sig, doesn't teach me anything at all, especially if I don't have champs that work well in the meta for the season.

We may both be Valiant level progression, but we're not the same skill level. Kabam needs to acknowledge that fact and stop using progression as a stand-in for skill level.

You. Said it yourself you now good don’t mean you can’t get valaint without work you did do the work but you also spent so much more one do.

DNA3000

So why am I posting this? Because I'm tired of seeing posts from @Kabam Crashed, and others, that use the progression title as an assumption of what level of skill you should be considered.

No one does that. I have no idea what gave you that impression.

we need need ELO for AW and BGs.

I’ll ask them to get started on that right away. Oh look, it’s done, congratulations, BG and AW now have ELO ratings. You’re welcome.

Kerneas

The incursions part is just nonsense. Incursions are meant to be tried over and over again, because they are random and the chances of unbeatable node+champ combo are fairly high

Yaga

I actually like Incursions and how it's set up. It can get frustrating but you get that one run that everything falls in place and it is really enjoyable.

Yaga

So why am I posting this? Because I'm tired of seeing posts from @Kabam Crashed, and others, that use the progression title as an assumption of what level of skill you should be considered.
No one does that. I have no idea what gave you that impression.

Maybe because quite a few people do that and say it all the time.
we need need ELO for AW and BGs.
I’ll ask them to get started on that right away. Oh look, it’s done, congratulations, BG and AW now have ELO ratings. You’re welcome.

Thanks! You're a true gem.

TyEdge

So why am I posting this? Because I'm tired of seeing posts from @Kabam Crashed, and others, that use the progression title as an assumption of what level of skill you should be considered.
No one does that. I have no idea what gave you that impression.
we need need ELO for AW and BGs.
I’ll ask them to get started on that right away. Oh look, it’s done, congratulations, BG and AW now have ELO ratings. You’re welcome.

If BG and AW have ELO ratings, why is it that when I lose, they’re always bringing me down, despite my instructions to the contrary?

(For anyone under age 45, don’t bother responding. This isn’t for you).

Yaga

Bad prompt engineering?

But you and DNA have made it clear that I should have chosen my words more carefully. I mean a lifetime or at least multi-season ELO rating combined with a current season one.

Just an opinion but most players don't like playing too far above or below themselves. With a combined ELO system, the top players wouldn't just feast on the bottom-feeders either by forfeit of 2 match win with 100% while their opponent leaves 100% health on the defender, especially in the beginning of the season.

Back to my premise, having a longer than single season ranking, knowing what that number/rank is along with your seasonal rank and being matched closer to your long-term ranking might help the mode. It might not. But knowing what your rank and your opponents rank at the beginning of a match might encourage people with less developed rosters decide to stay in a match.

klobberintyme

So why am I posting this? Because I'm tired of seeing posts from @Kabam Crashed, and others, that use the progression title as an assumption of what level of skill you should be considered.
No one does that. I have no idea what gave you that impression.
we need need ELO for AW and BGs.
I’ll ask them to get started on that right away. Oh look, it’s done, congratulations, BG and AW now have ELO ratings. You’re welcome.
If BG and AW have ELO ratings, why is it that when I lose, they’re always bringing me down, despite my instructions to the contrary?

(For anyone under age 45, don’t bother responding. This isn’t for you).

Elo:

ELO:

Ehlo:

JESUSCHRIST

Progression tiers are an indicator of progression

GC tiers are an indicator of skills

Halley

I think Progression tiers indicate that players have decent rosters, and maybe a bit active in story events, not relate to skill much

Jaffa_

That’s a lot of words just to say you have skill issues

Abspain101

I took the red pill and saw through this post instead of seeing the girl in the red dress ie post i saw it for what is really is skill issue skill issue lol

out999

The only thing they work on is new promotions, the rest they don't even touch. And don't believe they're going to do anything, this company isn't worth its spit.

altavista

Progression level is used for the general difficulty for Content; Progression levels are not used for Competitive modes.

In terms of Content, I'm not sure what your point is. Valiant EQ was created for Valiant level rosters, regardless of skill level. That is why the design of it is "one champion, that you can use once the entire quest". It doesn't matter whether you are skilled or not. Every other difficult content aimed at Valiant players can be completed either through 100% skill or a mix of revives and units. And then the rewards are designed to feel rewarding to Valiant level rosters - rank up materials and champions that a Valiant player would want.

Sure, Kabam could design "Half-Valiant" content with "Half the Valiant rewards", but then Kabam would theoretically have to do that for every progression level (Half Uncollected difficulty with half the Uncollected rewards). There will always be players below the average roster (and skill level) of whatever demarcation you use.

In terms of Competitive modes, sure something like ELO could be implemented. But your overarching complaint about Progression levels intersecting with Skill and with Competitive modes, doesn't apply.

Furrymoosen

The only thing they work on is new promotions, the rest they don't even touch. And don't believe they're going to do anything, this company isn't worth its spit.

Yet you seem to think they're worth yours.
Maybe just go and find better things to do with your life and let people that enjoy a game enjoy it.

laserjohn26

There is really no difficult content anymore. Considering the champ pools at the time the content was released, Act 6 was more difficult in its original form than Necroplis.

Now i believe you can just pay for rankups on holiday deals and get progression progress while doing little to no actual in game content.

BigBlueMadness11

This is just a prime example that we are behind on progression titles. All valiant accounts are not created equal and it's time for a new harder to reach title. I want to see a progression title that requires 100% exploration of all story content. That is so much harder and so much more work than completion.

Qwerty12345

With AW... we have war rating... the more you win in war, the higher ranked alliances you face. Roster size / even skill level doesn't directly matter (but sure helps to win at least in old maps). War ratings do not reset every season /its been like 6 years since they last "cut everyone in half to condense them".

AQ... the higher your progression, the more points you get... again, its not tier based. Again, they do not reset every month / closest thing is when new prestige champ comes out.

BGs... should be tied to your BG ranking. Not the ranking of your deck, your roster, or how far you got in story mode. There are too many strategies to manipulate things.

Not resetting people every season would go a ways to fixing it (although I guess people could tank one season to make the next season earlier... it would be a much bigger "investment" than just burning some energy.

DNA3000

Bad prompt engineering?

But you and DNA have made it clear that I should have chosen my words more carefully. I mean a lifetime or at least multi-season ELO rating combined with a current season one.

Just an opinion but most players don't like playing too far above or below themselves. With a combined ELO system, the top players wouldn't just feast on the bottom-feeders either by forfeit of 2 match win with 100% while their opponent leaves 100% health on the defender, especially in the beginning of the season.

Back to my premise, having a longer than single season ranking, knowing what that number/rank is along with your seasonal rank and being matched closer to your long-term ranking might help the mode. It might not. But knowing what your rank and your opponents rank at the beginning of a match might encourage people with less developed rosters decide to stay in a match.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they were looking at such a thing, but the reason why it doesn’t exist is due to the desire at the beginning of time to have a way to encourage participation in the mode.

If all we cared about was pure participation, we could do two things. One: get rid of VT completely. Two: force everyone to play the same number of matches every season. We could then hand out rewards at the end of every season that would be consistent with season final placement, everyone would earn those spots, and everyone would match against comparably rated opponents.

Practical problems immediately arise. If you don’t force everyone to play the same number of matches, players can just park in a spot in GC and get free rewards every season for little or no effort. Any “must play at least X matches” rule would either be too low to matter, or so high were back to mandatory match counts.

The majority of players are not going to be strong enough to be competitive for higher tier rewards. They’d either get little or nothing for participating, or we have to set the lowest tier rewards high enough that once again players would be able to park and get them for free.

The compromises built into the mode create the VT which has ratcheting (you can’t go down) to give lower players a participation path that generates rewards at least as much for effort as skill. The ratcheting mandates resets to prevent parking. It also becomes the qualifier for GC, which essentially also mandates ratings resets (well, technically it doesn’t do that, but it’s much simpler that way).

I know Kabam is looking at ways to improve the structure of BG, and that may involve changes to VT and GC (they have hinted at ratings decay, which might be an eventual gateway to persistent ratings). It these kinds of changes are not trivial to make because they are inextricably linked to both the participation attractiveness of the mode and the rewards structure. Any change to either the match making system or the ladder structure would have to factor in the impact on how rewards are distributed, and the degree to which it might make the mode more or less hostile to other players. Yes, people do complain about the “unfair” match making, but that doesn’t mean it can’t get much worse. When matchmaking was more “fair” it was also generating such absurd results in GC it threatened to completely trivialize, and in a real sense destroy, the game mode.

When people start saying “if you want to participate in BG don’t rank your champs too high” that’s much, much worse. Not just to BG, but to the entire game.

Rebark

In the past, they were an indicator, but many people fell behind because act 6 was extremely difficult.

It turns out that almost half of the people got stuck there.

Even after two or three nerfs, today, act 6 is still the hardest, by a lot, when you compare the evolution curve.

Doing an act 6 with 6 star champions is harder than doing an act 8 with 6 star champions.

That changed and progression started to be linked through rankups, from that moment on it stopped being about skill indicator and started being just about progression.

Yaga

Bad prompt engineering?

But you and DNA have made it clear that I should have chosen my words more carefully. I mean a lifetime or at least multi-season ELO rating combined with a current season one.

Just an opinion but most players don't like playing too far above or below themselves. With a combined ELO system, the top players wouldn't just feast on the bottom-feeders either by forfeit of 2 match win with 100% while their opponent leaves 100% health on the defender, especially in the beginning of the season.

Back to my premise, having a longer than single season ranking, knowing what that number/rank is along with your seasonal rank and being matched closer to your long-term ranking might help the mode. It might not. But knowing what your rank and your opponents rank at the beginning of a match might encourage people with less developed rosters decide to stay in a match.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they were looking at such a thing, but the reason why it doesn’t exist is due to the desire at the beginning of time to have a way to encourage participation in the mode.

.......

When people start saying “if you want to participate in BG don’t rank your champs too high” that’s much, much worse. Not just to BG, but to the entire game.

All great points DNA, and I definitely agree with your last statement.