The Problem With Compensation and It's Solution
Werewrym
Member Posts: 2,830 ★★★★★
Yes I know what you are going to say... "Another compensation thread?!?!" Well yes and no, my goal here isn't to suggest what we get from compensation or to argue about what is too much or too little. I just want to point out why the way we get compensated for issues with the game is not a great method and also a bit inconsistent with what Kabam has told us.
There is quite a large gaping hole when it comes to the current method of compensation... That hole is the fact that there is no way you can compensate everyone when you put everyone into the same group and toss some rewards at them. In fact I think this is probably one of the worst ways to provide compensation after some of the issues that we have had to put up with for basically the entire past month. The big issue here is that we may be given 2500 5* shards to "make up for what we missed", but the truth is that this only appropriately compensates a very small chunk of users in the game. And then on the flip side of the coin you have all of the users who have either received far more than they missed out on or far less than they missed out on.
It is absolutely not reasonable to think that a level 40 player would have been able to acquire the same amount of 5* shards as a level 60 player. We have heard numerous times from Kabam Mike that the goal of compensation is to make up to summoners what they missed out on during down time/unplayable game. But it is quite obvious that this compensation goal is only being met for a small group of summoners. What about everyone else who missed out on multiple 5* crystals? How is this compensation fair if the goal of it was to compensate for what was missed? And on the other hand, how can it be justifiable to give 1/4 of a 5* crystal to summoners who have yet to obtain their first 4*? There is no way that 2500 5* shards is what they missed out on.
I hope that you can all see why this is a big problem with the current method of compensation. What really baffles me though is why Kabam has not found a better way to provide compensation. If they are truly attempting to appropriately compensate every summoner then I think that the current method needs to change. There is an extremely easy solution to this! Prestige. We have the prestige system in the game and it is perfect for determining what level of play that every summoner is currently at, so why not use it to better approximate the losses of all summoners?
Now I know nothing is perfect, and I realize that there is no way to meet the losses of all summoners on an individual basis, but this would be a huge step in the right direction. Instead of one generic package there might be 10 different packages that are distributed based on a players prestige. It would require a little bit more work for Kabam to put together this many compensation packages, but I would think that it would be well worth the time to make sure that all players are being appropriately compensated for their losses. After all, is that not the goal of compensation?
This method of compensation has even been used before around 12.0. Not specifically based on prestige, but there was a way to split summoners into categories in order to determine what compensation package they would receive. I say, do it it again for 19.0. It is not only fair, but it is the right thing to do based on everything we have been told about how these compensation packages work.
What are your thoughts on compensation and how it is achieved? Is it done right? How could it be improved? Is a prestige based compensation method better than what we have currently?
There is quite a large gaping hole when it comes to the current method of compensation... That hole is the fact that there is no way you can compensate everyone when you put everyone into the same group and toss some rewards at them. In fact I think this is probably one of the worst ways to provide compensation after some of the issues that we have had to put up with for basically the entire past month. The big issue here is that we may be given 2500 5* shards to "make up for what we missed", but the truth is that this only appropriately compensates a very small chunk of users in the game. And then on the flip side of the coin you have all of the users who have either received far more than they missed out on or far less than they missed out on.
It is absolutely not reasonable to think that a level 40 player would have been able to acquire the same amount of 5* shards as a level 60 player. We have heard numerous times from Kabam Mike that the goal of compensation is to make up to summoners what they missed out on during down time/unplayable game. But it is quite obvious that this compensation goal is only being met for a small group of summoners. What about everyone else who missed out on multiple 5* crystals? How is this compensation fair if the goal of it was to compensate for what was missed? And on the other hand, how can it be justifiable to give 1/4 of a 5* crystal to summoners who have yet to obtain their first 4*? There is no way that 2500 5* shards is what they missed out on.
I hope that you can all see why this is a big problem with the current method of compensation. What really baffles me though is why Kabam has not found a better way to provide compensation. If they are truly attempting to appropriately compensate every summoner then I think that the current method needs to change. There is an extremely easy solution to this! Prestige. We have the prestige system in the game and it is perfect for determining what level of play that every summoner is currently at, so why not use it to better approximate the losses of all summoners?
Now I know nothing is perfect, and I realize that there is no way to meet the losses of all summoners on an individual basis, but this would be a huge step in the right direction. Instead of one generic package there might be 10 different packages that are distributed based on a players prestige. It would require a little bit more work for Kabam to put together this many compensation packages, but I would think that it would be well worth the time to make sure that all players are being appropriately compensated for their losses. After all, is that not the goal of compensation?
This method of compensation has even been used before around 12.0. Not specifically based on prestige, but there was a way to split summoners into categories in order to determine what compensation package they would receive. I say, do it it again for 19.0. It is not only fair, but it is the right thing to do based on everything we have been told about how these compensation packages work.
What are your thoughts on compensation and how it is achieved? Is it done right? How could it be improved? Is a prestige based compensation method better than what we have currently?
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Comments
There are lots of people that have sold off champs, and their prestige is low. How is that fair to them?
There is no simple answer here, it would most likely have to be a new way to calculate what level people are really at.
Granted you have a point, but I don't think people are selling off their top prestige champs. Most people have 5* in their top prestige and you can't even sell them, so I don't think selling champs would be the specific issue here. The bigger issue I see is that you may not have chosen to rank your top prestige champs and instead gone for unduped champs that are better. Which in the end might not be a major issue anyway if a prestige based compensation method was in place.
In a perfect world, I would hope they do away with compensation packages altogether, and focus that time and resource to expediantly fix the issues that plague the game.
The following is an example to "paint a picture" of why I think this way.
So you were playing and experienced a bug or glitch that interfered with your game session and found that it has been widespread and acknoweleged by Kabam. Advisory message sent to all players BOTH in game and the forums regarding the bug, followed by scheduled "check ins" to update us on the process and ETA of a fix.
Said bug is identified and tested to have been removed from the game within 2 to 4 weeks along with an apology statement with a couple token energy refills. Would this situation cause you to demand compensation packages?
How about Kabams historical trend of acknowledging the bug and having it continue to plague the game with no updates or dialogue with us players on a fix for months on end during which time, other bugs pop up addressed with the the same protocol?
Lets not forget all the while "new and exciting content" is being pushed with time limits for completion.
Prestige is only the average rating of your top 5 champs without masteries....selling champs shouldn't have an effect unless you are making some strange decisions. (I think you were thinking of the general player rating)
Prestige is the average rating of your top 5 champions.
Yes that would be the ideal situation, however, it doesn't seem to work that way in this game. I doubt the same people that work on compensation packages are the ones that work on fixing all of the problems. Ideally the updates would have less bugs, but that is a hard feat to accomplish it seems.
-Suits
I'd argue that there's a good chance that their prestige is low BECAUSE they've sold off champs. Selling champs is short-sighted and ultimately stunts progression, but it's a choice a player can make. But I'm not sure we should bend over backwards to make things easier for people who have willfully made poor in-game decisions.
Well it was based on your total champion rating, so not quite prestige based. I remember this because I missed the cutoff for a 5* awakening gem by less than 1k rating.
Honestly that would probably work better than prestige
Yup true.
Quite a few people I knew that missed that one. Myself included.
And while mildly infuriating to be off by barely anything, I did get that some sort of cutoff needs to be placed and will always make x% of people angry or sad or disappointed.
Total rating would be the wrong metric.
Prestige would be the correct metric, and as it should be, base rating as source, not inflated rating due to masteries. Base rating of top 5 champs. That would take the wind out of sails of anyone really, since it’s based on the 5 champs you deemed worthy to be your top 5.
Or you could factor in masteries, because it’s not like pi increasing masteries (suicides) are cheap. There’s a certain amount of progression required to even have a shot at it.
The problem with that is that some people may have suicides unlocked but don't use them due to the fact that they make war defenders easy. Suicides increase your PI by quite a lot, so it is a much more reliable system to go off of the base rating of your top 5 champs.
Artificially boosted rating (however done) shouldn’t be factored in.
It would also complicate the calculations of prestige per user. Having just the names, ranks and dupe levels of t champs keeps it relatively simple to do large scale calculations on who gets what.
Incorrect. It was based on player rating which isn't the same thing as prestige at all.
A decent starting point, but what about players who had atypical play during the measurement period? Assume they were on vacation, or changed jobs or took time off from their alliance—and came back to 19.0.
They did a similar thing recently with an AQ glitch where they gave players the prizes they would have received the from running AQ previous week—problem was, when Player A rejoined his Map 5/6 alliance from a sister relaxed alliance and Player B headed to the sister relaxed alliance the week that things glitched, the result was Player A receiving few rewards for playing Map 5/6 all week and Player B receiving great rewards for logging in once a day and playing next to no AQ.
Hard to say what someone would or wouldn’t have done based solely on history.
Dr. Zola
The biggest flaw is one I don't think most people tend to think about. Simple solutions tend to be flawed because they don't fully capture the real world details of the problem, and you end up with something that kind of works but has a lot of issues. But the notion that more complicated solutions will work better has the flaw that once you open the door to implementing a solution that is composed of many individual special cases, it becomes almost impossible to stop people from claiming that any solution willing to accommodate those special cases is biased to the point of being discriminatory if it doesn't contain their own pet special case.
In essence, sometimes it is better to be discriminatory by accident then discriminatory on purpose. There's no right answer there.
Correct.
But a better guiding principle (in my humble opinion) is just to be generous, especially when it’s all your fault. As I’ve said elsewhere, more Warbucks, less Scrooge.
Dr. Zola