Information on Cutoffs

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, but why is it that Kabam does not provide basic cutoff information in any manner? They clearly have access to these numbers and could retrieve very easily, so why not provide them? The idea that the community has to gather all important data themselves is pretty outlandish.

I'm not asking for everything, but AQ cutoffs, AW tier cutoffs, arena cutoffs, and Legend cutoffs would be extremely helpful to the community. This is especially true for those players that do not participate in the unofficial places where information is generally shared by the people putting in hours of work to make it easier on us.

Comments

Scottryan

Just get infobot

LocoMotives

Scottryan wrote: »

Just get infobot

Not really the point at all, but thanks.

Jay_Ibero

They don't provide it because it would make them less money.

DNA3000

LocoMotives wrote: »

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, but why is it that Kabam does not provide basic cutoff information in any manner? They clearly have access to these numbers and could retrieve very easily, so why not provide them? The idea that the community has to gather all important data themselves is pretty outlandish.

I'm not asking for everything, but AQ cutoffs, AW tier cutoffs, arena cutoffs, and Legend cutoffs would be extremely helpful to the community. This is especially true for those players that do not participate in the unofficial places where information is generally shared by the people putting in hours of work to make it easier on us.

"Basic cutoff information" is not a real thing. There is no cutoff that you need to earn a champ. You have to be the top 800 player or top 10% player to get the featured or basic respectively. The cutoff information is actually an analytical product of the players collecting historical data from voluntary submissions.

We don't have to collect this information. The community collects it because collectively we want to collect it.

Your question really boils down to why doesn't Kabam publish historical data on all of its competitive events. And to be frank, I think the only real answer to that question is, why should they? Most games don't. It is potentially useful competitive information. It is up to the players to decide if they want to share that information collectively, or hoard that information and not share it to gain a competitive edge.

We the players decide what to share and what not to. And it is important to note that we don't actually always know what the actual minimum awarded score is. We only do if someone decides to share that information. In some arenas we know with a lot of precision because we know the cutoff mark (which is another piece of information that an actual player has to determine and share) and someone submits a winning score very close to the cutoff line. In some cases, we don't know very accurately because no one submits a score anywhere near the cutoff and we have to extrapolate. ArenaKnight posts the lowest reported score that awards, but the actual cutoff could be significantly lower than that: you wouldn't know unless you analyze the deep dive records.

There's no specific reason why Kabam should do anything other than allowing the players to work this out for themselves.

DNA3000

Jay_Ibero wrote: »

They don't provide it because it would make them less money.

I have no idea how this statement makes any sense except that it was posted as a reflex action.

DNA3000

Deleted accidental double post.

Krazewulfos

LocoMotives wrote: »

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, but why is it that Kabam does not provide basic cutoff information in any manner? They clearly have access to these numbers and could retrieve very easily, so why not provide them? The idea that the community has to gather all important data themselves is pretty outlandish.

I'm not asking for everything, but AQ cutoffs, AW tier cutoffs, arena cutoffs, and Legend cutoffs would be extremely helpful to the community. This is especially true for those players that do not participate in the unofficial places where information is generally shared by the people putting in hours of work to make it easier on us.

so, kabam has a crystal ball that tells them what everyone is going to score ahead of time, to try to secure said champion? interesting. man, I wonder what i'm gonna score for the iceman arena in a couple months. could a kabam employee use the crystal ball and let me know?

LocoMotives

Krazewulfos wrote: »

LocoMotives wrote: »

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, but why is it that Kabam does not provide basic cutoff information in any manner? They clearly have access to these numbers and could retrieve very easily, so why not provide them? The idea that the community has to gather all important data themselves is pretty outlandish.

I'm not asking for everything, but AQ cutoffs, AW tier cutoffs, arena cutoffs, and Legend cutoffs would be extremely helpful to the community. This is especially true for those players that do not participate in the unofficial places where information is generally shared by the people putting in hours of work to make it easier on us.

so, kabam has a crystal ball that tells them what everyone is going to score ahead of time, to try to secure said champion? interesting. man, I wonder what i'm gonna score for the iceman arena in a couple months. could a kabam employee use the crystal ball and let me know?

Obviously not, but they have the information for the cutoffs of events that just happened. Every other game that I have played (admittedly not very many) has provided the score for each reward cutoff much like the players collect now from each other. When arena rewards are sent out, they can add a column showing top 800, 1-10%, and all of the reward brackets. It is useful to players or else we wouldn't bother to gather it.

Obviously I should've included "past" events in my original statement, comprehension can be difficult for some people so I should've spelled it out more.

Krazewulfos

LocoMotives wrote: »

Krazewulfos wrote: »

LocoMotives wrote: »

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, but why is it that Kabam does not provide basic cutoff information in any manner? They clearly have access to these numbers and could retrieve very easily, so why not provide them? The idea that the community has to gather all important data themselves is pretty outlandish.

I'm not asking for everything, but AQ cutoffs, AW tier cutoffs, arena cutoffs, and Legend cutoffs would be extremely helpful to the community. This is especially true for those players that do not participate in the unofficial places where information is generally shared by the people putting in hours of work to make it easier on us.

so, kabam has a crystal ball that tells them what everyone is going to score ahead of time, to try to secure said champion? interesting. man, I wonder what i'm gonna score for the iceman arena in a couple months. could a kabam employee use the crystal ball and let me know?

Obviously not, but they have the information for the cutoffs of events that just happened. Every other game that I have played (admittedly not very many) has provided the score for each reward cutoff much like the players collect now from each other. When arena rewards are sent out, they can add a column showing top 800, 1-10%, and all of the reward brackets. It is useful to players or else we wouldn't bother to gather it.

Obviously I should've included "past" events in my original statement, comprehension can be difficult for some people so I should've spelled it out more.

dude. that's still not going to give the info you want. talking about comprehension issues when you cant use the tools that the community has developed and is encouraging players to use, to better prepare yourself for cutoffs. hmm...

LocoMotives

@DNA3000, saying "why should they" doesn't really get us anywhere. Obviously they don't HAVE to or they would have been doing it. I think it would be a pretty simple addition for them with the data at hand and save a lot of players (ArenaKnight to name one) a good amount of time and effort. I basic range of times that the players who received Legend tags scored would also be helpful and potentially drive competition (spending).

LocoMotives

Krazewulfos wrote: »

LocoMotives wrote: »

Krazewulfos wrote: »

LocoMotives wrote: »

I'm sure this question has been asked ad nauseam, but why is it that Kabam does not provide basic cutoff information in any manner? They clearly have access to these numbers and could retrieve very easily, so why not provide them? The idea that the community has to gather all important data themselves is pretty outlandish.

I'm not asking for everything, but AQ cutoffs, AW tier cutoffs, arena cutoffs, and Legend cutoffs would be extremely helpful to the community. This is especially true for those players that do not participate in the unofficial places where information is generally shared by the people putting in hours of work to make it easier on us.

so, kabam has a crystal ball that tells them what everyone is going to score ahead of time, to try to secure said champion? interesting. man, I wonder what i'm gonna score for the iceman arena in a couple months. could a kabam employee use the crystal ball and let me know?

Obviously not, but they have the information for the cutoffs of events that just happened. Every other game that I have played (admittedly not very many) has provided the score for each reward cutoff much like the players collect now from each other. When arena rewards are sent out, they can add a column showing top 800, 1-10%, and all of the reward brackets. It is useful to players or else we wouldn't bother to gather it.

Obviously I should've included "past" events in my original statement, comprehension can be difficult for some people so I should've spelled it out more.

dude. that's still not going to give the info you want. talking about comprehension issues when you cant use the tools that the community has developed and is encouraging players to use, to better prepare yourself for cutoffs. hmm...

I do use the tools, thanks for your repeated concern. My statement is that the 3rd party tools should not be needed and it should be 1st party information handed out after an event ends and rewards are sent out. I really appreciate the guys such as ArenaKnight and Mutamatt (and many others) that provide these great resources. It would be really nice if they didn't have to spend their time doing it though.

I haven't missed cutoffs and this has nothing to do with me personally. I'm just trying to express that this info should come freely from Kabam.

DNA3000

LocoMotives wrote: »

@DNA3000, saying "why should they" doesn't really get us anywhere. Obviously they don't HAVE to or they would have been doing it. I think it would be a pretty simple addition for them with the data at hand and save a lot of players (ArenaKnight to name one) a good amount of time and effort. I basic range of times that the players who received Legend tags scored would also be helpful and potentially drive competition (spending).

In this case, I believe "why should they" is an important question because you're presenting the case as being something they could easily do and would be helpful to the players. But that case is only a good one if you believe that all things that are easy and helpful are things game designers should do. But that's not true. Many parts of multiplayer games are presented explicitly as situations in which it is up to the players to decide how to handle them. This is especially true when it is a competitive situation. Scores and ranks are competitive data. The players themselves don't all agree on whether it should be shared. Many players advocate "not getting in the pool" because the more of a champion that Kabam awards, they more that champion can become a more prevalent defender or used against them as an attacker. Why help the opposition?

We decide what to share and what not to share, and Kabam shouldn't necessarily take that decision out of our hands. When we are talking about a competition, the default position should be "why should they release information" about the conduct of other people. I believe when it comes to how the game works, Kabam should in general share that information. In effect, the game information is analogous to the rules of the game. We should all know the rules. But why should you know how much I scored, or how much anyone else scored, or what the minimum winning score was? The people who know that information are the people who actually scored those points, and it is currently up to them to decide whether to share it. If you're going to ask Kabam to release that information, I think the burden is on you to explain why you're taking that decision out of the players' hands.

It isn't just about a generic "why do anything?" In this case, it is more the belief that in my opinion, sharing competitive information is not the same thing as asking for information in general, and has a higher burden to overcome to justify taking that action. Why take the decision out of the hands of the players? Why are you entitled to information that currently the players themselves are deciding collectively whether to share or not.

I would love to be able to scout my war opponents. Kabam could allow me to replay their last few wars so I could see how they deployed defenders, how strong their attackers were, etc. It is just history, and this wouldn't be too hard to do, and it would be very helpful. And *some* people do share their alliance wars in streams or in other ways. But many players consider that competitive information they don't want to share. Why should Kabam override that decision in a competitive realm. If they want to share, great. If they don't, that's their call.

To put it as simply, if oversimply, as I can, you aren't asking Kabam to share information about the game, you are asking them to give you information on what the other players are doing. But the game currently limits the information you can get about other players, and the default answer should be "no" without a very good reason to override that in my opinion.

LocoMotives

You're saying Kabam shouldn't do it because players may not want to share, but we already have pretty accurate numbers for these that have been collected from the community itself and compiled by players willing to put in the work. I never mentioned anything about past wars, that was your addition and I agree has no place being shared.

Basically, I'm not asking for anything that we don't already get after a day or two from players willing to share their info. I didn't even mention champ or player prestige in this post which some players think would be helpful to see on a summoner's profile. Why not save the players the trouble and provide it first-hand?

DNA3000

LocoMotives wrote: »

You're saying Kabam shouldn't do it because players may not want to share, but we already have pretty accurate numbers for these that have been collected from the community itself and compiled by players willing to put in the work. I never mentioned anything about past wars, that was your addition and I agree has no place being shared.

Basically, I'm not asking for anything that we don't already get after a day or two from players willing to share their info. I didn't even mention champ or player prestige in this post which some players think would be helpful to see on a summoner's profile. Why not save the players the trouble and provide it first-hand?

I'm not sure I can explain my position to you effectively, because my direct explanation gets overly reduced and any attempt to analogize or compare to another situation for illustrative purposes is something you seem to be rejecting on the grounds that if you didn't mention it first, I'm not allowed to mention it either. That cuts off the only two semantic tools available to me.

LocoMotives

Your direct explanations tend to be very long and involved. Not a problem, it just causes most of us to reduce what you say for simplicity sake lol. And you are free to mention other instances, but do not use those to say my argument is incorrect. I didn't mention anything about past wars because that is unique and specific info. I also didn't say they should tell us every person's score, just the cutoff mark.

But you're free to disagree, I just figured I should defend my position and my intent.

Jay_Ibero

DNA3000 wrote: »

Jay_Ibero wrote: »

They don't provide it because it would make them less money.

I have no idea how this statement makes any sense except that it was posted as a reflex action.

The better idea players have of the cutoff the fewer units they will spend on refreshes and boosts.

DNA3000

Jay_Ibero wrote: »

DNA3000 wrote: »

Jay_Ibero wrote: »

They don't provide it because it would make them less money.

I have no idea how this statement makes any sense except that it was posted as a reflex action.

The better idea players have of the cutoff the fewer units they will spend on refreshes and boosts.

That is a supposition unsupported by the facts in two ways. First, arena scoring history does not suggest that discussions about guesses significantly affects scoring. The median guess tends to miss equally high and low. Second, even if there was an effect too small to measure, there is no reason to believe that more people would spend more to increase scoring as people would be cutting off spending and coasting when they were more certain to be over the likely threshold.

You could argue that in the absence of information people would spend more to score higher. But that seems unlikely because even when everyone knows the cutoff is going to be high there appear to be limits on how high the scores can climb. People are not continuing to spend increasing amounts of units to beat scores they know to be high. There's no evidence that people are spending increasing amounts of units to push scores higher even when we have a reliable estimate of how much they need to spend. It seems more likely to me that in the absence of information people would be less likely to spend units on an effort they have literally no idea will succeed or not.

But even setting that all aside, as other players have pointed out the player community on Reddit already captures enough of this information to make reasonable guestimates. That information is not always precise, but it is close enough to largely invalidate this statement. Releasing the true scoring couldn't possibly cause players to spend significantly more or less than what they are already spending, because guestimate data already exists that already informs player spending one way or the other.

GroundedWisdom

LocoMotives wrote: »

Your direct explanations tend to be very long and involved. Not a problem, it just causes most of us to reduce what you say for simplicity sake lol. And you are free to mention other instances, but do not use those to say my argument is incorrect. I didn't mention anything about past wars because that is unique and specific info. I also didn't say they should tell us every person's score, just the cutoff mark.

But you're free to disagree, I just figured I should defend my position and my intent.

The difference is with the compilations we do ourselves, Players volunteer that information themselves. Divulging the scores of everyone is not "kosher". It's actually somewhat exploitative. People are free to offer up that information, but it shouldn't be a requirement.

LocoMotives

I would definitely disagree with "exploitative". The fact is the info is basically out there now (with a small margin of error) but the players themselves have to do it. Telling players what scores reached what landmarks doesn't "exploit" anyone or anything, it just provides guidelines to a larger % of the players that don't currently use the 3rd party information.

But hey, if I'm the only one on this side of the fence then I guess nobody really is worried about it and my complaint is just white noise. So I guess I'll drop it

GroundedWisdom

LocoMotives wrote: »

I would definitely disagree with "exploitative". The fact is the info is basically out there now (with a small margin of error) but the players themselves have to do it. Telling players what scores reached what landmarks doesn't "exploit" anyone or anything, it just provides guidelines to a larger % of the players that don't currently use the 3rd party information.

But hey, if I'm the only one on this side of the fence then I guess nobody really is worried about it and my complaint is just white noise. So I guess I'll drop it

I hear what you're saying, but it is up to the discretion of people to divulge their scores. As for the internal statistics, they are property of Kabam. I get that you are trying to save people work, but it leads to a whole host of problems including arguments over scores, misinterpretation, disappointment from expectations, etc. We may compile and project ourselves, but that's something we opt to do. The Arena is still a blind competition. If people choose to share their scores, that is up to them. I can't see them feasibly divulging that, for many reasons.

DD2

Kabam wants players to play. Cut-off information will likely dissuade more players from grinding than encourage players to grind, therefore, less players will invest less time in the game which is bad for Kabam.

Generalized, but I'm sure it's somewhat accurate.