Battleground Blitz: Week one
DNA3000
Member, Guardian Guardian › Posts: 19,841 Guardian
With Crystal Cleanse now more or less wrapped up, its time to move on to the next Realm event: Jack's Battleground Blitz
Here's where we are:
And if we extrapolate:
The pace line aims for one billion points as the target by the end of the season.
So we're below the pace again. Are we going to fall short again? Actually, I think this is much more encouraging than Crystal Cleanse. With Crystal Cleanse, there was a big burst of effort and then a drop off to a much lower rate of openings, which would be consistent with the most enthusiastic players opening a ton of crystals early, and everyone else opening at a much slower rate throughout the event. That wasn't necessarily what had to happen, but it isn't entirely bonkers to conceive of either.
Battlegrounds is different, both in concept and in the data. The data does not show the same burst followed by drop off. Instead it shows a relatively stable point earning rate throughout the first week. Well, stable in a daily sense. In an hourly sense, BG activity is very spiky:
It is interesting to see most of the BG matches taking place in the mid day (relative to the continental US), not at night, although that actually explains a lot of my experiences finding matches in Battlegrounds (as I'm -10 GMT). But yeah, it does bounce all over the place. So let's look at points per day, and superimpose a trend line in there. With so little (daily) data it isn't terribly useful as a predictor, but it can at least tell us in which direction the trend is going overall, since that's kinda difficult to eyeball in the hourly rate graph:
Slightly upward. And with Battlegrounds, this makes sense. For one thing, we should expect participation to increase as the season goes on, because many players - including many of the lower progress players - wait until later in the season to start playing, to allow VT tiers to shake themselves out. Second, with each passing day more players are entering GC, and GC points are substantially higher for every GC match. So we should actually suspect that the first week point earning rates are the floor, not the ceiling as they were with Crystal Cleanse.
Given that, the analysis suggests that our current season trajectory puts us somewhere *higher* than 800 million points for the event. That is well within striking distance of one billion, and we should see that trend line move upward with each week. *If* participation increases over time like I believe it normally does and *if* activity continues to maintain similar levels to previous high volume seasons, then I think one billion is a viable target for the Battleground Blitz.
It is really up to us to do what we have been able to do in the past, keep up participation, keep up activity, and not get caught up in the naysayers that somehow have become convinced the targets are impossible. They aren't impossible. In fact, so long as we don't collapse in a manner unusual relative to previous seasons, I'd say we have a 75% chance to exceed one billion at our current extrapolated pace.
In summary: Crystal Cleanse week one
BGBlitz week one
That's the difference in this event. Keep doing what we're doing, and we go up from here. We'll see where we are in week two.
Here's where we are:
And if we extrapolate:
The pace line aims for one billion points as the target by the end of the season.
So we're below the pace again. Are we going to fall short again? Actually, I think this is much more encouraging than Crystal Cleanse. With Crystal Cleanse, there was a big burst of effort and then a drop off to a much lower rate of openings, which would be consistent with the most enthusiastic players opening a ton of crystals early, and everyone else opening at a much slower rate throughout the event. That wasn't necessarily what had to happen, but it isn't entirely bonkers to conceive of either.
Battlegrounds is different, both in concept and in the data. The data does not show the same burst followed by drop off. Instead it shows a relatively stable point earning rate throughout the first week. Well, stable in a daily sense. In an hourly sense, BG activity is very spiky:
It is interesting to see most of the BG matches taking place in the mid day (relative to the continental US), not at night, although that actually explains a lot of my experiences finding matches in Battlegrounds (as I'm -10 GMT). But yeah, it does bounce all over the place. So let's look at points per day, and superimpose a trend line in there. With so little (daily) data it isn't terribly useful as a predictor, but it can at least tell us in which direction the trend is going overall, since that's kinda difficult to eyeball in the hourly rate graph:
Slightly upward. And with Battlegrounds, this makes sense. For one thing, we should expect participation to increase as the season goes on, because many players - including many of the lower progress players - wait until later in the season to start playing, to allow VT tiers to shake themselves out. Second, with each passing day more players are entering GC, and GC points are substantially higher for every GC match. So we should actually suspect that the first week point earning rates are the floor, not the ceiling as they were with Crystal Cleanse.
Given that, the analysis suggests that our current season trajectory puts us somewhere *higher* than 800 million points for the event. That is well within striking distance of one billion, and we should see that trend line move upward with each week. *If* participation increases over time like I believe it normally does and *if* activity continues to maintain similar levels to previous high volume seasons, then I think one billion is a viable target for the Battleground Blitz.
It is really up to us to do what we have been able to do in the past, keep up participation, keep up activity, and not get caught up in the naysayers that somehow have become convinced the targets are impossible. They aren't impossible. In fact, so long as we don't collapse in a manner unusual relative to previous seasons, I'd say we have a 75% chance to exceed one billion at our current extrapolated pace.
In summary: Crystal Cleanse week one
BGBlitz week one
That's the difference in this event. Keep doing what we're doing, and we go up from here. We'll see where we are in week two.
17
Comments
Go on delete this one too
How do the hardest workers get same rewards if they are getting extra stuff for contributing with more points.
Pretty solid rank rewards
And I wish there was some penalty for just randomly throwing words around, but literacy is not mandatory. Realm rewards work the same way as most global events work in MMOs for the last twenty years, and also the way alliance rewards work in this game. They are how teams work in the real world as well.
Here in MCOC I will just write you off as a malcontent, because this is just a game. In the real world I’d fire anyone with your attitude, as would be my right as a business owner in our generally capitalist world.
And unless you’re the greatest MCOC player in the world, and I would bet my eternal soul you aren’t, your success in this game does not solely depend on your own efforts. You rely on guides, advice, resources that the community makes available, and you profit from for free while providing nothing in return. Doing so while complaining about the unfairness of the reward system makes you a leech.
And I don’t delete posts, I point out their deficiencies. Like responding to a post without reading it, or comprehending it, or using words in reply the poster doesn’t understand, or making silly accusations to make up for general insecurity and confidence in their position, or random interjections to replace thoughtfulness. Stuff like that. I find it more satisfying, and over the past forty years I’ve become exceedingly proficient at it.
Misinformation has always been the enemy. Misinformation hiding behind smug, overconfident, completely ignorant, microscopically thin comprehension and shameless manufacturing. Misinformation about how crystals work. Misinformation about how the game mechanics work. Misinformation about how the game systems work. Misinformation about the development team, about the player base, about literally anything and everything.
I’ve been fighting misinformation more than I’ve been fighting champions for the last nine years. And for all that it seems to be a hopeless fight, how many crystal conspiracies do you see around these days? How many people preaching the game is dying aren’t laughed off the forums these days? How many people can just make up stuff about how the game works these days? Certainly, the credit is not all mine, nor do I wish it was.
How many people have consistently said that Battlegrounds was dying, that no one except the Valiants plays it, that without a large infusion of rewards it was worthless. And yet hundreds of thousands of players play it. Tens of thousands get into GC every season. Participation is improving, not declining. People are playing.
What they need to hear is the truth. Numbers are up and rising. Participation is up and rising. The player base as a whole is increasing. And players of all progressions that qualify play BG. Uncollecteds play. Cavs play. And for their effort, they get proportionately great rewards. They are not alone in playing BG, and they are not throwing their effort into a dying game mode. They are heading into the trend, and if they do, and if they just keep doing what they have been doing for the past several seasons, they’ll get most of those realm rewards.
I calibrated my scales to one billion, because I am treating all milestones above one billion as stretch goals. The goal should be to hit one billion. And I think we will. If players just hear the truth: it is doable, and if they do what is reasonable to do based on what they’ve done in the past, they’ll do it.
I’ve played more online games than most. I’ve seen them come and go. Nothing lasts forever (except maybe Eve Online). Even if MCOC lasts for the next thirty years, most players won’t. And one day, when you’re thinking back to the game, what do you want to tell people you did? The minimum? I have stories about every game I ever played. None of them ends “and I got away with doing the minimum.”
In fact, none of my *life* stories ends that way.
< /soapbox >
Not sure where you got "all milestones" from, meet or exceed the 1 billion milestone
Thanks for opening my eyes 🙏
All I can say with reasonable certainty, given the data I’ve collected, is: if we continue as we are we will hit 800m, and if we do more than just continue on as we have we will go higher. Crashed can actually calculate how much higher.
Crashed and I are not in disagreement. My picture is just blurrier than his is.
Did I mention Crashed and I chat from time to time? Crashed and I chat from time to time.
We know some percentage of players enter GC every season. We know that some percentage of them grind on, and some park as you mention. That’s always true. But there’s no reason to believe that there will be a larger number of “parkers” this season versus previous seasons. If there is more participation, then more people get to GC. Some fraction of them will continue to play, and thus continue to score more points. That will be points we don’t normally get.
The idea is not that GC has more points, so the player base automatically scores more points. The idea is every season some fraction of players enter GC and some fraction of those continue to play and score points. On a relative basis, those will score more points in GC than they were scoring in VT. For the same amount of activity, points per player will rise.
So if engagement continues to rise during the season and more players are both playing in VT and entering GC, more players will equal more points, and more players in GC will also equal more points per match, both of which are positive influences on our scoring. Individual players will play or not play, but what matters are the big picture statistics. How many play in VT, how many play in GC. And to play in GC, you have to be in GC.
I think if we just play normally and not make it out to be all doom and gloom, 5000 should not be a problem.
Honestly, if I can do it with my skill level and roster I am sure you guys can do it easily.