I see it as a common complaint on these boards, and in the challenge event.
The ones who get the top tier prizes are actually the people who don’t really need them as they are already playing with top tier heroes.
So how do you justly reward the top players who have invested so much time, money and skill in the game?
I’m thinking tokens for an elite tournament. You need to finish in the Top x tiers in special events and/or achieve the top x tiers in cup rating to earn them. When you have sufficient tokens you cash them in to enter a ‘world championship’ tournament that is hosted periodically (say once a month).
This could be an elimination style tournament (or perhaps round robin group stages moving on to elimination) to determine the best player - in the format of raids, held both ways over a few bouts (say 3 match-ups each way).
(‘Each way’ = You raid the opponent 3x, and he raids you 3x. The one who had the most victories overall wins the match-up. As a tie-breaker, the one who loses the least heros overall wins).
What prizes go to the tournament winners? Now that’s another subject for debate, but really I think it should not have in-game utility. Medals or similar… otherwise we’re straight back to the rich getting richer again.
And the clincher? The top x fights (say quarter finals up) are recorded / viewable.
Whaddayuthunk?
(Hey… once the mechanic has been developed, you could always host lower tier tournaments as well, of course… but you need to finish well in the Events and Raids to earn entry in to the Big One).
I think it is a misconception to say that it’s prizes not needed and it would be wrong to take prizes away in exchange for a token to enter even more contests. How are they supposed to be okay with working 3x as hard for a chance at a similar award?
We had been begging for months to have prizes be performance based, not a random lottery. The events finally fix that and give us something to work for along with items we genuinely need. I do think the scale could be adjusted because of the vast amount of people out there playing, but the idea that it’s not needed and we should get tokens just to enter another contest with no guarantees is kind of a slap in the face for the effort already put in.
(I only placed like 40 or so. I wasn’t exactly a top tier but having been friends with top players and chatting with many of these players for months I can honestly say they aren’t as stacked as you think they are. They’re doing well yes and sometimes pick up mats for heroes they don’t have yet or already have maxed but that doesn’t mean the game should stop for them and they don’t get deserve decent rewards from contests.)
We still need to address 2 issues:
1.) How do you differentiate the top achievers / recognise them for their effort?
2.) How do you make it so that it’s not just ‘the same old same old’ who continue to mop up all the loot
(Other players are also putting in the effort, but may not have the ability to win simply because of the heroes they have, and actually need the items to get themselves up there).
The current approach to #1 is to only make the top tier loot available to the few top performers, but this is at the expense of #2 (which is a slap in the face to the rest who put in the effort).
If we address #2, then you are doing so at the expense of #1. The top achievers would (justifiably) ask ‘why is our effort not being recognised’ with differentiated rewards’?.
So if I take your point on board (and I do), but also still need to satisfy #2, then where does that leave us? Still with the need to be able to differentiate the performance of the top achievers without being at the expense of the others who put in the effort.
I think an elite tournament with reserved right of entry may be a means to do this.
To be fair I hadn’t considered the angle that the top guys may not be interested in entering because they see it as ‘yet another contest’ which is somehow hard work… my assumption (and correct me if I’m wrong) is that the top guys try hard to get to the top because they want to be seen as succeeding over their peers. Surely they’d want a means of then testing this, and proving it? (If they’re finding the game ‘hard work’, then why are they playing? )
Do we really have to ? As it stands they already receive performance based rewards from this event only. Those that care to have their names up there are fighting it out for the leaderboard all the time.
It mostly already is. I think the amount of players just makes it a little more difficult to fight for. They already have it divided into 3 separate categories. They have a sliding scale of prizes getting duller and duller as the rank drops. They have a prize just for finishing it. There is a month of growing time between the events. A whole month of lottery based prizes where a large majority of people believe the best prizes are given to the average B and C players on titans. Every day I see new teams popping up in raids and when I bother to look, new names in the top 100. They could potentially add a fourth category between intermediate and advanced with like a 2 5* 3 4* cap otherwise I really do think the way it is set up is the most fair.
Also, until the event I’d never even noticed Zero. I was genuinely hoping for Opp to win. Arien wasn’t even first or second. How is it the ‘same old same old’? I actually can’t even recall intermediate or beginner winners, but I imagine it’s about the same.
And really ? Getting that fussy over a simple phrase like “work” ? Now you’re just being nitpicky. We all grind that same boring map every day, fight our way through the raid wanted missions, and hit the Titans hoping to grow a bit. Yes that part is more “work” than fun. But it means you can level those heroes up a bit more, craft a few more items, get a higher Titan score and maybe finally beat that guy that keeps beating you in raids. (Yay)
They might be interested in another contest but with zero prizes that actually advance their game play… why bother ?
The Event rewarded heroes you couldn’t get before. Sure nice for top players to get those without a lot of rolling. There was also rewards you can’t get otherwise. The character faces.
Also top players used loads of items to achieve those top spots, so getting a lot of materials as reward was really nice.
I think this event was nice, both as a challenge and rewardwise.
There may well be a bit of ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water’ here. I’m seeing “I don’t like the reasoning behind the idea, so I’ll argue against the reasoning, but not comment on the idea”. (This seems to happen a lot on these forums).
Is the idea of a tournament a good one?
The concept of whether it should discriminate or not is debatable. The extent to which it should replace existing rewards versus augment them is debatable. But I’ve seen no commentary on the tournament idea, but plenty on the essentially ‘variable’ aspects of how it is introduced.
Because it is elitist, the opposite of inclusive, and therefore in my opinion junk: there’s already the opportunity for people who want their name in lights to shine, why create more? The rich hardly got richer with this event, Zero has exactly 1 level 80 5* at this point, and I haven’t the faintest idea who the Intermediate winner was.
Viv nailed it: if the rewards weren’t worth the effort anyone with a clue wouldn’t bother - I don’t do the majority of the quests as they simply aren’t a worthwhile expenditure of energy for that very reason.
Anyone who rolls enough can field a competitive team in about three months, if you roll more you can create a top flight team in around 6, if you buy a ton of ascension packs maybe you can accelerate that but seriously, $30 for maybe one ascension item is pretty steep and you’re far more likely to get a 3* or junk than the requisite 4* materials.
The event was new and therefore difficult as hardly anyone knew what to expect; it also needed some changes (including balancing and more play testing on beginner), and I’ve heard rumors it is going to be somewhat different this time around and I think it will be a lot more competitive as a result at all levels, and more worthwhile for the beginner bracket too.
I like this game, I want both it and SG to be successful to continue it… and the path is more players playing and sticking with the game. Tons of people participated in the event, and unlike what I feared, there were tons of names I didn’t recognize at all on the leaderboards, heck there were tons of alliances I didn’t even know.
63 total alliances had a member in the top 100 on Advanced: 63! Of those 63 alliances only two had more than 5 members in the top 100.
I fail to see how that isn’t a functional event as a result, people from all over the place wound up on the leaderboards. I didn’t do stats for Intermediate or Beginner but it probably would’ve been an even wider distribution.
Wow - nice to see my efforts in typing up a cogent idea rewarded with the word ‘junk’. Ho hum.
Not really sure how a tournament in itself is not inclusive. The ‘inclusiveness’ is determined by whether there is reserved right to entry (which I thought it may be a reasonable idea, but can see that some may feel it ‘elitist’). The right to entry bit isn’t cast in stone - no reason why you can’t have a tournament that’s open to all.
Outside of that, it’s simply a different form of competition, no more or less than other forms such as (for example) a race to see who does best in a PvE event. It’s simply a different format, and based on Raid mechanic rather than PvE mechanic.
Normally tournament concepts in games are reasonably popular. Have I strayed into a game where this is not so?
Must say I am somewhat losing the motivation to put forward new ideas. I’ve contributed several and am yet to see a vaguely constructive response. (And no, the response doesn’t need to agree with the idea to be constructive). Posting new ideas appears to be a bit like playing raids… a frustrating endeavour with no real reward. It takes a certain element of masochism to want to keep doing it.
Guess my time on the boards will go the same way as my time on the game… a loss of interest due to lack of reward and moving on to something else.
I should’ve stated it differently, I do apologize for the strident response and labelling it “junk” even though I still don’t agree with an idea that a fraction of the population can partake in.
A part of that was dealing with some silly elitist crap elsewhere and I took it out on your idea.
I guess my question to you is if you disliked the event so much, and there was a long feedback post, why not turn to improving that rather than trying to create a different bit to appeal to a small subset of the population, who would have to be bribed to do it at all which would fall back to the rich being richer again? Lot of the players didn’t even use the avatars awarded until non-trivially later (for those that even did).
Esports has a place in gaming these days even if nobody can quite market it yet, but the critical factor needs to be skill based, and while I do think Zero may be the most skilled player I’m aware of in game and he did win Advanced, a tournament of champions thing, which this event can serve as anyway, in a game where quite a bit of it is luck when we’re talking small sample size, doesn’t make sense to me.
You appear to be arguing to simply doing away with the rewards, in which case nobody would do it.
I would take a different tact and suggest the right solution is spreading out the rewards to more people, but there still needs to be something beyond a participation award, and something beyond a completion reward, and that needs to be tiered, so the basic premise of the event isn’t flawed we just appear to be debating the relative merits of the rewards in question.
I didn’t ‘hate’ the event. I took part in it and beat intermediate - mostly because I wanted the ascension item it gave. It cost me a hell of a lot in Battle items though - put me in to food poverty for a while to regenerate all the mana, health and antidotes I had used.
It did strike me, however, that the rewards were too focussed on the absolute top players - only the top couple hundred getting good rewards. My feeling was that on the whole you couldn’t finish in the top 100 without having a team already that would largely make the rewards given redundant. So the remaining 1000s of players who took part and spent a lot of time/effort and energy to complete their tiers see the best loot going to people who have less need for it. This was the ‘rich getting richer’ to which I referred. The cut-off for effort employed was too ‘sudden’. If 1000 players had bust a gut and spent all their items to try make those top couple hundred slots, and failed to reach the bar, I’m not sure they would have seen the effort as worth it.
My idea had 2 parts:
(1) The concept of changing the reward structure so that you don’t have to differentiate the best by effectively excluding those who don’t make the mark from the decent rewards. (You and I agree that the rewards need to be spread further down the pool of players.)
(2) The concept of a tournament-style raid competition.
The constructive criticism I was seeking was much more in the nature of your most recent post… breaking the idea down in to bits that may work and bits that won’t. Tournament entry as a replacement for resources: Won’t work. But what if it’s ‘in addition’. Exclusive entry in to a tournament (maybe) will not be popular… but what about making the tournament for all, or entry earned by effort instead of achievement? Is there even the need? etc.
This is the sort of feedback that has been lacking in each of my suggestions - respondents too often jumping on the 1 aspect they don’t like and trashing the entire concept as a result (throwing out the baby with the bathwater)… and that is the aspect that I find dispiriting.
I don’t need everyone (or even anyone) to love the idea… but if it is debunked, it should be for cogent reasons… and maybe with some effort to explore alternatives if there is something to work with there. It’s these ideas that form the seeds of evolutions in the game that make it interesting… and not a good idea to discourage them.
I don’t like the tournament idea for several reasons:
It would take a lot of resources from the company (programming the tournament and the whole recording it part) which is why I think it will not happen anyway.
This game is too based on randomness to make a PvP event something actually thrilling to watch and fair for the players - it evens out in the long run on the leaderboards somewhat, but in a tournament there’s no time to even out anything. With how good/bad a board can be, it could be really disheartening to get a crappy one in such tourney.
It would basically be creating a game mode for say 100/200 players out of thousands. Not the best way to spend game resources.
Most people would get absolutely no joy from it - they wouldn’t care to watch it and wouldn’t be able to participate anyway.
There are many much more efficient (and also rewarding) ways to mark the top players as the top players - the portraits, for instance, portrait frames, name colors, any such cosmetics. Or different skins for their heroes or even a unique hero others won’t have (rewarded for say reaching 2xxx cups or getting a high spot in an event - not an OP hero, just a unique solid hero money - directly - cannot buy).
The challenge event is a tournament on its own, basically. Only more fair because it allows the players to re-do the stages, roll better boards, utilize their items. Think of it this way - the tournament would be basically this just for a select few with 0 interest or involvement from a grand majority of the playerbase.
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There’s no reason for the top prizes to be made worse - they are what makes the top players actually participate in the event and get involved. They want to build different team compositions, gather all heroes, what have you.
What could be done is to extend the brackets to allow more people to get a taste of the valuable prizes and differentiate the top-top tier by truly exclusive rewards like the aforementioned cosmetics which could allow to push the ascension items a bit further down the tiers to help out the weaker players who put a good amount of effort into it. I don’t know SG knew how many people would participate, maybe they will expand the tiers this time anyway.
I don’t see a way (or necessity, to be honest, and it comes from one of the poorer who barely got the completion prize on intermediate) to really remove the ‘rich getting richer’ factor while keeping the events fair. What reason would there be to be the best if you didn’t get treated better when you prove it?
In a general way i don’t dislike your idea, if you put in a way that everyone may take part in it and this tournament don’t preclude the new event.
I always like the competition, so add more just make me happier.
You directly asked me about the reasoning so I responded to that part. If you look again you’ll see my last sentence says
“They might be interested in another contest but with zero prizes that actually advance their game play… why bother?”
I suggested a raid based competition months ago in a LINE chat with Rubi and Petri, thinking it should actually track cup gain/loss over a period of time, for everyone. I absolutely want more competitions but not with excluding players or zero game advancing reward. I am not “throwing the baby out with the bath water”, the main points to your post was to cut off rewards, even the title suggests its a way to cut them down. IF that wasn’t what you were going for maybe re-title it and adjust your post to focus on the event instead of salty remarks towards people who disagree with parts of your post.
Without the context of knowing you had already covered a tournament idea previously, it’d difficult for me to not assume the debunking of the idea in general (as it was perceived) was anything other than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. You’ll also find the comment wasn’t in direct response to your post.
If there were elements you thought worthwhile, you had opportunity to state them. I’m afraid (rightly or wrongly) I did not perceive your last sentence of “They might be interested in another contest but with zero prizes that actually advance their game play… why bother ?” as any form of positive endorsement of the idea.
You will see in subsequent posts in the thread that I do not require people to agree with the idea. I ask for constructive criticism and an exploration of whether there are elements of the idea that are worth preserving, while discarding others. It would have been interesting to see that you had already explored the idea of tournaments, and what the outcome of that was.
I don’t believe it necessary to change the title of the original post as the idea or debate develops. This isn’t about my ego… it’s about whether it’s a good idea (in whole or in part).
My apologies for any offence that ‘salty remarks’ may have given. At that time it was my 4th idea that had been summarily dismissed without (what I could see) any real constructive criticism of what parts were worth preserving or if the idea as a whole is flawed. When I get frustrated, my salt level increases.
My original idea for a trophy count wouldn’t work because cups are easily manipulated. I wouldn’t want that now. I don’t like the idea of a tournament exclusively for those who collect tokens either, and 6 matches between two players 3 attacking 3 defending may take awhile to actually finish so here’s how I think a raid based competition could work now:
They could set up 3 to 4 categories like the other event with limitations of hero and troop power, maybe a team power limitation. This way people can use their 3/70 5* heroes in intermediate. You must pick which category you want to compete in before starting and stay in just that category. Raids would be limited to the category you select during the event.
I would prefer it timed and trophy tracked. You start with zero trophies in your division and at the end of the time period, 3 days, 7 days, whatever you get prizes based on rankings in your category. Maybe an additional prize for highest collected out of the world.
It was mentioned before (by Ellilea) that the problem with raid tournament is the randomness of the board, and I think that was a fair comment. Some thought needs to go in to how to mitigate this. Re-tries was my first instinct, but has some practically issues.
I agree making it time-bound also brings skill more to the fore than luck.
Maybe worth starting a new topic if you have the appetite…? I think there’s some ideas worth exploring here… and I think the game can do with more variety.
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