[Feedback] Item rewards and queue times in MP incentivize resigning

Nothing you say would be different from my system or the current system. Either they'll have 50% win rate in my system because they'll have equal elo's or they'll have 50% win rate in the current system because they have equal elo's.

In either case the outcome is the same.

 

It seems a simple solution would be as follows, rewarding a basic chest to any player who completes a game who also loses. With completed games counting as follows.

A game where one player gets six victory points before the other player. A game where one player resigns when only having one character remaining, a game where one player has resigned when the other player has 4 or higher victory points with a difference in your victory points being 3 or greater.

Will this still allow people to game the system? Yes, the problem is then however that gaming the system will still take time, at the very least, two kills from the opposing player against someone gaming the system, which will take getting in close to one another or being on the victory squares for 4 rounds which takes in the very least a single round to achieve, though more commonly two rounds.

Is it possible to game such a system? Yes. But it will also be much more noticeable when said player is gaming the system and not even giving an attempt at victory.

With our current system gaming, we can't really tell for sure. This system gaming will leave little doubt in a players mind, and will less likely make a losing player feel like they simply wasted time.

 

I'm going to flesh out a more complete system that rewards players for winning that cannot be farmed easily.

Rules for winners: Every time you win you get a "strong common" chest. Every 5 wins earns you a "special chest." The quality of this special chest is determined by your elo. If you are below 1000 elo, the special chest is just a "weak gold" chest. If you are above 1000 elo, the special chest is a "strong gold" chest. If you are above 1250 elo, you earn an "weak epic" chest. If you are above 1500, you earn a "strong epic" chest.

Rules for losers: If you lose with an elo above 1000, then you get a "weak common" chest. If you lose with an elo above 1250, then you get "strong common" chest.

All of the above elo numbers can be tweaked.

Every two weeks, elo ratings are reset.

Rationale: Losing hurts your elo score so people will be less likely to forfeit, since only high elo's grant good rewards. Losing won't be a total waste of time, however, if you've done well and climbed up the elo ladder. You will not need to dedicate an eight hour session in order to get a purple. You can casually grind out 5 wins over a period of several days if you wish. There will never be a need to report anyone for purposely losing in this system.

 

The straightforward way to make players want to play games out to their conclusion is to make the rewards largely based on how long the match takes (measured in time and turns) and to give the loser a lesser reward rather than nothing. You'd win the most by winning a 10+ minute game with 6 or more turns, you get some fraction of that for losing that match, you get proportionally less for shorter games, and for winning or losing on round one you get nothing or virtually nothing.

As long as the rewards are completely binary (you either get your chest or don't) you will get people who game the system or naturally prefer following the meta-strategy of what gets items the fastest rather than the competitive strategy that would get them the best rating/record. And who can blame them? Papa needs his epics!

 

I don't like this idea. Anytime someone feels they would get crushed, they can just forfiet immediately in order to deny their opponent good rewards. Highly abusable.

 

If gear has so much influence on ELO that does not bode well for the game considering luck is the deciding factor in acquiring it.

 

This would incentivize stalling which would be even worse. A "good" deck would be one that can stall the longest and still win.

People will "exploit" any reward system. That is the best competitive strategy in a loot based game.

 

It's because they haven't balanced the items very well yet. Many items with low rarity have ridiculously powerful cards on it. If they equalize rarity between items, and make sure the cards of similar rarity have similar power, then in theory it shouldn't matter too much what items a character gets since everyone will randomly get different items that still have near-equal power.

In theory, of course. In practice right now, some items are OP and whoever gets them has a massive advantage over their opponent. Look at Frosty Staff. Totally outclasses almost every other rare at it's 1 blue 1 yellow orb cost. Another one is Electroporter Novice. Three trait cards, no orb cost.

Because there's are some inconsistencies between card power and card rarity, one when player gets a rare he might get a completely OP Frosty Staff while the next guy gets Sub-zero Staff, which is the same level and rarity yet has two less encumbers. There are many such inconsistencies between items with the same level of rarity that should be addressed for multiplayer, but it's hard to do that because it might mess with single player or lose the element of excitement when finding a rare/yellow.

Perhaps the devs want to make this game more like Diablo 3 where rares usually were better than legendaries? Just to keep in an element of grind?

 

Don't get too sucked into broader problems of loot and mp, or speculation about consequences of possible changes, that's a rat hole that can contain a rather large amount of soap suds. I'd like to focus directly on the problem-how do incentivize winning instead of losing?

Suggestions like giving a chest on loss seem like good ideas to me (get more people playing mp!), but only increase the value of losing/resigning.

I think the main issue is the reward track, which makes some wins more valuable than others. Win 20 is worth more than wins 1-19. Further the timer on the track requires bursts of winning (further question: why does the game have reset timers on anything? I get it as a way to take your money if you sell time, but card hunter doesn't thankfully so...why?).

I think the best solution is super simple: rare or better chest on a win. No track, to timer, no Elo adjustment, no epic chest, no nothing. Win=reward, done. The current reset based reward system is odd and I don't see why we don't just get rid of it.

 

Wouldn't that make trading wins by resigning even more efficient and therefore attractive? Also rare or better on every chest is a whole lot better than what we get now, that's quite the power jump.

I don't think you can prevent people from maximizing their loot chance in multiplayer; that's after all the whole point for a lot of them. Flattening the reward structure could help reduce this behavior by lowering the stakes involved; 20 wins for an epic chest is both a huge time investment and a significant difference in loot quality.

What about getting a gold chest every 3 or 4 wins? This would still provide an incentive to keep playing a few more rounds without the exponential scaling of the current reward structure.

 

I'm not overly concerned with win trading. In ranked mm I cannot choose my opponent. I'm concerned with a player being able to maximize their reward by going through win/resign cycles. The only way to fix that is to take out cyclical rewards.

Also 2 things: 1) I'm not committed to any particular price point, as long as winning isn't rewarded on a fixed interval schedule. 2) I'll never understand players who want rare items to be more difficult to come by, especially in mp, where iI want to play with a diverse pool of options.

 

Could you elaborate on that?

I don't really understand how that follows. Even if the rewards are perfectly flat i.e. same kind of reward for every win, it seems to me that going through win/resign cycles is still the most efficient way of gathering loot. There just isn't a specific goal to stop at per day.

I've come to loathe this aspect of the game as well. I was just making an observation.

 

What about removing or reducing multiplayer rewards, especially rewards for grinding? Players who are playing for the rewards rather than the fun or glory are likely to be tempted into gaming the system and are unlikely to be enjoyable to play against.

 

I explained how to do this in my post above. You have to tie rewards to elo. It is the best and fairest way.

 

You still don't get the point that your system won't be fair. Aside from the issues that the rich get richer, I understand your incentive to force people to win and reach those ELO and get more loot. However, ELO isn't absolute. If you get better at the game and everyone get better, your ELO stay where it is. It will reach a plateau and never change. Putting an arbitrary barrier at 1000 rating for better loot will always give 50% of your player more loot and other 50% less loot. And the 50% poor include player who are not good at the game, newbie, casual etc... It also leave a bad taste in their mouth if they feels like they have to buy some item to get better ELO and therefore get richer (implying P2W).

Here's the thought process of these player: Since I can't get better loot just from resigning repeatedly, I have to win enough to get to these brackets. But I'm not good enough to get there, might as well just resign repeatedly for fast loot from these lame chest. Still faster than playing legitimately.

 

And then there's my system. One that keeps the current system in place but always gives a basic chest to the loser if they finish the game, with a finished game counting as...

One player getting all 6 victory points. One player having four or greater victory points with a difference of 3 or greater and one player resigning. Or one player down to one character and one player resigning.

This gives loot to the losers of a game, AND has the added benefit of being able to tell when someone is gaming the system. IE all elf wizards with as many movement cards as possible getting next to you as quickly as possible then proceeding to do nothing else.

This system can't be gamed without being noticed.

 

You're tempting me to build a party that can suicide on the first round. I know I can give my wizard 5x Fireball and 3x Firestorm, and I think 3 or 4x Hot Spot; my warrior has Combustible and because I play elves, everyone gets Vulnerable.

 

I'm not sure getting a basic chest is that great of an incentive, 2 random items of any level or rarity weighted toward common is just noise. There's a reason most everyone playing for loot only goes up to the next gold chest if they don't go for the epic one. Basic chests are kind of worthless.

 

^I got legendary and epics from those basic chests don't you dare insult them.

 

So did I, but there's a difference between getting a random good drop on the way to an epic or gold chest and willfully wasting your time on a bad/lengthy match-up just so you can have a basic chest and make no progress toward your actual goal. Resigning is still the better option.