There needs to be an incentive to keep your rating up.

So many times I see people auto surrender in order for them to quickly grind back up to grind lower rating noobs like myself. There needs to be a reward for having high rating. Like if you have 1500+ rating your text will be bold and colorful like this in the lobby chat. Simple things like that will make alot of people want a high rating.

 

Teasky, you have a great understanding of player psychology. I fully support this idea.

(the things I'd do, the lengths I'd go to for cosmetic changes...)

 

I think for many people it is all about grinding out the gear, so to convince some people to play the best they can every game there would need to be a situation where you get more loot the better you are. This would be a very bad idea as it would give the best players even more better items.

While I don't think negative on this is a good idea I think shutting off loot gain if people are quiting very early often might be the way to go. A person should be playing for atleast 5 minutes in the majority of matches I would think, only conceding before when the first/second round goes really bad.

 

It just need to be some advantage that would not affect balance too drastically. Handing some free pizza according to rating could work for instance (or any cosmetic improvement would work too indeed).

 

My suggestion:

The more a player keep winning consecutively, the more likely he is to get better loots.

i.e., if he wins two games in a row, he is more likely to get better loots than winning once, losing once, and then losing again.
if he wins three games in a row, he is even more likely to get better loots at the third win than winning once, losing once, winning again, losing again, and winning yet again.

Which means, if a player deliberately loses a game to lower his rating, he breaks his winning streak and loses out on increasing probabilities to win better and better loots. Players who deliberate lose will always get lower-quality loots.

Also, Legendary items should only be a possibility for players who have won at least three games in a row. Players who have only one or two won games (i.e., no yet a streak) should NOT even get a chance to win a legendary item. Three wins in a row, he gets a chance. Four wins in a row, a better chance. Five wins in a row, a good chance. Six wins in a row, he will very likely get at least one legendary item. Seven wins in a row, guaranteed he will get one, maybe he will get two. etc.

Players who have not yet had a winning streak (less than three wins in a row) should NOT even get a shot to get a legendary. When Blue Manchu does that, then players won't just give up -- because they will be giving up the chance to win any legendary item. If they just maintain the win-lose-win-win-lose-lose-etc pattern, they will never win a legendary.

BTW, it's very difficult to maintain a winning streak.

 

KT Chong: seems like a good incentive to *really* tank your rating once a while so you can be pretty sure to go on a huge winning streak.

I intentionally tank my rating for two reasons. First is that I don't like waiting too long for a game and if you're ranked too high it ends up being 5 minutes per game. Second is that I like trying new things out constantly and don't want to always be pitted against the best guys when I do it.

 

Seriously though, I don't think it would be unreasonable for people at high rating to advance on the multiplayer chest track a little more quickly. Don't give high ranked people any EXTRA loot (keep the chests the same and the path the same), just acknowledge that it takes longer to win games at high ratings compared to fast wins bullying low ranked people. Maybe above a certain rating threshold you can remove a basic chest from the end of the track every three wins or something, I don't know exactly how it could be done.

 

That is a very good suggestion : by making the track shorter for higher elo rating, it would make the play time to get chests more consistent. That coupled with some incentive to get higher elo could make rank tanking not that appealing anymore.

 

@KT Chong, I think that suggestion would only make the problem worse. People would destroy their ratings just so they can get many consecutive easy matchups so they can get better loot even easier. There is no incentive based on rating there.

 

Why not just like all other ELO comps.

End of the week, top % of players get some pizza.

 

Let's not go ahead and call people out in threads. This leads to endless bickering and the closing of threads. *If* you have a point to make, you can do so courteously. If you have a problem with a person, you can report it to me, SurgeonFish, or Pengw1n and we'll definitely listen to you.

 

I did not even know wait time is tied to my rating. I despise having to wait a long time to get a match-up. I'm gonna lower my rating because, honestly, I am only interested in getting the first few easy gold chests every day, as quickly as possible. At this point the rating is meaningless to me.

 

I didn't read the terms of use (who does?) but I will assume that lowering your rating on purpose is a big no-no.

I can understand that people want to get the gear as soon as possible but don't you think that its an extremely unethical practice? If you feel there is a problem with higher level play you should let the devs know about it.

Imagine all the people that you are potentially turning away by stomping lower tiers. If you care about the longevity of the game you shouldn't abuse the system they have in place to protect newer members :/ less you become the source of your own problem.

If you truly are only interested in getting gear quicker you might consider subscribing instead?

 

It never felt tied to rating to me... in fact, it looked fairly consistently closer to "higher chest -> higher wait" - first ones at 1-2m, last ones at 5+; but that might be just my playing patterns.

 

It's true about what you're saying, Genki, but game systems always compel people to 'game' the system. Ethics, sportsmanship, and other such concepts have no real power in the aggregate when people play online. You may subscribe to such a system, along with many other like-minded people, but there will always be people who don't share the same value system as you do. As long as there's an advantage to doing this, people will always have an incentive to 'defect' from the system.

It's the game designer's responsibility to ensure that the game system rewards play that is 'fun', and not play that is 'unfun' or 'unfair'. I put those words in quotes to show that these are very subjective concepts that always differ from person to person. What is fun for a MMO griefer is certainly not fun for the guy on the receiving end; likewise, a new Call of Duty player who is noob-tubing left and right is having a ball of a time, but everyone else might not feel the same way.

Sirlin's Play to Win series sums up competitive play perfectly, which I often go back to read. I played a ton of Street Fighter/X-Men crossover games in arcades when I was growing up, and I can identify strongly with what he is saying. You may not agree, but he describes the mindset of a competitive player perfectly.

Hence, as long as there is a positive expected value (+ve EV) to the 'tank your rating and beat up noobs' strategy, people will continue to do so. One point I believe is important is that the matchmaking system is quite good in making sure you don't get matched up with the same person repeatedly. Hence, a new player who gets slaughtered by a tanker won't face that person again quite so quickly. Also, Gary is always up for a match when you keep losing and your rating is too low.

I'm not sure how to design the system to minimise the expected value of the tanking strategy, but I'm sure BM has some good server-side data on how often it occurs, the benefit to the player who uses it, etc. It would make for nice data-mining if they showed us some of this.

 

Any incentive to increase your rating can't be tied to better loot drops or else the gaps between high rating players and beginners will become harder and harder to close as time goes on.

Maybe have something like a Title associated with certain ranks? like for every 100 points. It could show up in front of your name in the multiplayer lobby

for example:

0-800 peasant
900-1000 squire
1000-1100 man-at-arms
1100-1200 Knight
and so on

Edit: Pengw1n informs me that Blue Manchu is way ahead of me...

 

What people like to forget is, that you need need to lose more than twice as often to stay around a specific rating in the range of 800-1000.
That way everyone profits, because the chances are higher that you get a easy win and in the worst scenario you even out with wins and losses against tankers.

And it seems that critics assume that tankers just like to overpower new players but that is not true most of the time.
Its about saving time and nerves.

It is quite easy to reach 1300 with a normal deck, with that i mean a even group with not very specified gear, here a Blister Stone, there a Beweled Shortsword and so on.
But there you are confronted with annoying Draw Decks, Firestorm Decks or the next fotm.
Of yourse you can beat them with luck and a good draw but if you really want to compete you need to do the same, if you cant because you are missing the epics and legendaries to make it viable, you will waste a lot of time.

And some people dont want to waste time, its all about card hunting and about the easier and faster way to do it.

 

How about this—the game keeps a record of your ratings. If you beat people who are, say, 400 points or more BELOW the highest rating you've achieved, you don't get any loot.

(This would only work if you had separate ratings for your different loadouts.)

 

The current could be fixed gold/purple chest by something like a "daily XP bar" : Each victory would grant as many XP as the opponent elo rating (or any growing function), and you would get gold or purple chest at some XP threshold (while still getting junk chest whenever you don't pass a threshold). This way, it would be easier to make grinding time consistent between high and low elo.