1. Reduce league schedule interval to 5 hours or less 2. Rotate ALL PAST and current league maps 3. Include ALL PAST maps for ranked matches too It is clear that the current league schedule is WAY too long. Looking at the wiki, there are a lot of very interesting past league maps. I'm sure most people would like to have a chance to play them. Majority of currently active players have never even seen them and even old veterans might welcome the variation. It gets eventually boring to play the same 4 maps all the time. Furthermore, I would be more interested of artifact and normal chests. Citadel items are fun, but they have too high token cost (even from pvp point of view). TLDR: There are a lot of fun past league maps. We can haz them?
Every month ranked maps rotate, also leagues get rotated frequently. Of course if you want to you can host a casual game with any leagues or ranked maps.
Month? I can barely understand it for ranked maps. But there is absolutely no reason not to rotate ALL existing league maps all the time. I'm counting 21 different league maps in the wiki. Simply rotate all of them every 4 hours? (That would keep it always interesting. People are guaranteed to lose interest of only 4 maps all the time, no matter how good they are).
But I happen to like my quick draw leagues! They take collections out of the equation and force players to develop the best plans with what they are given. If every league is tossed into the rotation, you'll have a difficult time of becoming well versed in any particular league. I remember when I first played oozeball or astral I was like "wtf is this, this makes no sense at all, worst league ever". But I kept playing it because it was in the current rotation and now I don't mind playing them at all. In fact, I think they probably helped me with my positioning, translating to (usually) better placement for my party in ranked matches. The rotations are usually balanced so you can experience the leagues you want in a reasonable amount of time.
I think I've seen all leagues twice or more and I've "only" been 5 months. I think the current rotation system is quite fine. As timeracers pointed out, ranked maps (a set of 4 - 5 maps usually) change at the start of every calendar month. Different map sets favor different strategy, so people have to adapt to them and usually use different builds to be successful. Keeping all the ranked maps in rotation at the same time would create more randomness in ranked play and I'm quite sure the majority don't like that (more randomness in ranked MP). Similarly a set of 4 different leagues run usually for 3 - 4 weeks. I think this is a good system, because it gives enough different leagues to keep things interesting, but at the same time one could see certain leagues often enough to adapt to them (build better decks, learn better tactics etc.) I think it would be shame especially for new players that have just got hang of certain league and wanting to try different build / strategy to see it next time sometime in unforeseeable future. As for other points you mention. Citadel leagues / chests should rotate out after the initial launch at the end of July and after that you should get regular chests from the leagues. If the playerbase keeps steady at many thousands simultaneous online players, increasing the league game frequency from 10 hours to ~7 hours and/or increasing the sign-up period and/or increasing the different leagues in rotation from 4 different leagues to 5 - 6 leagues could be good idea, if waiting times for ranked MP games would still stay low.
Thanks for the answers, good points. But I think you are slightly biased, if you are in the entitled position of having seen the past maps. Majority of active players have not (I believe much more than 50% started in the recent Steam/Citadel release). About playerbase: think of it the other way around. It will stay high, if people stay interested. People stay interested, if they wont get bored of the same 4 league maps all the time. About quick draw leagues: There are quick draw leagues and many fun fixed decks in the past leagues. In fact, only some them use the player's own deck. (I agree that ranked maps should be categorized. For example, maps with a lot of water during one week and other kinds the other week). My main point was the league maps. At least include every map which are either quick draw or fixed decks. To be more precise, lets count them: League Maps (21 total): Quick Draw (6): Temple Tussle (Quick Draw) Streams of Blood (Quick Draw) Deep Forge (Quick Draw) Lost City (Quick Draw) Golden Shrine (Quick Draw) The Host (Quick Draw) Fixed Deck (8): Artifact Anarchy Clash of Geomancy Monkey Magic Astral Tourney Graveyard Gambol Oozeball Monster Hunt Turret Tango Constructed (7): Wicked Waterways Chess Madness Triple Duel The Golden Shrine Death March Roll Out the Barrels Central Processing Unit This leads me to modify my suggestion. How about: 1. Reduce league schedule interval to 4 hours (at least for now, change it back later if really needed) 2. Rotate a set of 7 maps each week. There would be 3 sets: Quick Draw, Fixed and Constructed. (Move 1 fixed deck to the quick draw week to have 7 during each week). For example: Week 1 (Quick Draw): Temple Tussle (Quick Draw) Streams of Blood (Quick Draw) Deep Forge (Quick Draw) Lost City (Quick Draw) Golden Shrine (Quick Draw) The Host (Quick Draw) Turret Tango Week 2 (Fixed): Artifact Anarchy Clash of Geomancy Monkey Magic Astral Tourney Graveyard Gambol Oozeball Monster Hunt Week 3 (Constructed): Wicked Waterways Chess Madness Triple Duel The Golden Shrine Death March Roll Out the Barrels Central Processing Unit
There is a simple reason why there are only a few maps and leagues each month. This gives players time to focus on these leagues and maps and understand the subtle intricacies that exist in a rich strategy game such as this. For ranked MP, It also gives you time to develop a team and strategy which makes best use of the maps. Do the maps favor wizards or warriors? Do they suit telekinesis or Sprint, Team!? Do they favor a waiting game or assertive approach? Similarly for league. So as fun as it would be to have access to to more frequently rotating leagues and maps, you'd only be scratching the surface. It takes a bit more patience and resilience to focus on one thing, but yields many rewards in the long run, which to me, is ultimately more fun.
Lets take for example Turret Tango. First game: I was a total noob, but it was fun. Second game: I was learning and it was fun. From the third game onward: I have won 95% of matches (only losing if draw extremely unlucky cards) and it gets boring. Every day more and more people start to only sign up for chests and not even bother playing it, because it has become too boring. It is sad, because there are a lot of fun maps which you dont even get a chance of playing, unless you still play after 5 months! 99% of the currently very high playerbase have left before that. But we can change that, please.
I've thought ranked rotations were way too long ever since I started playing a few months ago. There's no doubt in my mind that guild seasons and PvP in general would remain just as competitive as they are now if a season consisted of 4 one-week rotations instead of 1 four-week rotation, but they would certainly be more fun. Having a new surprise set of maps show up with Randimar's stock every week would help give players that 'kid on Christmas morning' feeling and motivate them to check in every week just to see what's new. Essentially, it'd help keep the game feeling fresh without the devs actually needing to add anything. I'm not really sure why leagues work the way they do. They're not competitive, and the same ones over and over definitely get boring quickly (especially when they have fixed decks). Surely it would be more fun (and slightly less maintenance) to just cycle through all leagues all the time.
I have played more Turret Tango, because its a fast way to get MP chests, especially if you have a high win ratio in it. It actually becomes interesting in extra rounds (after 4). I guess this is one reason why league schedule interval is so extremely long. It is faster to get MP chests in some leagues, than ranked at high elo. That is actually not a problem currently, because average waiting times for league and ranked games (for most people) have been under 30 seconds lately. One possibility would be to have extra league games (lets say every 10 hours, but 5 hours apart from the normal leagues). All 21 leagues would rotate in it all the time. To avoid increasing ranked waiting times, they would not give MP chests, only the rewards. They might not be as popular as the current leagues because of that, but it would give people more choice. Choice to play them if they like, and have something to do. Choice is always a good thing and it would help the game in general. PS. I also suggest reducing timers from 20 to 15 minutes, in all ranked games and quick draw leagues.
