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

The fastest way to win items in multiplayer is to trade wins by resigning.

The second fastest way to win items in multiplayer is to tank one's rating by resigning over and over to ensure quick queue times and weak opponents. Then go on a quick winning streak to grab your pink chest.

I'm assuming this is not a feature, and that we want people to try to win in multiplayer. It took me about 3 hours of matches to unlock my first pink chest (rating 0-1200) spending about 1 minute in queue and 10 minutes in a match. It took about 9 hours to unlock my second (rating 1200-1400) spending 5 minutes in queue and more than 15 in a match plus a much lower win rate against much better players.

There are a few possibilities to fix this: Winning MP could pay a gold or pizza reward that scales with rating. Higher elo could contribute to better loot rolls on all chests. The chests could cease to reset at 18 hours etc. Anything to decouple speed of winning from size of reward.

 

You should be reported and punished for repeatedly resigning, tanking your MMR and smurf your account to farm wins. There are always people who only care about reward and do whatever it takes to maximize it, there is no way around that. (I have yet to see a game with a system that adequately solve this problems). The only way currently is to punish those account. Another solution would be to remove the ability to resign, and punish account with frequent disconnect (to intentionally lose).

Currently though, the low beta population escalated your problems with a long matchmaking time for high rating. I can see it get better with a bigger population. Regardless, high MMR matches should usually last longer than low MMR matches simply due to more strategic planning, more thoughts per turn, stalling, damage avoidance card, positioning manipulation cards, ... etc...

I disagree with the idea that reward scales with rating though. The idea of loot is random and for people with incomplete deck who are fighting in low MMR, they need to be able to obtain those item to get better at the game, which raise their MMR up.

 

Another solution I can offer for the pink chest problems. As of right now, I need to devote 6-9 hours a day if I wanted to get that chest. This is simply impossible for most players (even if the time get reduced when playerbase increase). I really do not care much if a chest is pink or not and I got enjoyment out of every matches I play (The subject of how enjoyable this game is just to play is for a different topic) so here's a solution for players, no matter how casual, to reach their pink chest eventually.

Current system: Chest reward reset in 18 hours (?) after your first win (first gold chest). This incentivize farming the first gold chest every day.

Proposed system: Chest reward reset in 12 hours after your last recent win. This brings player choice: whether they want to wait 12 hours each and farm the first chest over and over, or keep winning (in a reasonable timeframe with breaks in-between) to eventually reach that pink chest throughout a period of several days.

 

I expect quite a few responses like this so I will try to address it. I think that this response reinforces my point, even while it purports to critique it.

I think that systematically resigning matches to lower ones MMR is bad behavior. I suspect most players and the developers agree given that there is a mechanism (reports and bans) specifically designed to address this. I think that this is a useful and necessary system.

My complaint is that the reward schedule for items is inconsistant with this system for punishing bad behavior. Because of MM wait times, game complexity, and the 18 hour reset schedule, the optimal way to get items in MP is not "win every game." I don't see why we should ever in any circumstance encourage people to lose matches. It's immaterial to me that the ban system can punish people for intentionally losing matches, there should never have been a reason for them to do so. It is not a critique to say that tools exist to punish people who exploit the item system--it is an acknowledgement that it is possible to exploit the item system. Why not remove that exploit instead of make excuses for it?

1) People who care only about rewards will always find something to exploit.
True, but no reason not to fix this exploit.

2) No game is without exploits.
True, but no reason not to fix this exploit.

3) The only way currently...
This is a suggestion for a change.

4) Remove resignation/rewards for short games.
This does not fix the problem. If you've granted me that this exploit is a problem, why not improve the game by fixing it instead of breaking something else?

5) MM times will improve with a larger population.
Perhaps this is true (though games like LOL have epidemic smurfing because high elo players face long wait times), but again, long wait times are not the problem at hand, the problem at hand is rewarding strategic resignation.

6)Disagree that reward scales with rating.
This is a reasonable critique, reward might be best if it was flat with rating. I would be perfectly happy with "brown chest on a loss, gold chest on a win, pink chest at random." I'm indifferent to the particular solution so long as it dispenses with the "reward resignation" aspect of the game (but note the difference between removing rewards for resigning and punishing resignation).

I don't see explaining away exploits as part of my role as a beta tester. Nor do I have the power to try out different fixes. All I can do is provide feedback as to what seems to be problematic.

 

The current issue with Multiplayer rewards is that of every game: It stops being fun the moment you think you can´t win. Usually, when i manage to secure the VP and eliminate the other team´s wizard first turn, people tend to be quick on their resign button, and that´s not an abuse, it´s simply a gag reflex to the fact that their winning chances heavily diminished. I usually don´t bat an eye when one of my characters is killed if i´ve managed to put dents or am in a favorable position, but when my main damage dealer is eliminated and a Whirlwind knocked me out of the VP, i know when I´m defeated.

This adds up to the fact that multiplayer matches obviously last MUCH longer than regular SP matches, because the AI plays in a snap and some enemies are just easier to beat, this makes losing even more irritating because they are longer and more difficult games that, unless you are at a Gold Chest, can net you WORSE rewards than, lets say, the White Star SP. Right now, outside of getting the first and perhaps second chest everyday, the average player cannot push themselves to get the almighty purple, let alone doing so without Resigning ONCE.

I feel that, if the game wants to make multiplayer more attractive to the casual, non-competitive crowd, it has to offer more endearing rewards than multiplayer with normal chests, because MP IS the current form of grinding, and this game has very well avoided the feel of grinding in the Single Player campaign, it should manage to do so in the Multiplayer fields as well.

This also causes the issue of people looking for the fastest ways of winning, such as cookie cutter Obliterating AOAs. My slow rolling deck is geared to beat these decks that tend to think with the clock rather than their brains, and nets itself a few surrenders on first blood from my opponents. I feel both smart and bad about reading and unpolished reward system to predict the meta

 

I like this idea.

 

First we need to fix the rating system, specifically the AIs' ratings; Gary's rating is ridiculously overinflated from newbies trying to beat him with nothing but a blunt sword. Solution: Don't let players into MP until after they get the free starter deck. Either give it to them the moment they enter MP the first time, or lock MP until the tutorial sends them there.

 

On the Resigning of games problem, I just had someone do that to me and until I read the post I did not know why some people did it.
But maybe a way to workaround/fix of the Resigning problem is to say not let people keep playing / temp ban, if they Resign X times say 5 in say 10 - 20 - 30 minutes. The Resigning without playing a round of combat or two could act as double negative points. I think this could be a way to slow down the problem.
The temp ban could be something like 2-3 hours on a first offence, 4-5 Second and maybe 24hours for each following offence.
As resetting the chest list would reward this even more that is not and option.

 

1. I believe that players should never, EVER be penalized for resigning a match.
2. I believe that players should not be incentivized for resigning a match.

Currently there are multiple incentives for resigning matches, as outlined above. If those incentives can be removed or lessened, then we don't need to try to penalize people for resigning.

 

I am only looking at option that some people are try to exploit in part of the game and as stated it would only be for the person that is using resign in such as way as to exploit the game.
And they would have to be resigning multiple times in a short period of time.
I also don't like to penalize people, unless they are trying to take an unfair advantage.

 

Just out of curiosity, do people feel it is an unfair advantage to get free loot from having an opponent that resigns right away?

 

Yes, of course it is.

 

The match system works to prevent player from getting matched up consecutively. This helps to prevent trading wins, by resigning, from happening. And anyways, I thought the fastest way would just be to play well, and you know, actually win matches.

 

This only works up to a certain number of colluding players/accounts. I doubt people actually try to exploit this right now given the limited availability of beta keys, but when the game goes live and free to play that's bound to change.

Ranked matchmaking and variations of ELO ratings in general only help up to a certain point and can always be gamed, just look at League of Legends and their 10+ million accounts.

 

Which is why one has to fall back upon the second method, strategic resignation to manipulate elo.

I think the optimal algorithm is something like "if your opponent's ELO is more than 100 points different from yours (either higher or lower), resign immediately, otherwise play the game out." This keeps one's ELO artificially low (because one resigns against much lower rated opponents), avoids difficult games (against much higher rated opponents), inflates the ELO of lower rated players so that you are more likely to face them and inflates the elo of higher rated players so you are less likely to face them.

I don't think this requires a grand unified theory of cardhunter to fix. Nor do I think this is a problem present in all reward systems. It is currently easier to give items via resignation than it is to get them via competition. In addition, resignation has the self-oriented side benefit of reducing cue times and match difficulty. Those are easy fixes. Banning, evening out rewards between SP and MP, and a better rating system are all great ideas, but they are separate thread ideas.

 

That would only be the fastest way if you assumed everyone had an adherence to some Lawful Good moral standard.

The way the system is currently set up, I tend to go for the 2-rare gold chest, and then I stop playing MP for the night, because the Queue times are so long after that chest in combination with losing any of those games is enough to put me off playing for the night.

Losses feel like a gigantic waste of time, even the close games that I truly enjoy to the very end leave me with a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe that's ok, and that is something we just have to live with.

Given that, those (like me) who really enjoy the prospect of new items and updated/differing builds and who highly value their time-efficiency, losses are the absolute worst thing possible.

I would be happier if I could refresh the timer myself after # amount of hours.

If I want to grind to the Epic over 3 days, so be it. If I want to reset after 6-12 hours (or whatever it currently is) to get the low hanging fruit some more, so be it - as it would be nice to have the option.

 

Got both my gold's today from players resigning

 

They both forfeited so fast that the screen immediately greyed out and I was unable to read their names. Plus, I don't know if they quit because they were farming or because they had some other pressing issue that caused them to quit.

 

When you return to the MP lobby, there will be a message saying something like "Forlorn defeated xxx" - so you can get their name that way.

However, I would not report players for simply resigning quickly. There are a bunch of legitimate reasons why that might happen, and I think it would be unfair to assume those players were trying to exploit the reward system. For example, I've personally 'lost' a bunch matches because I was immediately disconnected from the server as soon as the game started. In those games my opponent would have had an immediate victory. (However, all of my immediate-disconnect games were against the AI. In fact I could see the AI having its turn at the start of the game behind the message box which said "you have been disconnected from the server... blah blah. refresh the page to reconnect", but I couldn't do anything because I couldn't close that disconnect message and the other controls were not functional. I suppose if I really was disconnected, then the AI must be processed client-side, which is a little bit surprising to me.)