Ideas for the next the PvP season

So what would you like to be changed in the next PvP season? Shoot!

1. Season could be shorter. 6 weeks perhaps? This didn't feel like one event atm, was too long.
2. In most games section the win rate from that week (or whatever periods there will be) should be looked at not win rate from 1st January 2014.
3. In highest rating section the average rating over last 10? 20? games could be looked at so it wouldn't be possible to get a lucky win streak and then sit on it till next rating collection day. Also an unlucky loss streak wouldn't fall anyone out of the top x list.
4. In most games section top x (in spring season x equaled 20) players could be taken after their points have been calculated.
Points 2-4 might be (very) difficult to do, I know.

I definitely had more ideas. Will post them if I recall any

 

Flak's Wishlist
• Ratings in the API (would allow for more automation)
• @Farbs' meta site should record history for non-guild-members (would make current methods more reliable)
• More generous prize structure
• Some kind of announcements board in-game to make it easier for players to learn about events (like, but not limited to, the season) — this could maybe just be a frame that reads the SRC news RSS feed

 

1. Definitely will be doing shorter periods in the future, possibly with smaller cross-season prizes to reward consistent participation.
2. Agreed. Wasn't possible with tools available at the time but that is something I definitely want.
3. Average rating over the period would be fantastic. The idea of collecting weekly was to get a sort of 'average for the season' but the more data points the better. Would love to see possibility of automation for this.
4. Yeah, with current methods this would be annoying (would need to look at way more people), but methods will be changing.

Good suggestions, Feleran!

 

The season was fantastic, and it motivated me to attain my highest rating ever. I agree that it was too long, but what made it seem so long was that it imposed restrictions on how I play and I assume others had the same experience. In order to have my highest rating, I would need to play the tightest most competitive deck. I found that for me that was the dreaded Divide & Conquer. The season made me do it, Flax. I equipped an all elf team with no wizard as soon as the season was over, rating be damned. The season encouraged participation, but it also encouraged stagnation. A whole new set of cards came out in the middle of this season and I feel like the best players in the game were afraid to really play those new cards competitively. I know some tried, but when you have only a few days to raise your rating up to where you think it ought to be under ideal conditions, you can ill afford to experiment with what may turn out to be inconsistent jank. Could there be a really good instant burn build? Can the elves compete? We weren't going to find out while we were all slaves to our rating.

Additionally, selective queuing and just ceasing to play when your rating was at a zenith were both side effects of the season. I know there may be no real easy solution to these problems, but I hope that any new season finds away to:

1. Allow us to play our less cutthroat builds or experimental builds in ranked play without hamstringing our chances to do well in the season.
2. Encourage us to queue up with a pair of cajones and play whoever we get paired with.

If we cannot solve these issues, a shorter season length with a respite in between ought to help.

 

Use another Metasite or make another section on it which only counts the games you play for that time period.
So the people who like to experiment with builds won´t get punished over those who always played the best cookie cutter builds.

Make it shorter, 3 months of grinding is just for the most dedicated and it should be for everyone.

No exclusive prizes, make a hall of fame or something. So people with jobs and a family won´t feel excluded. Since those are mostly people who pay for ftp games.

Solve the problem with selective queuing.
The mentioned special Metasite just for the season could adjust to such unfairness. Since you could limit the games which count toward the rating between 2 players to a certain amount or make another solution.

 

@Susurrus—I'm aware of these issues, and one of the goals of my deckbuilding competition was to give players who didn't want to 'just win' a chance to get a thing or two. I've got some more things like that up my sleeve, as well as thinking about how to deal with these issues. Agree there's no easy solution. Shorter periods would help, as you say.

Also @Questor, selective queuing is an interesting problem because the devs haven't officially said it's uncool. Still waiting for word on that. Once we got confirmation that it's sucky, we either find some way to discourage it or some way to punish it. I have a few ideas

 

Yeah, selective queuing is one of the biggest problem here. The ethical players who just play against anyone are in disadvantage against those who select their opponents, wheteher it is in the silent version of it (waiting for someone to finish a match and queuing right after) or the "agreed" way (agreeing via lobby chat to queue both at the same time). I hope the devs banned this kind of behaviour, so we can actually report players for doing so, instead of just saying that is unethical.

Another issue is related to the recolection of the data. If the stats are recolected from the farbs site, then everyone should be in the same conditions (being in a guild) so that every player can see other player's matches. It would add much more transparency to the whole process, removing the need to be guessing the amount of matches played with the win streak or with other not completely reliable methods.

Finally, if the next season follows a similar structure, with the need of playing a minimal amount of matches (10 a week in the past season), I would suggest leaving the AI out of the counting. Even though Cardotron can be a pain in the butt due to his op cards, it's relatively easy to build a deck specifically to counter and beat Cardotron and play in the most dead timezone (I don't know really how to say that, I hope you understand it ) that I think it's during the USA early morning, so that you ensure you will face him most of the time.

 

See my wishlist above.

No easy way to do this ATM but yeah it'd be good.

 

I skipped that somehow, but great, we are on the same page then!

 

Flax, next time don't tell anyone. Just pick start and end dates, and set up some prizes with Jon. The first any player will hear of it will be when you post the stats and hand out the prizes. This would relieve you of the stress of dealing with all sorts of complications and complaints, and allow players to play normally. I know it's not a standard "Party Leader" approach. A stealth season would be more like Santa Claus. He's always watching. He always knows. Always.

 

I think the main reason of the season was not to play "normally".
The main reason was to get people to PLAY ranked and that worked.
I love competition: no game, digital or not, seems appealing to me if it's not competitive. We had players trying to beat each other, the best were accused in all sorts of things, up to accusing bluebluegreen of sharing his account. People were talking about the season, looking who's in lead. They had their favourites who they wanted to see winning. Everyone in there wanted to win themself. CH ranked play had a reason.

 

Please, speak for yourself if you want, but don't generalize. First, not everyone is so competitive as you are describing yourself, there are players who are happy just with participating and competing in the season, without having the mere goal to win. Secondly, it's not the same the pure will to win something than the urge to win by all means, with certain ploys and behaviours that have already been mentioned, and that was the worst thing of the appearance of the season (because before the season ranking didn't have a real meaning more than maybe self-proud). That's why many players respect some players (the ones that won't turn to such base acts just for the will to win at all costs) more than others (the ones who just don't care about ethics). So, competing is fine, wanting to win too obviously, but don't put everyone in the same bag as they just wanted to win. Not every player at the top was accused of something as you said.

 

Elves definitely can compete! If I played more I (hopefully) would've been in the highest rated category floating around in the high 1600-low 1700's with all elves

That said, welcome back to elf-land, Susurrus! =P

As for the actual topic at hand... I have nothing to contribute as I continued to play like 3-5 games per week >_>

 

This isn't for PVP season, but I'd prefer if contests didn't have barriers to entry.

 

Elaborate?

 

Videos should not be mandatory. Encouraged, perhaps, but not mandatory.

 

Yes, the prize structure was a bit underwhelming. It was overly huge for first place in comparison to the rest and dropped off quickly -- I don't think there's a huge skill gap between placements that warrant such a huge prize reward differential. Also, for the time investment you can easily do 1 League a day and earn a huge number of more chests for a lot less investment, save for the exclusive figures.

I don't think the season was too long, I just think that for the STRUCTURE it was too long.

IDEA 1:

The fact that people are directly competing with each other for "places," while driving a competitive environment, is also grounds for great hostility. People should be striving against the game and for personal growth, not for "I got 1 more Elo or 1 more game won than my opponent!" To do that you'd remove prizes based on placement and instead have tiers. It would require slightly more in the API to automate it more so, but shouldn't need much more. This is a system that is used in most other competitive games like "League of Legends" and "StarCraft" and others for casual placement (IDEA 2 is used by those for non-casual placement).

For ranking the tiers would be "played 10 games a week and averaged at the end of the season X Elo" -- which means that everyone who averages that certain Elo gets a prize. Or even have it be "highest Elo bracket reached and 10 games a week" if you want it to be even less stressful and simply encourage players to play. This second option would mean people wouldn't need to run super dominant builds constantly, they could switch in and out as long as they were comfortable with their highest Elo reached.

For most wins per week, it could be a tier system for "most games won per week on average." Something as to remove the "who can farm more wins" competition aspect so people aren't directly competing.

IDEA 2:

If Jon and/or the community wants direct competition for seasonal placement, then I'd restructure it so that it is simply for "placement" for a final battle that determines the winner.

Rating would narrow it down to the top X players and then those players would play against each other in a "best of 3" series (double Elimination or Swiss would probably be the best -- matching the highest rated player to the lowest rated player and so on). This would determine final placement for prizes. That would mean players are directly competing with the best of the best, instead of being able to game the system to get a higher average Elo.

Not sure exactly how you'd do that for "games won per week" in this format though.

 

Idea one is better than idea two. Out of curiosity, why so many quotation marks? "StarCraft" ?

 

To offset them. Technically, I should be using Italics, but I'm used to typing in locations that don't support italics. The standard grammatical use for titles is for quotation marks when italics aren't applicable. Just a carry over from my school days where MLA was enforced as law.

 

I see. I was confused by your usage because as I learned it, some titles get quotation marks (regardless of whether italics are available) and some get italics (or an underline if italics aren't available). And game names like those you mentioned—being the titles of entire long works akin to books or movies or albums and not like poems or episodes or songs—would get the latter treatment. Of course, it's the internet, and you're not writing an essay, so you don't really need to do any title formatting... not to mention your target audience doesn't need its hand held with regard to figuring out that Starcraft and League of Legends are proper names referring to popular computer games. XD