[LEAGUE] Problems with the League system

Maybe make wins in leagues give chests as regular MP games?

 

Maybe make the extra games give a 10% change of getting a epic chest? so ppl can try gamble a bit? dunno if thats even possible

 

Make league battles count towards the daily mp win count - and maybe make them give AotA items only?

 

Pay us . 10 pizza for each extra game and we'll never stop .

 

Rewording one of my suggestions (above):
You can keep playing until you've completed the standing games and have enough wins to qualify for a prize.

And I'd love to see stats on what percentage of league participants lose all their games.

 

Okay, I've now played two more leagues, and got second and first place in them, so I'm rather less depressed now. (I didn't get the figure I really wanted, but at least it seems possible now.) Given my normal horrible performance in ranked MP, I'm surprised that I'm doing better in the non-constructed leagues than I did with the constructed one.

 

Giving a brown chest for wins past the # of games you have to play could work.

 

I thought of something that overlaps the issue and . . . MIGHT help.

I just posted this question elsewhere:

You need people to play. Tiebreaker points encourage some people. But people who have won zero games get NOTHING and cannot even get basic loot by winning another league game.

This is very discouraging, especially if the matchmaking system happens to place you against people 500 or 600 above you for your initial four matches. Which basically describes the experience of the last two leagues for the person sitting a few feet away from me. What if someone wins none of the first four games but then wins the fifth match or sixth? No reward. (Which we just saw happen over here and thus confirmed as a waste of time.)

So I think some OTHER reward is needed for people who play further. Something to keep folks from going crazy with tiebreaker points, AND to satisfy those disgruntled players who are out of league standings with zero wins. (And encourage those who've won at least one game, and are secure in the standings with no tie, to play more too.)

I mention these together because I suspect a simple reward, like allowing end-of-battle treasure chests once beyond the fourth match (as suggested), would solve the problems. Disentangle the tiebreaking function completely and just leave it as a special themed multiplayer romp for people who got in the league.

 

I'd like to chime in and echo what some other people are saying on the tiebreaker points system, as well as offer some possible solutions.

Problems with the current tiebreaker point system:

It's not fun to race to win as many games as possible within an hour to break ties.
This is really the core of it, it's really stressful, and it makes it so that getting 4-0 is just a prerequisite to getting 1st place, as opposed to the actual goal of the league.

If you go 4-0 but don't come in first, it really sucks.
I mean, you won every game, but don't get the 1st place prize? What? That just feels...bad.

The system encourages collusion.
And really, why wouldn't you collude? If you don't, everyone tied with you is going to have to spend the next hour playing as many games as possible for no additional rewards, but tons of pointless additional stress.

People are generally nice, and aren't going to want to do this to others.

And this isn't really a problem that can be solved. Even if BM employed the most strict anti-collusion policy/changes possible (perma-banned everyone who colluded, removed all stats on other people in your pod, disabled chat while leagues were running), it would simply become the norm to stop playing after 4 games if you won them all, so that people are indirectly colluding with each other.

What this collusion causes is the exact thing the tiebreaker system was implemented to avoid - people stop playing after 4 games.

The solution to the tiebreaker point problem:

Make rewards tied to your # of wins during those 4 games
This change is pretty much mandatory to fix the system. Simply tie your rewards to the number of wins you get (Like in Hearthstone's arena mode) - 4-0 is 1st prize, 3-1 is second, etc. This system, however, causes a new problem: players have no incentive to play competitively past their 4th game.

Hearthstone can get away with its system because it's made by Blizzard, and they can reasonably assume they'll always have enough players online playing Arena to make the system work at any given point in time. CH can't necessarily make that assumption, and needs to encourage players to keep playing (and trying to win!) games past the first four.

Potential (partial) solutions to get players to play more than 4 games and try to win them:

Cap the number of extra games that can be played
This doesn't encourage people to try to win, but combined with some of the other possible soultions it provides them an incentive to not lose. If you don't need tiebreaker points to win, what's to stop you from just going in and intentionally losing a ton of games to be nice and give free wins to people? Well, if you cap the number of extra games (at, say, 4), people can do this at MOST 4 times, but if there's rewards they get for winning they probably won't do it at all.

Make wins count towards chest reward track
I've already suggested that league wins count towards the track, but it's possible you could make additional wins beyond the first 4 games count as well. I'm not a huge fan of this option though, as it's probably not a big enough incentive to make players not just resign to be nice to others.

Have a separate bonus games reward track
This would be a mini-reward track. I'm thinking if you cap the number of bonus games at 4, the reward track would have 2 wooden chests, a gold one, and an epic chest at the end (or a second gold, if an epic's too generous). This gives players a second chance to go 4-0 to get an epic chest, and a strong incentive to play past the 4 required games.

Make it so that you can compete in a league multiple times
Basically, upon completing the league you'd be able to sign up for it and complete it again. You'd have to extend the sign-up period to cover the majority of the time the league runs for. This would ensure a constant flow of players trying to win. This wouldn't work while the entry fees are still being waived, however, and it also brings back the initial problem of players being rewarded mostly on # of games played.


My recommendation would be to cap the # of extra games at 4, and add in the seperate reward track for these bonus games. That way people have a strong incentive to play 4 extra games, don't just forfeit them, with a reward that isn't SO GOOD that players don't feel like they HAVE to play the extra 4 games, with a bonus of feeling like your entry fee buys you 2 chances to go 4-0 instead of only 1. If these extra rewards make league rewards TOO good, the 1st and 2nd place league prizes could always be nerfed a bit to compensate.

Overall, if combined with my previous suggestion of letting league wins count on the daily reward track, this would eliminate the stressful and annoying aspects of leagues, while making you feel rewarded for every game that you win.

 

I've realized there is a plus side. When I get in a tie and need more Victory Points, suddenly gameplay changes. I CARE about Victory Points as if they were loot. After discussing repeatedly how I feel the Victory Point system is underutilized, this change shakes things up. It's like now I'm hunting a valuable, quantifiable thing, and I can lose a match no problem so long as I extract enough points from the jaws of defeat.

If they could keep that CONCEPT somewhere, it could be fun.

 

I strongly dislike that concept. A win is a win and a loss is a loss.

 

Great argumentation!

 

I figured that was a large reason for it. I'd say make anyone who ties play 1 (or 2) more matches to resolve the tie. If they STILL tie then just give them both the rewards.

This might not work though in situations when someone ties right at the very end of the League. The current situation though rewards those who get in first and play heavily (just to get VP and then quit when they know they can't get VP easily). That's HEAVILY flawed.

 

Played the Artifact Anarchy league at noon today, and after my four games I was in first place (though I could see that other pod members could catch up to me). I then quit CH because I had other stuff I needed to do today.

Just logged in now to collect my rewards, and found out I got fourth place!



I lost two ranks for not playing past the required games, and look: the grand prize winner didn't even complete all his games!

 

Well, 3/3 is better than 2/4
And you would have probably been 4th even if they all played only 4 games.
But yes, as we all have said many times already, would be better if playing more games wouldn't give an advantage.

 

How about giving out a separate award(s) of normal/Magnificent AOTA chests for most games won in each pod? So even if you are in last place in your pod, you can just play a few more games, and if you can rack up a few more wins then your podmates, you get a small reward.

 

• This could end up with another situation of cueing games as fast as possible for 2 hours straight.

• I agree with what was said before that if a person goes 0-4, they should still have a way to make themselves eligible for a prize.

• If (and this is a big if) interest in leagues remains high enough once they stop being free, I'd like to see 3-5 pods being filled simultaneously with players placed in a pod based on rating. While this doesn't ensure that a player will get games against similar ratings, at least they're competing against players with similar rating. That way each pod is more balanced within itself in relation to the field. (If a pod is full of mostly 400-800 rated players, they are more likely to do similarly in their games against the field of players than if a 400 is put in a pod with a 1700.) It would make pods fill a little slower, but if the tiebreaker system is removed, it's not like you can't go play the campaign and come back because now you're not racing for stars. Obviously at the end of sign up something would have to be done to combine pods so the fewest number of players are left out in the cold (no sense in having 5 pods all 1 player short). OR, at the end of the first hour don't create any more pods, but let them all fill. So have the sign-up timer switch to something like "3 leagues spots remaining" or whatever.

• If a league reward track was set up, it might be worth considering a "reverse chest distribution" as the normal MP track. Such that the more games you play the more frequent gold chests become available.

 

THIS. SO MUCH THIS. I played in a league as a 800-900 ranked player of a month or so... fought 1600/1600 /1400 in the league requires teleports/flight to move about and got ruined by: 3 dwarf wizards with firestorms and resistant hide and toughness. Crushed. : stone feet once warped onto to center square locking the game. : 10+ whirlwind type effects... All of this stuff while i have only one item on each of my guys that would even allow travel to other squares.

This is horrible matchmaking, and if it keeps on like this when you try to make the leagues Pay to Play, forget it. It's pay to feed the top fed farmers and made of anti fun particles.

 

One pizza per victory up to a maximum of 9!

Somewhat this. While i feel there is a lot of exaggeration going on i think this map has a issue with the fact that flight travel isn't that easy to come by. Every single match i played was wizards sniping over the water for 6 turns while waiting for a flight card. I blame my build on that for me as i have access to some of those cards and chose to use better spells instead. But the issue is bigger the less items you have and that became very clear to me as i who have a decent collection still lacked the items needed to actually bother with the WP. I would suggest some way to get there without tp possibly rickety bridges at the edges of the map that are all difficult terrain.