[Suggestion] Reduce League Rewards

I am concerned about the sheer value of leagues in the upcoming patch.

Leagues are already an absurdly good deal. With the upcoming changes to the multiplayer reward track, they'll become by far the most efficient way of spending both time and money. Right now, I feel like those who choose not to play leagues are really missing out on loot. Currently, single player and ranked multiplayer simply can't compete with the loot potential of leagues. When the patch comes out, single player enthusiasts will be at an even greater disadvantage, and leagues will still be strictly better than ranked multiplayer.

Let's look at the entry fee vs reward ratio. It costs 50 gold to enter a league. The prizes are as follows:

1st: 1 epic chest, 2 magnificent chests
2nd: 1 epic chest, 1 magnificent chest
3rd: 1 epic chest
4th: 4 magnificent chests
5th: 3 magnificent chests

Let's convert this to gold. Epic chests will cost 25 pizza (worth 250 gold) and magnificent chests will cost 5 pizza (worth 50 gold).

1st: 350 gold (600% return on investment)
2nd: 300 gold (500% return on investment)
3rd: 250 gold (400% return on investment)
4th: 200 gold (300% return on investment)
5th: 150 gold (200% return on investment)

With an entry fee of only 50 gold, a minimum prize payout worth 150 gold, and an average prize payout worth 250 gold, leagues are a no-brainer as far as loot is concerned. Even if you join and drop immediately, you receive 3 magnificent chests. Rather than buy magnificent chests, players simply join a league and don't play any matches. They get those chests at a 66% discount AND improve the average reward for everyone else in the pod. Why would you ever purchase a magnificent chest for pizza? Just convert that pizza to gold and join a league without playing any matches. You'll get 3 chests for the price of 1.

With the improvements to multiplayer rewards, and especially with the increase in treasure drops, it will become extremely easy for one to pay off the cost of their league directly from their win chests. A single rare treasure drop will cover 80% of the entry fee. Given the substantial bolstering of the multiplayer reward track, this seems like the perfect time to tone down the league rewards. On average, you'll get 2 wins as part of your series of league matches. With the new multiplayer reward track, this will net you an extra 2 rares on average, or up to 4 if you have club membership.

To compensate for this, what if the rewards were reduced to:

1st: 1 epic (250 gold)
2nd: 4 magnificent (200 gold)
3rd: 3 magnificent (150 gold)
4th: 2 magnificent (100 gold)
5th: 1 magnificent (50 gold)

The average payout would be worth 150 gold, 3 times the entry fee of the league. The minimum payout would be worth 50 gold, which is equivalent to the entry fee, so you won't lose any value even if you place last.

Leagues would still be a great deal. With the new reward track, the overall payouts will still be roughly as good as they were before. In terms of value leagues will still be almost strictly better than playing ranked. The disparity just won't be quite as wide as it is now.

Also, people would no longer be encouraged to join a league without playing any matches. You'll only get 1 magnificent chest for 50 gold, which is exactly the deal you'd get if you bought the chest from the shop.

Ultimately, I think people should be able to play Card Hunter however they want to play it without feeling like they're being penalized for not playing the most lucrative game type. I think reducing the reward disparity between the different modes of play will only make Card Hunter a better game.

Feedback is appreciated.

 

Yup.
Or bring back pizza leagues so people will at least have to pay to enter.

 

Right, but this only applies if you think purchasing chests is good value for your money. If you sell all the items you get, you'll lose an average of 6 gp for every league you play. Items from the MP chests for your wins will likely give you a little profit, but you'll always have a chance of losing 23 gp for every league you play (chance is 1/16 if victories are determined by flipping a coin).

 

Leagues had a low entry cost in order to get more people to play them. As jon said, it had to be a "no-brainer" to join leagues.
As it has been pointed out, with the current prize structure you could actually ending up selling all your stuff for less than the 50 g you paid to enter (even if you wind third place!) although that has more to do with the crappy selling price of items than anything.

I would like to say, it would be a great improvement to leagues if your tie-break score was equal to the number of stars you have earned, not the number of stars you had - your opponent's when you win a game. That way if you play and lose 3 games, but earn 9 stars by defeating characters/scoring VP's, you would have a better score than Mr. McNotPlayedAnyGames. That's the kind of, no-holds-barred cutthroat gaming I want to see. I always go down swinging.

 

Exactly, that is why you can not compare pizza chests with gold entry fees.

 

I don't know that I have a strong opinion on this, but I think there are some things that need to be pointed out. If you're identifying the distinction by the

, then the discussion needs to be what is gotten out of certain game types (loot), not an intermediate aspect (chests). What I mean is, if you're comparing what can be garnered from Standard MP and Leagues, then it's not chests that ultimately are being gained but loot. It is an inaccurate comparison to say that someone who wins a magnificent chest has won 50 gold worth of stuff because it's not like they can choose to sell back an unopened chest for 50 gold. What they have actually won is whatever is in the chest. So if you want to make a comparison I would start with the following as what is won in leagues:

1st: 2 epic+ items, 2 rare+ items, 11 random
2nd: 2 epic+ items, 1 rare+ items, 7 random
3rd: 2 epic+ items, 3 random
4th: 4 rare+ items, 16 random
5th: 3 rare+ items, 12 random

or converted to gold:

1st: 61+ gold
2nd: 52+ gold
3rd: 43+ gold
4th: 36+ gold
5th: 27+ gold

Looking at chest costs instead of chest contents only has legitimate comparison if chest purchases were a common practice across the average cross section of CH players (which it's not), rather than league prizes being pursued as loot and not as a means to purchase chests.

I would also note, with the increase to MP rewards the loot gap between Standard and Leagues as a ratio is actually decreasing with the proposed changes, so I'm not sure why because of the MP changes Leagues should now be reduced. Put another way, Standard play "pays" via the MP track, Leagues "pay" the MP track + prizes. This means that the difference in payout is only the League prizes. These have been significantly better than what is gained from the MP track but with the massive boost to the MP track, these prizes will no longer have nearly the gap of payout in comparison to the MP track by itself. Thus with the proposed MP changes the difference as a straight "this minus that" is identical to what it currently is, and as a ratio it will be closer than present.

 

Your numbers are correct only if you assume that all of the chests have the worst possible distribution of items (4 commons 1 rare for magnificent chests and 3 commons 2 epics for epic chests). In this case you will lose 6.2 gold on average by selling everything. However, most of the time, the rarity slots of some of the reward chests will be upgraded in some fashion, and if even one chest contains a legendary, selling everything will at least break even on average. I'd actually estimate that if you sell everything from leagues on average you'll break even or even turn a small profit.

Also, as Jade303 pointed out, sell values of non treasure items are terrible. The fact that selling everything only loses you 23 gold in the absolute worst case is actually more evidence of the sheer cost effectiveness of leagues. Think about what this scenerio entails. Not only do you need to place last in your pod, but in your 3 chests, every single item has to roll the lowest possible rarity, and all of the items you get have to be so bad they're not worth anything more than their sell price. Think about what a low percentage scenario this is. And then consider that this low percentage absolute worst case scenario doesn't even lose you half of your investment, even given the abysmal sell price of items. Compare this to your potential gains from leagues. What if you drop something you would have purchased from randimar? You definitely turn a massive profit. Overall leagues are basically risk free. You're almost sure to come out ahead, sometimes by a lot.

Plenty of people play leagues. I dont have the official data but from what i can observe leagues are almost as popular as ranked play, if not more popular. I've had to wait 10+ minutes in queue for a ranked game. As far as I know wait times on that scale are unheard of in leagues.

Why exactly does it need to be a "no-brainer" to play leagues? Players should be able to play what they want to based on how fun it is for them. If the leagues are truely what the community finds enjoyable, then they'll play them without needing any additional incentives. If the rewards are brought more in line with other forms of play and everyone stops playing leagues, doesn't that mean that the leagues just weren't very fun in the first place? If people enjoy playing leagues for fun, they shouldn't need additional loot on top of everything. A format should be able to survive on its own merits. Its survival shouldn't be dependent additional loot to seduce players. If it's fun, people will play it. If it's not, it shouldn't be in the game.

Leagues rewards were always unbalanced and should have been nerfed a long time ago. This economy rebalance is merely a great opportunity to implement it. Since Leagues are benefiting from the MP reward track buff, league enthusiasts won't feel as punished if the rewards are reduced a little. Their overall haul will basically be the same as it was before, which is totally fine. Plus, now that a league is almost guaranteed to pay for itself in treasure drops, even players who are short on gold will still be inclined to enter.

Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with the MP reward track changes and I do feel like the item gap between ranked and leagues is shrinking. It's still pretty wide though, and I maintain that even after the economy rebalance the best way to get loot in this game will be farming the loot fairy whenever it's available and playing whatever leagues you can. Ranked multiplayer and the remainder of single player won't have a place in optimal loot acquisition, and I think this is a huge problem.

 

Yes. But I find multiplayer games very stressful, and leagues increase that by requiring that I log in at a certain time and devote about an hour to the game. For me, the gold leagues currently are not worth the potential rewards. Also, I only sell excess items, so many chests I open (even some epic chests) contain nothing new, nothing I want to use, and nothing I can sell.

 

You've got to pick one side or the other. Either loot can be used as a motivating factor, or loot disparity doesn't matter to motivation, it can't be both.

 

Sorry for the confusion. I want ALL forms of play to have a place in optimal loot acquisition, and players should advance their collections at a similar rate no matter how they choose to play Card Hunter. Not format should get special treatment. Players want to advance, so they will naturally gravitate towards acquiring more loot, but by making sure that all game modes grant roughly equal loot, each player will play the game mode they enjoy the most rather than sacrifice fun for loot.

Right now, there are ranked enthusiasts who play leagues, not because they feel like playing artifact anarchy or quickdraw, but because the payout is so much better than normal ranked. If the payouts were equal they wouldn't bother with leagues because they would rather just play ranked.

 

I do like playing leagues, and I do like playing ranked. One problem with the new reward system is that if leagues are still 50 g and still give you MP chest ladder rewards, there is no point playing ranked if your goal is treasure. And that sounds like a legit problem.

 

Yeah I understand, but with leagues there is an entrance cost - this pushes some players that would otherwise prefer to play leagues to play other formats, this is why league rewards had to be pushed up and costs down. Remember for a lot of players it's not about actual gold cost/reward but perceived cost/reward. I'm not sure your desire for everything equal across the board can be achieved unless leagues lose both their prizes and costs entirely - but that starts to greatly change the nature of what leagues are.

One could also argue that if all players should be able to equally play what they most enjoy, then leagues should run 24/7 because the league enthusiasts are GREATLY disadvantaged by being only able to play 30% of the time. Also speaking of time, yes I've had a 12+ minute wait time in a league queue, and in a league I don't get the option to play the AI if I don't want to have to keep waiting.

 

If your goal is treasure and you play both now, why would you only play leagues in the future? Standard MP is getting the same boost.

 

Bringing this back up too with a new idea:
Though it's ok to hand out 3 golden chests for 50g (it makes people log in to check league schedule, log in to enter the league, log in to claim the rewards), it's too generous to hand out epic chests like this IN ADDITION to regular MP win chests.
solution a) League game wins wouldn't progress the ranked wins chests, winner of each game might get a regular chest with unc+ unc+ c+ c+ or sth.
solution b) Purple chest shop chests would only hand out 1 epic+ item. Currently I register for a league, win 1 game and even if I end up 3rd (1 win gives 2nd place on average IMO), I still get better reward than MP's 20th chest. That's... weird.

 

20th chest is 2 epics.

 

So? My points stand.

 

OK well I don't know why you want to make people stop playing league. It's already a minor loss for players with large collections. Why does it have to instead be a major loss?

 

What are you talking about? Guaranteed epic+ and more stuff too for first 3 is still more than enough to make leagues worthwhile (solution b).
Or guaranteed 2 epic+s but no guaranteed rare+ loot for every single won league game (solution a).
And 50gold for 3 golden chests would still work the same way.

 

I actually think wins in league games should not progress the multiplayer reward track and instead just reward the regular ranked win chest. This will stop people from grinding leagues too hard, which I think is fair considering there's a greater time investment spent on playing regular ranked games instead of league ones. Also, leagues feel like the "all-in-one" source of loot because of this redundant reward mechanic. Chests (very likely epics) from playing, and chests for placing. At the very least, it would make ranked multiplayer feel a bit more prodigious than it does now.

 

Another option would be to keep the reward track, but to go back to a very old suggestion (that I actually argued strongly against at the time) which is to pay out league prizes on games won regardless of how other pod members do:

"1st" prize is given to anyone who gets four wins, "2nd" to anyone who wins three, "3rd" for two wins, "4th" for one win, and 5th for no wins.

This would both slightly reduce overall rewards (a pod could have no "1st place" winner even if everyone plays) and encourage more league play rather than a one win and done mentality (those who enter and don't play would be no different than now). It additionally removes tie break points complaints and eliminates angst about whether or not one needs to check back to play more games to hold their place in their pod.

There are still some negatives to this approach, but I'll let someone dig up my old posts on the topic if they want to read those. Overall, due to how much league play has dropped off in favor of just entering and not playing, I think the benefits now would outweigh the drawbacks.