A Player vs Player Critique / Revision Proposal

[Phaethon]

@Spherix

If most players only played enough to hit tier 1, and the top players only played a little bit more than that, say about 100 battles per week, would the rewards be appropriate? 11 Arcanes seems like an awful big reward for 100 battles. That would be way higher than the drop rates for challenges, or even the new Explore mode.

Now, the reality is that the top players play a lot more than that, and did even before ranked PvP and the associated leaderboard were introduced. They play 1000+ battles per week. 11 Arcanes for 1000 battles would be right around the expected drop rate of 1-2%. Before the introduction of Explore mode, even this was still a competitive return for the amount of effort.

To be honest, they would be fair at that point. It takes 1,656 arcanes to fully trait all the troops currently in the game (ref:List of Troops per Arcane). Considering a person places first every week, and naturally excluding all gain along the way, it would take 151 consecutive weeks in first place to complete. Does this number seem appropriate?

@Spherix

The thing is, the developers don’t actually want to drive people to play that much:

Well, that’s not exactly something you would want to blatantly say. The very quote you cited (though the quotes are a bit out of context, but I still see the relation, to some degree) sort of confirms that:

@Mr.Strange

The best way for us to make money, is to keep people happy and playing the game long-term.

They are not going to say that they want you to spend bushels of time on the game. Look, I’m not saying they are horrible people. They are great with damage control and quick with responding to issues (through tickets, at least), but it is a business. Maybe it’s the cynic in me, but at the end of the day, they are there to make money. While I’m not oblivious to that, I think a boost to rewards wouldn’t be that far out of the question when you consider the requirements everything takes in this game. It is a free to play game and it is really good with not making you feel like you have to spend to enjoy, but the completionist will struggle with this very early on.