PvP ladder forumula seems grindy and a bit wonky, is it working as intended?

Gameplay Chat (PC/Mobile)
21

I think you’re operating on fundamentally false assumptions. PvP isn’t failing at its goals – they just aren’t the ones you think they are. Yes, the leaderboard fundamentally is based on time and speed. That may not be ideal, but do you have a better suggestion? What else can they measure? Would another system have perverse incentives, or discourage play?

The developers aren’t setting the bar for how much time you need to spend to rank in the top 100 – other players are. Only 1000 players each week are going to receive rank rewards, so no matter the criteria, you’re statistically unlikely to make the grade. If the criteria are reachable for you, then they’re also going to be reachable for many other people. The first half of the opening post boils down to complaining that other people are running faster than you in a race – kind of completely missing the point or structure of a race. Yes, if you slow down or stop, people who keep running faster than you will pass you. None of that is the developer’s fault. The only bar they set for you is for the tier rewards, which operate like what you’re asking for: The top tier only requires 1900 points, and you receive the rewards immediately, rather than having to hold that tier for the rest of the week. If rank rewards were based on highest rank throughout the week, then I’d be getting them, since I regularly rank in the top 100 or 1000 for a short period of time on Monday, due mostly to the hours I regularly have to play.

The leaderboard and rank rewards are not intended to be a method for the average player to acquire anything. The people who regularly rank in the top 100 were playing that much before the leaderboard existed, and don’t need the rewards anyway. The leaderboard doesn’t drive play so much as it recognizes those who were already playing excessively. This enables the developers to give out the most valuable resources in the game, the ones that drive sales, without any actual impact on their income. Breaking up the leaderboards into multiple divisions just means a few more people who still aren’t you would get rank rewards.

However, the leaderboard and PvP are not synonymous. PvP is a great source of resources, independent of the rank or even the tier rewards. You get gold, keys, souls, maps, and traitstones all from PvP battles, just like any other battles. The difference between PvP and other battles is both the variety of the teams you’ll face, and the difficulty of overcoming the best defenses other players can create. The game doesn’t revolve around PvP or the leaderboard. There are other activities, and hopefully they will continue to add more. But they added the leaderboard because the people who were already playing enough to be competitive wanted to be able to see how they were doing. Now they can, and so can you: the number of battles they’ve won and lost is clearly visible on the leaderboard. It doesn’t tell you how much time they spent, so it’s not all the information you asked for, but some of the data is there.

In short, the leaderboard isn’t for everyone. Ignore it. Not everything in the game will appeal to every player, and there’s not a problem with that. You’re not supposed to get arcane traitstones as fast as you want to, unless you spend money on them.

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22

It’s time consuming to compete in PvP, perhaps give PvP points on a defense win equal to what you would get for an invade to make it a bit more skill friendly.

I also mentioned before to give the defender a gauge bar that increases every turn and once filled up would create a laser AoE non-true dmg to the invading team (not OP but giving the defender an edge)… that bar would fill quicker and quicker as the match takes longer and longer…

23

A couple of the posters seem to think I’m whining or complaining. I’m not, I’m asking questions. I’m simply curious as to the net effects of this newer PvP structure both in appeal, time consumption as designed, and rewards.

I went through the effort / time to get in the top 100 and stay there this week. I had to ‘grind play’ daily to get there. My highest or best rank before I got mind-numbingly bored was seventy something (74 perhaps)? I would routinely get knocked back to 900-2000s daily. I played almost all day on Sat and Sun to earn back spot in top 100. On Sunday night, I went to bed at 11pm in spot 84. I believe I was bumped down to 101-200 bracket before it ended as I received my 1 arcane trait stone for my time / efforts (and the ancillary gifts for that bracket.

I built a team that nearly went undefeated. It wasn’t hard. I started with one strategy and went to another once I realized it was about speed of kills and quantity of kills daily, beating the top team I’m offered each time. I played against DHJL, Sister, Mark and the alike who all at various times were in top spots.

Looking back, I put in perhaps 6-10 hours daily for 7 days. It’s not normal for me. My guild donations in trophies were through the roof as was my gold donations… so, one could argue other benefits were received. I hear you and understand… but that’s not what I’m talking about.

In the end, its a game. I fully appreciate that getting to the top is reflective of the amount of time played by others. I also appreciate that its the players who push the bar, but they do so within the structure and confines that the dev’s have built with points earned / lost. For example - if the devs were to eliminat lost points, losses would mean less while time to kill and quantity of wins would mean more. If the devs were to increase loss points significantly, quality of play and record would mean far more than time and games played, as a number of losses regularly would keep you out of the running, while a perfect record and less play per day could propel you up the charts. If the devs institued neither of those, but put a cap on games played daily in PvP ladder, then again precision of quality play would be paramount as you could only get so many points per day - period… a number of measures could be taken like these, and others, to reduce TIME but still measure PERFORMANCE in ladder… in addition, they could pay out similar to hearthstone’s ladder, in that rewards are paid based on the highest rank you achieved at any time during the event, not simply on your final close record. List goes on…

So my original question is still on my mind, and it’s a public forum of folks interested in the game, and perhaps conversation will continue. The only difference is, I now have an appreciation for what it takes to get there. Thus I still wonder, in a game like this, is PvP working as designed? Are consumers at large enjoying it as designed? Should one have to put in that kind of time in a game like this to make the top goals? Is that measure, good for business? Does that appeal to the audience at large? Is PvP and it’s time goals even meant to appeal to the audience at large? Is the gold / glory drops along the way sufficient to satisfy the larger scope of audience who will never see top 1000, much less top 100 or even top 10?

Perhaps the answer is simply yes, it is indeed enough, it is working as designed, and the goals are there to appeal to a wide range of audience. Arcane traits as a result, in this fashioin, will be limited to a few, by design.

If that’s the answer, Okay. Experiment over.

Cheers,

24

I think it’s a bit crazy. I spent a good amount of time one week to get tier 1 reward. I played a total of about 150 matches (this is a LOT of matches for a common, casual player) If you break it down that’s 20+ matches per day. I was astounded to find myself not near the top 1,000… not near the top 10,000… but somewhere in the 20,000 rank range… I guess when you factor in mobile then there’s a solid amount of weekly players. But even still. This means 20,000 people played much more than I did. That seems really crazy. And for my efforts playing 5-10 hours a week would be about the same as someone that played 5-10 minutes. I don’t think that’s really fair. Maybe bump up the rewards for reaching higher tiers? It does take quite some effort even going undefeated to reach tier 1. Make it worth their time.

1 Like
25

It does appear that at least for the arcane traitstones, they are looking at adding another option when you read this recent post.

It doesn’t talk to the nature of PvP or time vs. rewards in it, but at least they see an issue of arcane trait stone availability.

26

Never knew there was an issue.

27

Maybe you can tell us koolbiird then an easy way to get arcane traitstones for free?

28

Impossible. Grinding takes time. Money takes time. No such thing as free.

2 Likes
29

Once again, consider that the reason it takes so much time and so many battles to rank on the leaderboard is because that’s how much people want to play, were already playing before the leaderboard existed. If nobody wanted to play several hundred matches per week, then it wouldn’t take several hundred matches to rank on the leaderboard. The demand was there. The leaderboard didn’t necessarily have that much effect on the behavior of most players. It’s just revealing what they were already doing.

There are other ways they could have designed it, and in my opinion, they should have designed it differently. But given the other design choices they’ve made, there aren’t too many variables they could use that would actually have enough variance to be statistically significant. Particularly at the the higher levels, players win almost all their battles, defense has an extremely low win rate, and battles take only a couple minutes. The only real variable is time played. Limiting the number of ranked battles players could participate in would frustrate the people who want to play more, and rather than emphasizing skill, it would increase the impact of randomness, and drive people to be very selective about the battles they engage, looking only for safe, boring targets. There would be a lot of skipping. Then the top-ranked players would be those willing to spend the most gems.

2 Likes
30

Tier 1 is already more generous than the old rank 1. You make the old (pre-2.0) rank 1 rewards by the time you reach tier 5, and everything after is a bonus.

As for time investment, that’s what the game rewards. The actual awards for ranks really, really aren’t worth the time investment for most people; it’s almost completely an ego thing. If you can’t play 3-4 hours per day – or more – to keep up with the leaders, that’s okay. Go out and spend some of your saved time outside enjoying the non-GoW world.

4 Likes
31

We all know by now that the time spent in PvP is going to affect your PvP rank… the problem is the following:

  • The fact that you must speed clear invades 60-90 secs to remain competitive for top 10 IS A PROBLEM

Why?

It eliminates a whole whack of troops from being used to accomplish that clear time…

I can’t use Valkyrie in my invades because I need to look if there is a 4-5 gem match before casting her spell… it would be suicide to use her spell without looking and realizing there is NO extra turns possible… same for Alchemist or other color changers (that takes just way to much time).

The only way I would use Valkyrie in a speed team is with 2 mabs, casting valk blindfolded cause I don’t care if I don’t get 4-5 gem matches, as long as I have 10 blue next turn I can get extra turn after mab’s cast.

Everyone needs to come up with a straight forward NO THINKING STRATEGY to win ASAP… how fun is that ? How much skill is required ? None

That is a reason why Maw is played so much, u devour soon as u can cast him NO MATTER WHAT so u can get a fast clear… same for Yasmine chalice + Rowanne… there is only limited teams that are straight forward thinking…

The PVP is basically eliminating a bunch of troops to be used competitively… like most defensive abilities just prolonging the fight is useless for invading…

Edit: I would like to see something new in the game (mega boss or what not) that makes defensive troops useful to survive the fight IMO.

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