I ask the question in the title with the thought in my mind that week after week we will have a ladder that reflect maybe not the best of GoW but just those with more time to grind endlessly at PvP. I actually have the time to sit on my laptop and play for 18 hours a day if I so wished and while I am a very strong player of the game I would be way to modest to even think of claiming to be the best, not while @Jainus is around lol.
So I thought about it some more and maybe if we decide that week on week we do not wish the race for the top 10 to be affectively over after say 3-4 days we should think of ways to handicap to some extent those with endless hours to play to at least keep the ladder to have some point.
I would attempt to achieve this by introducing a progressive penalty that would limit the point reward to 20% for the top 10 (so a 30pt match would actually give a top 10 player 6pts until they dropped from the top 10). I would apply a 50% penalty to 11-25 and lastly 26-50 would get 75% of the offered reward.
While this would not really benefit a more casual player it would slow down the runaway lead.
If my idea is not suitable what ideas do you think would be worth a try.
I raise this idea as a promise that was made for 2.0 has not been kept in that if your losing you can still quit and face no penalty other than the time it takes to reload. While I have a team I have never lost with and never had to quit with unless a ghost troop has been left I am sure th ability to not lose and endless play is giving us a ladder I do not believe we want or need.
I’m pretty happy with how the ladder works now, because it means I never have to worry about fighting for a top rank.
I just have too many other things to do than grind out 300+ matches of GoW a week.
From how many trophies the top 50 guilds have been putting up over the last 6 months, I was expecting far fewer people playing over 150+ PvP matches a week. I don’t know if this is the newness of the rankings, or if this is normal.
I have also theorized a bit about how the ladder could be more engaging.
One way that I would like is:
Enemy Team get “scaled” by their Ranking Points, say +20% to all stats for every 1000 Ranking Points of the Enemy over 2000 (No scaling before, so everyone should be able to reach Tier 1)
Rewards get scaled similarly
Awarded Ranking Points not only determined by opponents strength (seems to be like that at the moment), but also by difference in Ranking Points (ELO-like). Both should be factored in, so that like now lower level players can compete. Playing against opponents with significantly lower (maybe 1000) Ranking Points than you awards no Points - so no avoiding the troop scaling.
Obviously some “abilities” would have to be reworked for that to stop players from progressing farther and farther, but in my dream scenario, players would at some Point on the ladder reach a “limit” where they only win 50% of the battles, or at least get slowed down significantly. And it would hopefully reward playing more thought full (picking the right counters, playing without mistakes) at the higher stages.
I too am uninterested in grinding away constantly at the game. I liked my previous level of commitment, and I plan to stick with it. If the ladder rewards were better, I’d feel bad about missing out; as it is, I’m glad I can just ignore them.
Same here for the most part. What I am happy with is gold. Given most of my PvP matches were worth 200 or so and now most average 1000 (without bonuses), yeah I’ll keep at it just to help level the kingdoms to 10 much much faster.
This has been fixed as far as I’m aware. You do lose PVP points if you quit. The thing that DOESN’T happen at the moment is that it doesn’t break you win streak on your profile. Which is essentially purely cosmetic as far as I’m aware.
Also one of the issues that’s arisen in some discussions about the ladder is what role should level play in it? Eg should a level 200 player be able to manage to make it into the top 100 if they put in the time? Should it only be level 1000s in the top? Or should everyone have an equal number of PVP points for a win and there for have an equal chance?
None of these questions have a clear answer, but are worth considering when deciding what kind of ladder we want.
Also as an aside I wrote in another post about why ELO itself would be a bad idea. While I understand that in this thread people have been talking more about an “ELO-like” system, which if we WERE to use ELO, is what we’d need. I do want to remind people of the main issues of using an ELO system. Not that these can’t be overcome, but the weaknesses of the system do need to be taken into consideration.
That definitelyis an interestin solution. The problem being it will be a who struck last situation for the top 10 spots. If you can get into top 100 within the last few minutes then hit the number 1 with seconds to spare you win prizes.
I definitely don’t like this bid penny buy style of ladder.
I feel ladder prize structure should be reworked so there is actual incentive do the best you can. I’m top 100 and the rewards are not even as good as 1 hours tribute.
Well as you got higher you got to pick less and less far up the ladder. Once you got to top 50 or something it was by 5s then by 1 at s time at top 10.
I don’t like it, if only because it means I’d never face the top dogs ever again. There’s something satisfying about being able to take out a Match Masters big-shot’s defenses.
I most definitely don’t think they should add the ability for people to directly attack someone’s team to take their position in the ladder. As I’ve said in another thread, this could actually make sense in a game that had a live game between two people. A level 1000 player with maxed out kingdoms with 5 stars, fully traited, usually mythic teams taking on a level 150’s AI controlled much lower level defense team is no contest… at all. It surely isn’t a contest of skill. Therefore, it wouldn’t add any sort of equity to the ladder. The only thing it would add is drama.
Right. I’ve seen it in other games. In my opinion, it still made no sense when it isn’t a test of skill. When the devs add live PVP, I could see it making sense to add such a feature for the top 100 in the lead.
I find it more interesting knowing what the devs had in mind while developing this ladder. I haven’t seen them around explaining things. edit: They are probably very busy with fixing the numerous bugs that the beta-testers have found.
Personally i would have liked Tournaments (or Leagues) better, opt-in for different tournament sizes, requirements and modes, play a fixed amount of matches, failing to play the matches in time, results in automatic losses, etc.
