RE: Season 6 Updates and Balance Changes!
The balance changes all seem good to me.
The reward changes keep slanting the rewards ever more in favour of the players at the top. Making sure the players below fall behind at an ever-accelerating rate. Terrible.
You use the "Not many players" as an explanation for some of these changes. These changes are exactly what keep new players away from joining.
Here are some example league changes. The numbers are how much the rewards are reduced relative to current ones, by league:
Silver
60-20% less rewards daily
40% less rewards at end of season.
Diamond
33-6.33% less rewards daily
25% less rewards at end of season.
Champion
20-0% less rewards daily
20-0% season less rewards at end of season..
Goal is to reduce rewards? Then why not reduce them for players at the top too?
Goal is to make the game more fair? Then why not reduce them for everyone equally?
Goal seems to be, as always, to make the players at the top feel special, and chase away everyone thinking of picking this game up, unless they're willing to put up a lot of cash upfront.
And if the goal is to deal with bots, then deal something with it, or accept it can't be done to the full effect, and if you're harming real players' experience overmuch while dealing with bots, you won't have any playerbase left either way.
This was the debate I brought up in SM chat. For some reason allot didn't see my point. Reduced rewards is ok imo but they need to be reduced equally across the board. If anything reduced more at the higher levels. Players don't need 20 free cards a day.
they become the king without his clothes in that environment... if the SM guys don't get out and talk to the regular folks, then this game will take way longer to prosper than it should have. Typical human nature, but they need to move past it if they are going to prosper.
You have to remember who the audience there is. It's either the ones who invested the most money, or the ones who dream they can make it big. They sound just like people in pyramid scheme meetups.
Or people who argue everything away with, "But it's in beta!" While not realizing many of the decisions currently made only make sense for a game out of beta, and don't make sense in the context of a beta game.
I've given up on that. I might make some posts on the topic this week, but I'm gonna aim them at the larger audience, not at people who already invested, and have their biases as a result.
And it just seems like all the devs care about is keeping the Mavs happy. Even if Mavs will be the ones to keep spending the most money (not guaranteed, since they already have everything), nobody likes to spend money on a dead game.
I happen to be a maverick myself. Lots of good people sharing their ideas to improve the game in that section but I do feel as some individual opinions are based on whats best for themselves when certain debates come up instead of whats best for the game as a whole.
You'll note I'm not condemning the mavs here, but the devs. The developers' job is to do what is good for the game, not necessarily what players are asking for.
And yes, since this is treated as an investment, many opinions are geared purely on what's good for the opinion-giver, and often short-term at that.
You could argue I do likewise. I mean, what low-level player will not argue against the current changes, right? Well, I end every season in Challenger. I already more than made out my money from this game. I just hate seeing the decisions going on.
And yes, obviously some mavs really are out there for others. Just like we have things like Curie on Steemit. But it's an exception (on Steemit, not gonna say one way or the other on SM), except for the devs' decisions all being the sort that are entirely top-of-pyramid focused.
Its hard to find a balance but I have faith the devs will do just that. They put in allot of work and are considerate of the opinions of the players when making changes. The concerns addressed in this topic won't go unnoticed by them.
Good luck in the battle field !
Bots generally farm at the lower levels. By keeping the rewards high at the higher ranks it gives real players incentive to move up.
Sounds to me like a better solution would be to deal with the bots.
What about weaker players? And you think players wouldn't climb if they couldn't? You're just punishing those who can't.
And here's a question, why are players in Champion 2 league getting hurt then? As mentioned, if the goal is to reduce goals, then everyone should be hit. If the goal is to fight bots, then fight bots.
Agree with you completely @geekorner! Very very very true
I agree with your points... You are spot on! Thank you for making them so clearly.