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Houston... Kinkoid, we have a problem! What seems to be the problem? Hentai Heroes was designed first and foremost as a long-term, single player, semi-idle collection/gacha game. And, for all the criticisms and feedback I gave about this or that (artwork quality and consistency issues over the past year or so, a few fairly basic QoL features missing, poor communication and wrong signals sent to the community when there are technical issues, month-long support queues and general lack of personalized, adequate responses to support tickets...) this is a truly great game at its core. The Haremverse, the overall game design, many recurring characters, many cool themes, tons of events and fun stuff to change the daily routine and, above all, the amazing visual style and identity of this game make it unique in its niche, and highly enjoyable in the long run, which is what it's supposed to be. However... You've said it yourselves a number of times: the PvP aspects that were Frankenstein-ed further down the line into this fundamentally solo game were supposed to be "secondary" to its core game style. Except they're not. Not even sort of close. They're the exact opposite: completely and utterly game-breaking, ridiculously imbalanced features that make a tiny group of specific players kings of the hill and the vast majority of players left out on the side of the road, permanently (until you do something about it). I'm talking about the League and Player XP systems, here, and how terribly their current versions interact with one another. Arena and Contests, while PvP as well, are far less harmful to the game, for the most part. Arena is essentially a solo feature with a bit of a PvP texture to it, especially now that it no longer gives XP or booster drops. Contests are fairly competitive but decently balanced, except for players at level 360 and beyond, because you didn't adjust the 40-level range for contest brackets beyond that point, despite pushing the max Player Level from 400 (when 360-400 made sense) to 500 (where a Level 360 thrown in groups with players up to 100 levels above them becomes a balance issue). Apart from this specific issue (and a few minor details), and I'll mention it very briefly here as I already gave detailed feedback on that elsewhere, even the upcoming Legendary Contest event format seems fine in my book (even though it's been receiving a lot of negative feedback so far, and seems to have lots of players worried). If all the PvP parts of this game were at least somewhat balanced, and gave somewhat moderate rewards that most players can at least hope to aim for (at least every now and then), like Arena and Contests do, then we'd be okay. But the League system is a different beast altogether. Leagues are by far the most impactful and the most unfair part of this game. It's like the feature was thrown in casually, without too much thought going into its design at all, as an afterthought; but then, you decided to also make it the biggest source of income and power in the game. And it's been this way for years! Without ever really revisiting the concept, or seemingly noticing the super massive black hole this became in the game's economy. It's not even P2W like many (bad) F2P games tend to become over time, which is a very vicious circle that you guys have yet to fall into, despite claims (and the occasional sign) to the contrary. No, it's even more puzzling than that. You just made it a rule one day that players who started playing early enough in the game's development would have a permanent, overwhelming and even exponential advantage over all the others, for as long as they remain active. And that's not okay. So, what's wrong, exactly? Every single week, a dozen players (if that!) each receive well over 14k kobans (aka a jumbo-jet load), the equivalent of a free EPx10 (in orb form, so they can use it whenever they want), and the equivalent of 3 full-bar combativity refills (that they have to use immediately). Another few dozen players (maybe up to a hundred or so, if we add up all top 4 from D1 to D3, bar the D3 winners I just mentioned) each receive something along the lines of a truckload of kobans, a few free combativity refills, and a few EPx1 orbs. Meanwhile, the remaining thousands of players each receive a virtual slap in the face, along with something around 1K kobans at best (aka a pittance). Every single damn week. What's more, at the risk of ruffling some feathers here, is that it's a zero-sum situation in which the vast majority of players aren't even allowed to have a shot, period. When, say, Jelom grabs himself one of the top prizes, he's not even taking it from me, or you (well, the vast majority of you reading this). No, he's taking it from a couple of the other sharks at the top of this broken food chain who were in the same tank as him for that particular week. But that prize was always going to be for one of them. Same with each of the few D3 aquariums in which Kinkoid keep all their sharks well-fed and overgrown and completely separated from the rest of the field. Same for that level 400+ who grabbed your S3 or your D1 top prize. Yeah, you, in the green shirt. He didn't take it from you (if you're a player who actually belongs in that division, that is), he either took it from the couple of other sharks who also like to prey on the most tender fish and happened to be hunting in the same aquarium as him that week, or it was his prize to claim all along. 99% of players in the current state of the League and XP systems have strictly no fighting chance for any meaningful rewards across the board. We're all trapped in a maze of grossly imbalanced mess you guys boldly claim is a "PvP system", and it's been like that for years, and each passing week increases the power level gap between the lucky few sharks at the top and the plentiful reserves of sweet, juicy fish that 99% of us really are in the current system. And it has a ripple effect on every other part of the game, including the more expensive or competitive events introduced in the recent past, like PoA and the upcoming LC format. Many players felt that the PoA left column was kind of on the nose in terms of "you want, you pay!" design, even for a freemium game. But it's not P2W vs F2P, not really or at least not mainly. Who can afford to spend 7k kobans on demand without depleting their koban stash? Maybe players who get thousands every single week no matter what... which leads back to the broken league system being the core imbalance of this game's economy. It will be similar for Legendary Contests: players with the most accumulated resources and power will have a big advantage compared to others in their respective groups, and that kind of advantage is obtained most consistently, reliably and, dare I say (yes I DO!) easily by simply having won the jackpot a few years ago when the Leagues were introduced with a design philosophy (or lack thereof) best summarized as "your account is older? then you're stronger!". And it already is the case for some regular Contests as well, the ones that are very poorly designed, mainly those with the "Donation" concept. Who has hundreds of millions (sometimes literally billions) of Ymens on hand that they can burn for a chance to grab 300 kobans? That's right, the same tiny part of the player base that already receives all of the main benefits from the current league situation. And that's just one example out of many others of how overpowered this imbalanced system makes these players compared to the rest of the field, to a point where they no longer need to give you any real money, ever (which goes back to my earlier point that this isn't even P2W, it's basically an arbitrary divide between two player groups that has no logical reason to be). A lot of these players, whether they've thrown a lot of money or none at all into the game, have just reached the point of no return thanks to your greatly imbalanced League design where no matter what they do, they'll just keep getting stronger and stronger in every single aspect of the game, including the single player collection game to which the PvP aspects they got their power and income from is supposed to be "secondary" in the devs' minds. Yeah? Well, let's say I win thousands of kobans and a bunch of EP orbs on a weekly basis, and let's say I've been doing that for years... How does my single player collection compare to that of a player who doesn't really care about the leagues (or, more commonly, was left behind because they started too late to have a chance, and realized they had no hope in hell of ever catching up)? Well, I don't know... Does the phrase "I have emptied the Epic Pachinko" sound familiar to you? It does to me. You know who said that? Players who win big in the Leagues. You know who never ever said or will ever say that? Players who do not win big in the Leagues. Definitely including players who think they're focusing on the single-player collection aspect of the game, because that aspect also becomes super easy, barely an inconvenience once you get the kind of self-sustained near-infinite resources the 1% of players who score big in the Leagues have at their disposal. And again, without throwing a single penny in the game, necessarily. You just "had to be there" when the koban-printing machines were distributed... Please do note that I'm not hating on sharks themselves, here. I cited Jelom as an example earlier on, because it's someone who I know routinely crushes his D3, but it's not his fault (or any of his peers') if the system is broken in his favor. And as a person and a forum user, I love Jelom. And most of the players in his position, even though they're often focused on finding tiny margins to win-more more than their fellow league dominators each week, are still aware that they are in a ridiculously privileged situation to begin with, and not thanks to any particular effort or prowess of theirs, but mainly because they started the game at the right time, and they don't suck... Most of the sharks, even though they benefit from it as we speak, do realize how pathetic this "PvP system" is at its core, in which how well you play matters a million times less than how long you had been playing when Kinkoid decided that older accounts would receive a permanent and exponential advantage from then on. And as a community, I think we're fairly helpful, open and friendly, despite Leagues spitting at 99% of our faces while gently licking the remaining 1%... But this has got to stop. You need to open your eyes and have a long, hard look at the monster you've created and how far it is from any decent PvP game design ever. You need to realize that it's sucking the life out of your game, and if you don't change it to something a little closer to actually competitive, fair and balanced, then it might just eventually kill this game. When the last shark will have eaten the last of the fish, how will the game sustain itself? Oh, yeah. You in the back! I can hear you, you know... loud and clear: Wait, but that's just depressing and pessimistic... ... How about you offer some solutions, as well? Because of course, you'd say that. Well, to be very very clear and transparent right off the bat, this isn't my job as a player or a forum user. It's a game designer's job to design and balance one of the game's central feature. Also, pointing out an issue shouldn't necessarily require having a ready-made solution to propose. Of course it's even better if you do, but not saying anything when you see a huge problem arise (or, in this particular case, keep sitting down comfortably), just because you don't have the solution yourself, seems a bit counterproductive, don't you think? Helping others see the problem can bring forth discussion and ideas and lead to the people in charge working on finding and implementing a solution. Ignoring a problem because you can't think of a solution immediately rarely helps (and I do believe that this is what Kinkoid has been doing, and what some actually pessimistic players have been saying for quite a while whenever this massive elephant in the room is mentioned). Nevertheless, I'm not a game designer, but I have played (and still play) my fair share of PvP games, mostly F2P. I have an idea or two of what a balanced PvP system might look like, and just how far removed Hentai Heroes' Leagues currently are from any balanced PvP system I have ever experienced. So, without further ado, here are the main directions I see that I think should be at the very least seriously explored to improve on the current situation: 1/ Leave the Leagues as they are, but UNLOCK and PERMANENTLY CAP the Player XP system. Yep. It's the laziest and slowest solution, but it is technically a solution, long term. If you don't touch the Leagues at all, BUT you take a solemn, unbreakable vow to never EVER raise the Player Level Cap again, AND you reintroduce at the very least ONE way to earn XP that the player has SOME control over, then eventually balance should find its way into the Leagues. We'll end up with D3 and maybe even D2 mostly filled with players close to or at the maximum Level, so they'll have to actually compete with skills and strategies first and foremost again, because skills and strategies will have more impact than a fixed advantage based on Player Level alone. And it should slowly but surely tend towards something similar in the lower divisions, except it'll be centered around, say, Level 400 for D1, then Level 300 for S3 and so on. In the long run, this should result in D3 leagues being highly populated (in contrast with the current situation) by end-game players who have a competitive mindset, very low leagues being also highly populated, hopefully (if the game keeps attracting them, which this kind of change might actually help), with new players of all kinds, some of which will actually have an achievable path to the bigger leagues over time if they're dedicated (and good) enough. And the medium divisions should be in a more or less constant flux between those who promote to the big leagues and the newer players who reach a point where they can promote out of the small leagues. This would probably make for a far more tolerable and interesting situation for mid-game players as well, especially compared to the utterly depressing limbo they're currently stuck in. Again, it's super slow, and it also REQUIRES COMMITMENT, from players but most importantly from Kinkoid. If you take this path, then at some point, a bunch of frustrated Level 500 players will begin to nag you about how much they miss the good old days where they could just crush noobs however they pleased, and "compete" with other high-level players for even bigger rewards when they felt like a little bit of challenge for a change. They will ask you to give them a Level 600 cap to shoot for, so that they can buy their way into it ASAP and start crushing (Level 500) "noobs" again. You will absolutely NEED to give them a very firm and definitive NO for an answer. Otherwise, the whole system will collapse, and by the time it stabilizes again, the same bunch of then Level 600 players will whine and push for a Level 700 cap. This never ends, and this kind of very slow-burn, self-regulating balance doesn't work well against regular meteor showers like that. So you need to really, REALLY consider this before taking that path. Also, even if you do, we will all (well, all of us who are far from level 400 right now, that is) need to be very patient until the natural balance starts to establish itself. But it is one way (again, at least it's a broad direction you could take, I'm not here to design all the details and nuances for you, I'm just spelling out the fundamentals, here). 2/ Keep the locked XP and the massive Player Level Gaps, but IGNORE THEM for League Battles. That's a bit more subtle, it generally requires more monitoring and proactive action from the devs, and it can be done in a variety of ways, but it's much closer to what most PvP games have in place. If I create a brand-new, say, Hearthstone account right now, I might struggle to build a collection and get a decently competitive deck of cards, but when I enter a match, as long as I play well and I have a good deck, it makes absolutely no difference whether my account is a few days or five years old. Same thing for, well, the immense majority of games with a huge and highly impactful PvP part. Hentai Heroes currently HAS a massively impactful PvP part, like it or not (or even worse: keep denying it) except that its basic battle mechanic is instead "the older your account is, the stronger you are", which is beyond atrocious design, and can never EVER be balanced properly (unless you go in the direction I described above as 1/ and really, really commit to it, which will have more or less the same effect, except in the very long run). So, let's get rid of this horrible rule, shall we? Now, what could you replace it with? Well, most PvP games go with something based on results, performance, skills, strategy or a little bit of all that, and have tiers/divisions/leagues/MMR etc. based on previous results. The ones that take game balance extra seriously also tend to have FLOORS, and/or similar concepts designed to make the new player experience as fun as possible while allowing high-(SKILL-)level players to go back up to the ranks they belong to pretty quickly at the start of each season, and preventing them from going back to crushing noobs, even if they want to. None of this seems particularly difficult or challenging to apply to a basic combat system like Hentai Heroes'. But first, let's address the most crucial thing to change, and how it can be changed, to allow all these aspects to come into play. 2/ A) Within a set group/division/league, EQUALIZE PLAYER STATS. So, I'm in a group of 100 other players or so for the week/season, and we'll be competing with each other in a ranking system. The first thing that needs to happen is this: put everyone in that group on an EQUAL FOOTING in terms of raw stats (artificially so, compared to your current system, sure, but only for this part of the game - and also, it's not too different in terms of design from what you've been toying around with for the Champion fights: it's just a matter of adjusting stats). It can be done in a variety of ways, and it doesn't change much on a fundamental level, although some ways may be easier to implement, others more convenient for players, or easier to grasp etc. I'll give one simple but effective example: you can take the MEDIAN PLAYER LEVEL of each group, and then change each individual player's stats as if they had that exact Player Level, for the purpose of their fights in this group (and during that season). Say what would currently be the de facto top dog in the group is Level 404, the smallest fish who got in is Level 270, and most players are sitting somewhere in the middle, well you calculate the median level, let's say it's 345, and boom! The Lvl 404 dude now has his stats adjusted as if he were back to Level 345, the Level 270 dude has his stats adjusted as if he were already at Level 345, and no one has an unfair advantage based on trivial matters that have no place in PvP. From there, of course, anything goes: boosters (and all the various combos they allow), battle team composition, equipment, timing, and every imaginable tactics are at every player's disposal, and may the best player win. Just, you know, it won't automatically be the Level 404 dude just because he's Level 404 and your PvP has no built-in balance in its design. 2/ B) BASE each group/division/league ON PLAYER LEVEL. That's a bit more challenging as it can fluctuate during the week, and you won't necessarily have enough players in certain ranges, but on paper it still works. As a bare minimum requirement, for this to work, you need to implement reasonably narrow ranges of player levels, just like you already proved that you were perfectly capable of doing for Contests, and restructure your Leagues and Divisions around those. Make sure a Level 300 player will never ever compete with a Level 200 player, or a Level 400 player, for that matter. It might prove more difficult at the very "top" of the current food chain, though (I'm sorry if this offends anyone, but it needs to be acknowledged: if you're a veteran with a super high level right now, then in the current system, no one can actually know whether or not you're a "top player" in the traditional sense, as in really good; because you're a top performer by default, since you have an overwhelming advantage no matter what). That's honestly my least preferred kind of "fix" in this category, but it's still a way to at the very least establish a baseline of what's acceptable competition and what's grossly unfair imbalanced garbage. It can be done fairly easily, just remove the annoying and often counterproductive automatic promotion and demotion brackets, and instead let players move up to the next division when and only when they reach the minimum required level to be in the next division. And very obviously but it's crucial enough that I'll spell it out anyway: make it definitely impossible for a player to go back to a lower division than their Player Level allows. This wouldn't be quite as fair, balanced or competitive as solution 2 A above, but it would still be worlds apart from what we currently have. No more Level 400 in S3 or D1 to steal the meager #1 rewards from the fish. No more Level 280 who promoted by mistake or out of sheer optimism getting mercilessly butchered in D3. Actual fights with actual meaning and relevant strategies in most intermediate divisions. You get the idea. 3/ Leave Everything as Imbalanced as it is, but DISTRIBUTE REWARDS EVENLY across the board I hate to even mention this "solution", but I have to. If you're either unwilling or unable to make changes so that the PvP system itself becomes fair and balanced for all (or at least most) then you need to change the distribution of the massive rewards it injects into the game's economy every damn week. The lion's share of those rewards are currently distributed almost exclusively among a permanently fixed 1% sample of the player population (very active veterans, in a nutshell). Completely redistribute this, so that a top 30 in any division isn't massively different in terms of rewards from a top 30 in any other division, and, above all else, so that the top 4 of D3 doesn't reward more than the entirety of D2, and so on. This would be a really lame solution, and essentially a lose-lose situation for players who are currently amassing ridiculous amounts of kobans and other resources every week, and for those who are competitive in spirit and would like a chance to fight for the same type of rewards eventually (but arrived too late to receive a koban-printing machine). But it would at the very least stop the leagues from completely warping the game's economy around them, it would be a net positive for most players in the early to mid game, and it would make the statement that "PvP is a secondary aspect of the game" actually true. To be very clear, I wouldn't be happy with that, but it would still be less harmful than the current situation. That's all, folks. Thanks for your time. I sincerely hope this will spark interest in many players, and of course get the attention of Kinkoid staff, and that we can have an interesting discussion and hopefully see something positive come out of this. I welcome feedback, counterpoints and debate in response to the massive wall of text I've just laid out, of course. I would however like to thank any and all of you in advance for refraining from being too negative, harsh, or making hasty judgments (be it about Kinkoid staff, players who happen to be "sharks" in the current system, myself for daring to challenge the terrible status quo, or anyone else involved). Good luck, have fun. Stay safe.

It's been a few months since I've started playing this wonderful game, and I've been around virtually daily ever since, enjoying all the great content that is available for us. Now that I'm a bit more settled in the game, with a decent pvp team of girls, an ever-growing harem, and halfway through the Adventure mode, I wonder, and at the same time I ask all of you players, but particularly old players of HH, what is it that makes you come back every day or so to this game? Is it the competition of climbing up the leagues? The pleasure of collecting new girls and unlocking their sexy content? Is it the story?