PvP (Leagues) Isn't "Secondary". It's Central and Brokenly Imbalanced! How About a Fix?

[DvDivXXX]

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.

[Ben9]

Better reward distribution is really necessary imo.  I suspect that some of the things that players currently dislike about the game -- quantity vs quality of new girls added and features that seem p2w because they're priced higher than many can afford -- are in part a consequence of the koban glut at the very top end of the game. 

There is a necessity for Kinkoid to continually create more ways to spend kobans to try and outpace the rate at which they're giving out free kobans, or the players who are top of D3 just accumulate everything for free.  And a lot of these players were previously big cash spenders on the game, so it's a crucial economic demographic that Kinkoid have self-sabotaged with their reward structure. 

Rebalancing the rewards so that players lower in the ranks get a bigger share, combined with rebalancing the level system so that it isn't just a measure of who has been active the longest, would go a long way toward fixing the problem.

[Тёмный Властелин]

@DvDivXXX Your post is soooo long, one can not really make up his mind, what part of it to address or comment. 🤔

4 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

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.

 Maybe something like this - @Noacc - should be done to put some attention of Kinkoid to it.

[Benefuci]

There are enough smart, experienced and/or eager people here in the community that I think we could manage a proposal for a rework. Biggest question in my mind however would be: is KK even willing to get involved in such a project or will they stick to a "it aint broke, so we aint fixing" attitude?

Some initial suggestions/reactions to Divie DvDivxxx.

• The league must be "stand-alone". So no more Contest/PoA missions for PvP wins that can be fullfilled in the League. There should be no tactical reason for people to maintain themselves on an artificially low level. Nothing that happens in the league should affect the Leaderboards.
• Have the league reset every xx months, with floors (starting levels for the next season) based on the end-position reached.
• Resource-rewards (Kobans, Yemen, Orbs) should be limited, and mostly reward participation. Reward a bit of yemen with each win, some kobans and an orb with each promotion to a higher level. Rewards for the winners of the season should be non-resource: avatars ("2020 Spring Winner!"), exclusive themes, exclusive clothes sets, etc. Similar to some of the champion rewards. We compete basically for bragging rights, cosmetics and small fries.
• Remove the bonus from harem level in league PvP. Only the 3 girls in the team count. (Yes, I'm aware that paying players who have easier access to the latest legendary 5 star and can quickly level her up will have an advantage. I'm a F2P players here (for lack of a way to pay), but I realize and accept there must be a reason/advantage for people to pay. I do not think this advantage is so big it will be decisive in the league, but I'm a noob so I could well be wrong about this.)
• Remove the bonus from XP level. That would truly be the great equalizer. Keep XP for the role it has in the solo game: boosting Ego in fights in the Arena, vs villains and vs champions.

As for a problem OP didn't mention: the advantage of being awake at the moment contests end. Is last minute sniping a problem in the league as well, or have things pretty well settled after 5 days? I can't be bothered to be serious about the league (other then figure out how to get to a position that reliably gives me max free kobans) so I don't know. For contests I can only come up with 1 solution:

• Start 2 "groups". The competition of the rising sun and the competition of the setting sun, to keep things in style. Let people choose which group they want to compete in. The advantage of this is that it completely fixes the problem, and takes no special code from KK, so would be (somewhat?) easy to implement.

Probably lots of things amiss and broken with these remarks, but maybe it'll help get the discussion going that Divie is looking for.

 

[indeed777]

I think this is spot on analysis. The only other thing I would add is that the reward system is out of whack. Why is it more valuable to finish 16th in one league rather than 46th in a higher league? this encourages you to not get promoted to the league that you might belong in. This drives me nuts; no one intentionally throws matches to avoid promotion to EPL to stay in the EFL.

[Ben9]

One idea for a level rebalance that seems fairly easy to implement is to have seasons.  At the end of the season, everyone gets dropped to a set level.  For example, at the end of June they could drop everyone above it to 250, we gain levels till the end of September, then the season ends and we all drop again.  This also opens up the possibility of a third leaderboard - weekly, seasonal, all time - with some new prizes.

[_shal_]

56 minutes ago, indeed777 said:

I think this is spot on analysis. The only other thing I would add is that the reward system is out of whack. Why is it more valuable to finish 16th in one league rather than 46th in a higher league? this encourages you to not get promoted to the league that you might belong in. This drives me nuts; no one intentionally throws matches to avoid promotion to EPL to stay in the EFL.

The problem is that this is essentially unfixable in a 9-tier league structure, short of not offering any premium rewards at all. Just look at individual pro sports, let's say the golf PGA Tour and its secondary affiliate tour - prize money per tournament on the top tier tour is just about 10 times higher than on the secondary, and on top of that it offers more tournaments per season. The net result is that a top 5 player on the secondary tour is winning less in prize money than even the 150th-best player on the main tour (who is deep in demotion territory with that result), so obviously nobody in their right mind would decline a promotion even if he already knows he's going to struggle and get demoted straight back down.

So the rewards need to be stepped up massively from one tier to the next to incentivize against tanking. But if Wanker 2 needs to pay out even just 5x more than Wanker 1, and Wanker 3 needs to pay out 5x more than Wanker 2, and Sexpert 1 needs to...I'm sure you get the point. Properly designed pro sports-style payout structures simply don't work across more than three tiers of competition, four at a push.

That also means that this:

8 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

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.

is a complete non-starter, because it's simply going to incentivize tanking even more. You can make the rewards structures flatter within each tier (though I'd argue it's really not that skewed at all, other than the outsized difference between 2nd and 1st place), but you just can't flatten the whole thing. In fact Kinkoid tried by making the D2 payouts only 1.5x higher than D1, and D3 only 1.25x higher than D2, instead of the doubling that goes on from W1 to D1, and the effect is exactly that it's profitable for D3-quality players to vulture kobans as low as D1.

Edited June 20, 2020 by _shal_

[Karyia]

7 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

"Yeah, you, in the green shirt."

"Oh, yeah. You in the back!"

Thankfully, I'm wearing a black one and was near the front 😅😂 

Sorry but quite enjoyed these bits and pieces  

 

Anyway, @DvDivXXX you outdid yourself 👌 For your effort alone (not to mention bringing it up), congrats 👍👏

 

You mention lots of stuff and even alternate ways of doing several things, so it's not a matter of agreeing/disagreeing with everything or not. Like you mention, I think it's already a win even if you/we don't "invent the wheel" but, at least, contribute to (whatever) changes/tweaks that are made to improve things and the status quo.

 

For your 1/, I guess something "extra" would be needed when you get to the top... something on the terms of what @Slynia and others discussed here -> 

 

 

I would just like to throw out maybe a few "items" for debate/analysis:

 

a) Bracket/Division "restriction"

Wanker Division (restricted to level > x, if needed)

Sexpert Division (restricted to level > y, if needed)

Dicktator Division (restricted to level > z, if needed)

Fornicator (for lack of a better name and since I got a guy with this name in my league, consider me "inspired" 😅😂) Division (Level > 400)

Note: No idea if this is good or not or feasible... I just think people who reach level 400 shouldn't be able to come down from, well, somewhere. I "made" up a new division, since I suppose it would be too much to just cram up everybody on D2/D3. Keep an open mind.... just throwing it out there.

 

b) "Rotational reboot" (just went for a wacky name)

Some sort of "forced" rotation... say... every "x" D3 wins/top 4 finishes/top 15 finishes, player(s) get rebooted to D1 (or in a) to F1  ). The idea here would be to "reposition" the "constant" winner(s), so there would be space for others to get the top rewards every now and then (it would take two weeks for those player(s) to get there again, so... a "small" sacrifice?). And if they avoided it, well at least they wouldn't be on top all the time 😅 Again, no idea if this is feasible, nor fair but it would be different  

 

c) "The Dickest of them all" award 😂

Those guys from b)?

Scratching idea b), every "x" leagues/weeks, have one "champion" division/league between themselves 💪👊😈 (this would be over (or independent from) D3)

The award? "The Dickest of them all" trophy/banner/whatever (apart from the regular awards). This would "only" create "cosmetic" champions, while having more people getting top prizes (since D3 would be free from the "contenders").

Note: And how about that award name? 🤣

 

Feel free to "demolish", "edit" or totally "remake" any of these if you want to but please "return" something back, if you may. 

If I sparked anything in anyone that can turn into something useful/doable (even if totally different), that will/would be awesome 🙏👍

 

4 hours ago, Тёмный Властелин said:

Your post is soooo long, one can not really make up his mind, what part of it to address or comment. 🤔

 

Come on, man... just let it flow  😅

[DvDivXXX]

Thanks for the support and contributions so far. I'd like nothing more than to see this turn into a brainstorming session, especially if it involves some of our resident experts on the game and/or on stats. I know my OP is very long, but it's meant as an open letter and to be as broad as possible, to open up the discussion. Please don't let the length stop you from reading it.

5 hours ago, _shal_ said:

Properly designed pro sports-style payout structures simply don't work across more than three tiers of competition, four at a push.

That also means that this:

13 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

3/ Leave Everything as Imbalanced as it is, but DISTRIBUTE REWARDS EVENLY across the board [...]

is a complete non-starter, because it's simply going to incentivize tanking even more. You can make the rewards structures flatter within each tier (though I'd argue it's really not that skewed at all, other than the outsized difference between 2nd and 1st place), but you just can't flatten the whole thing. In fact Kinkoid tried by making the D2 payouts only 1.5x higher than D1, and D3 only 1.25x higher than D2, instead of the doubling that goes on from W1 to D1, and the effect is exactly that it's profitable for D3-quality players to vulture kobans as low as D1.

Fair point. But as I said, I only included this option reluctantly as a last resort, in case Kinkoid isn't ready to properly balance the PvP system itself. It would essentially kill the leagues as we know them, including the koban-printing machines held by 1% of the player base. That's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but even that is still preferable to what we currently have, for the health of the game in general. That's just how bad the situation is in my humble opinion. But of course, I really, really hope that something closer to my suggestion 2/ A) is adopted instead.

I'm also not particularly attached to the current league and division structure, nor do I think anyone should be. That's a super simplistic design and it could easily be replaced by something more robust and better suited for a balanced PvP system with proper rankings if they agree to rework the rest. So I'd like us to think outside of the "D1-D3" box as well, here. We're not married to that.

The most crucial issue, no matter how we look at it, is definitely the fact that league battles themselves are completely skewed by Player Level bonuses, in a system where XP progress is locked super tight and there's no way for David to ever catch up to Goliath, and yet they're still matched up together as is. This is beyond ridiculous and it's a disgrace to even call it PvP. The only other place you'd see this kind of unfair fights is on PvP servers in some MMOs; games in which the PvP aspect typically IS secondary to the main solo gameplay. Here, we have something that's more akin to entering a multiplayer session of Civilization or any other strategy game, but if your opponent's account is older than yours, then he starts with a couple of cities, a few dozen free units, and he's in a golden age already, while you start with your good old settler and warrior units, and that's it.

I'd be very interested in your thoughts on that, Shal (and others' as well of course).

[Observer_X]

6 hours ago, Karyia said:

Anyway, @DvDivXXX you outdid yourself  👌 For your effort alone (not to mention bringing it up), congrats 👍👏

@DvDivXXX, I quote @Karyia because practically those words were the same ones I had in mind to say after reading your initial post (thank God it's Saturday and I had enough time to read that textwall). This said, I will get to the point, and I am sorry I have to do it by repeating myself one more time, although I don't remember if we talked about what follows in our past exchanges.

Matter is, as you also said, the league system is in place from quite a long time now (I don't remember exactly how much). Since the leagues implementation the devs did only one small "correction" a few weeks after the initial implementation, altering the reward tiers to make them more numerous, and that's it. Point is, if in all this time the devs really wanted to change the situation (especially with all the feedback there has been over time), they would have certainly done so, even altering their to-do list, if they had considered it necessary. In my opinion, given the situation, if they have not done so it is simply because the current structure is fine with them and they do not care that 1% of players have 99% of the rewards. About why this should be so, I can only offer my opinion (see fourth paragraph), as the truth, like any other player, is beyond me.

Moreover, all this is part of a broader discourse that you may remember having already heard me do: more experienced players know well that the devs, most of the time, totally ignore the Feedback section of the forum, as they consider Discord their preferential channel of communication with the players (another thing that newer players often don't know): in my opinion, many players have not yet understood that the recent statements in the posts of the Announcements section, where the devs claim that they are interested in the feedback of the players, should be read as "We want to know only how much you liked what we put in the game" (just see how the latest surveys follow this line) and not as "we are interested in knowing how you would like us to change things" (just look what they did in the case of the banner popups: they uploaded three videos and asked to the players which one was the better, and as far as I can remember none of those videos followed consistently any player feedback). It is also for this reason that at the beginning of the post I quoted @Karyia to congratulate you for the effort: because, as much as I wish you otherwise, I believe that unfortunately you did it for nothing. It is for this same reason that two years ago, despite having some ideas that I would have liked to propose, I preferred to abstain from what I understood would have been a waste of time.

The thing that many players tend to forget (or, if you prefer, underestimate), is that the main purpose of the devs is not to entertain the players, but to have as many paying players as possible (and how they intend to continue doing the latter nearly ignoring the former like they have often done up to now, again is beyond me), ad this includes make it so free players leave the game despite free kobans rewards (of feel forced to become paying players), and the lack of league rewards IMHO is only a way to have "young" and impatient players follow that behaviour. If I had to place a bet, I would say that the question that developers ask periodically to themselves is "Do we have enough paying players or do we have to do something to attract or create new ones?". And I don't think they take players' will into account when asking this question.

I think I am repeating myself again, here, but didn't I said to you, in one of our first exchanges here in the forum, something in the lines of "when you will have played for some time you will see that sooner or later this game fucks your ass (big, hard, and all in one)"? And after nearly three years of playing, I might add that sometimes the game seems to enjoy your pain when it does...

(Wow, nearly half the night to write this... hope I didn't put some blunder inside. Time for bed).

 

[DvDivXXX]

@Observer_X Thanks for your kind words and feedback, my friend. I certainly understand and even share your sentiment at least for some aspects. However, I refuse to give up hope that Kinkoid can still improve, even though I had my fair share of disappointments and facepalm moments with them. They have also added many good things to the game over the past year or so, and made a number of changes that are mostly positive.

Granted, they still regularly make what I can only assume are mistakes, in various areas, or in any case what can only be qualified as bad moves, whether they're deliberate or not. A prime example of that was adding a useless and clunky notification bar that no one ever asked for, out of the blue, and then sinking even more time, efforts and resources in desperately trying to salvage it instead of just admitting their mistake, and removing the stupid thing after fairly much their entire player base told them they just want it gone.

It illustrates very well what they tend to do wrong, how, and possibly why (hint: it doesn't sound like an evil plan set forth to screw players over; it sounds like a poorly made assumption, a badly designed feature, and then perhaps a refusal to backpedal out of a misplaced sense of pride? something like that). I think the biggest thing they need to improve upon is communication, and a better understanding of what players may or may not like.

Case in point:

3 hours ago, Observer_X said:

if in all this time the devs really wanted to change the situation (especially with all the feedback there has been over time), they would have certainly done so [...] if they have not done so it is simply because the current structure is fine with them and they do not care that 1% of players have 99% of the rewards.

3 hours ago, Observer_X said:

the main purpose of the devs is not to entertain the players, but to have as many paying players as possible

See, these two notions actively work against one another. If the devs were ridiculously greedy above all else, then they would try to implement an actually P2W system, or at the very least something that incentivizes players to spend (more) real money. The current league system does the exact opposite of that: the 1% swimming in kobans definitely don't need to use real money to do whatever they want in the game (at least not anymore, as @Ben9 also noted), and their locked-XP system + XP-based PvP torture will never ever attract or create new whales (even if you're a millionaire, you literally can't catch up with the 1% now: no more Arena XP to refresh a million times as a few past whales are known to have done). And it's obviously not a great incentive for mid-level players to spend moderately either. What's the point?

I sincerely believe that what the devs do wrong, or fail to do right even when it's badly needed, is not out of ill intent, but rather because they don't understand the issue, or underestimate its impact.

And sure, tons of players have been saying "the leagues are broken" or stuff like that in the past, but no concerted, constructive community effort has really been made (or at least carried all the way through) to help them realize exactly what is wrong, what it's impacting negatively, and why and how they should do something about it. That's what we're gathered here for today (and if we can come up with a streamlined plan, some of us can certainly copy-paste it on their Discord if needed, but the legwork seems more suitable for a forum thread than a chat to me).

 

Another example out of many would be the infamous Thursday they put out a tweet and an announcement telling us we could grab a free EPx10 orb and a few extra freebies on top with a redeem code, and a number of players did just that, and that was great. A few hours later, they removed that offer, replaced it with a lame one (that all players could still grab, even those who had already taken the earlier generous offer), and made up something no one in their right mind would ever believe, about the EPx10 thing supposedly being "a bug"... And then, when some players complained that this seemed unfair, they were a little harsh in hinting at something along the lines of "don't look a gift horse in the mouth". That's such a terrible streak of bad moves, from a PR and marketing perspective, it's rather impressive.

They could have easily scored tons of good karma from their entire player base with this, at a very low cost (just leave the initial offer as is, even if that's not what you initially wanted to release, or you're having second thoughts), but instead they left a sour taste in the mouth of most players involved (even some who did get the free EPx10). Alas, I'm pretty sure they didn't see that at the time, and they probably still don't see it to this day.

That's the type of screw-ups I expect from Kinkoid. Not outright evil plans like I've seen in openly P2W games, which are despicable in nature, but at least they were properly executed (I won't name such games here, screw these games), but rather a lack of vision, consistency, and quality in the execution, and a lack of flexibility and generosity when something breaks, despite having mostly good intentions at heart.

Edited June 21, 2020 by DvDivXXX
spoiler-tagged a side story to make this more concise

[jelom]

@DvDivXXX, I think you overdid with the length of the post here, and many people won't read it.

As you put me as an example, I think is fair I give some response to you. But in this case I am not going to talk a word about the league system, but instead as why you have done the effort to write such a lengthy post.

I sense frustration in your latest posts in the forum, you complain that for a new player the gap with veteran players cannot be closed, and you are right at least in part.

You were progressing fast in your first year but now you have reached the part of the game were your progress is greatly reduced and you realize that reaching the top levels will be not possible in a long time, and that will impede you getting enough kobans to get all the girls, that is the main objective in the game.

Well, the truth is that life is not fair, and this game is no exception. In fact I sometimes think hentaiHeroes can teach some lessons about the real world, especially about patience, perseverance and resource saving and management.

[Ol Sheriff Joe]

Il y a 3 heures, jelom a dit :

Well, the truth is that life is not fair, and this game is no exception. In fact I sometimes think hentaiHeroes can teach some lessons about the real world, especially about patience, perseverance and resource saving and management.

i just love that wise sentence, @jelom

And just so you don't lose too much of your time in wild speculation or rethinking the wheel here : Kinkoid's already at work redesigning the league system... We'll know some time in the future if it was for a better or a worse... 

[Darsca]

15 minutes ago, Joe-da-G said:

And just so you don't lose too much of your time in wild speculation or redesigning the wheel here : Kinkoid's already at work redesigning the league system... You'll know some time in the future if it was for a better or a worse... 

Working to the same sort of time-scale as club features, yeah?

[Karyia]

3 hours ago, jelom said:

I think is fair I give some response to you. But in this case I am not going to talk a word about the league system

@jelom, with all due respect and nothing against you really (I consider you one of our "MVP" posters/contributors/helpers/whatever), but (and taking a page from Darsca's book here and checking the topic title).... very "unfair" sentence right there (IMO) 😅😂 But, in fairness, in no way do I think/feel that you are forced to say anything at all (no one is, though for sure your insight/feedback could/would prove valuable). In a way, you actually validate some of the topic concerns, while "avoiding" others (which is totally fine).

 

1 hour ago, Joe-da-G said:

i just love that wise sentence, @jelom

 

If you'll allow me, wisdom is not fighting a lost battle  (though, I have to say, it's unfair from me to "select" my own (narrow) perspective over such a wide-range sentence 😓) 

Glad to hear about the (future/potential) redesign 👍 

Please, given the influence and importance of the feature, don't forget about taking into account (any potential) player imput/feedback  🙏👌 (note: for sure, sometimes we can be our worse enemies 😅)

 

I mean no offense (nor am I offended) to any of you guys, just to make it clear 🙏👍 And thank you for replying/participating (that's what a forum is usually for).

[Chthugha]

Don't waste time trying to fix something that's broken.
Remove it, and build it from scratch.

-----edit-----

I'd like to say I already said the koban rewards were problematic when they tested leagues.
I actually wanted them to be removed, because it rewarded players that focussed on leveling up primarily.
Those players are still the top players almost 2 years later.
And even though I am now also one of the players reeling in shitloads and fucktons of kobans (only top 4s and 18 victories on Nutaku since the point system change, only top 4s and 11 victories here since I changed to KH on January 2nd), I still think it's too much.

I'm not so sure about shal's assertion that the top tiers have to be so much more rewarding.
In professional sports the top divisions are the most watched events, so they draw in the most funding from sponsors.
This automatically means that they will get way more money.
I don't think this has anything to do with the urge to promote or not, because as top athlete you want to compete on the highest level you possibly can.
In my eyes it would already be better if #1 in a league gets 600 x n (n being the tier, with D3 = 9 and W1 = 1), and then let it trickle down to the last reward tier getting 600 x (n - 1) + 100. This would just require people to not lose XP if they lose matchups. So something should be done about that as well.
Anyway, I still stand that it's better to start over from scratch instead of building on this broken system.

Edited June 21, 2020 by Chthugha

[~Crown Clown]

I've been playing honkai(a gacha game) for almost 2 years, and i really like the pvp system because the top players doesn't have that much reward advantage compared to competitive/casual players.

For example their Red Lotus Abyss(kinda like dicktator, where most decent players are) have a 50-50 reward(top 10 retain gets 420/bottom 10 relegate gets 320). 

While this game has for example a d2 league winner receives 11600 while the no.51 guy receives only 576 like wtf, that's only 5% of the reward of the top guy, so imba. 

Stronger players just gets stronger, almost no hope for weaklings to catchup🙂🙂.

[DvDivXXX]

4 hours ago, jelom said:

I sense frustration in your latest posts in the forum, you complain that for a new player the gap with veteran players cannot be closed, and you are right at least in part.

Thanks for showing up in this thread, Jelom. I've been expecting you indeed, as I chose you as my "shark" example specifically because:

A) You're unquestionably a notable member of the 1% privileged group in the current imbalanced system that I'm referring to in my OP/essay. 25 times #1 in D3 and counting, and you've been at it for so long that the only other result your profile's history remembers is your sole #1 finish in D2! That's certainly quite the results. The sad part is that, while I know you're a good player, quite knowledgeable about the game mechanics and certainly the D3 meta, and you've no doubt put efforts into those victories, the most decisive factor behind them is still by far the simple fact that you're at Level 445 right now, while most other players, even in D3, are far lower than that. The last D3s I've seen (over the past two weeks, despite demoting twice, thanks to Kinkoid's bugs ^^) had a couple of players (barely) above Level 430, a handful above Level 420, and the vast majority of the field was still in the high 300s or low 400s. Compared to most of your competition, you're The Hulk in terms of stats, and Iron Man in terms of resources (and both of these factors help each other out, which is one of the main vicious circle effects I've pointed out in my detailed post you find too long).

B) Crucially, you're a nice and reasonable person with whom I've had nothing but interesting and positive exchanges on the forum, and plenty of them, so of course by picking you as an example, I was a making a point (explicitly so) that my pointing out the grossly unfair advantage you and your peers have in the current system, I'm not hating on any of you, and it's nothing personal. And I certainly hoped that you wouldn't take this personally in any way, shape or form, and that you would instead be your nice and reasonable self, and acknowledge the hard facts, even if on this particular topic, it might make you feel kind of dirty, because you are exploiting a system that put you (and perhaps two dozen others or so) at an overwhelming advantage. However, as I meticulously pointed out, it's not your fault (or any of your peers') and my goal is by no means to blame or shame you guys for this. It's entirely on Kinkoid for designing a grossly imbalanced system and never maintaining it at all.

Unfortunately, I sense that you still aren't too happy about this massive problem being put on the spotlight, here, from the general tone of your post, to the fact that you chose to not discuss the main topic, instead trying your best to make it all about me and why I might be frustrated, impatient, or otherwise going overboard by pointing out this elephant in the room, and by going into such details and being so careful and rigorous to tackle the issue in its entirety (and with a constructive approach, you might have noticed, just in case you'd be tempted to call me "pessimistic" for stating the facts, here). I'm afraid that the general implication of your message here is that I'm being unreasonable, or exaggerating the issue, and that it might speak more about my own state of mind and my selfish perspective about where I am in the game right now, rather than express a genuine outrage at an unacceptable system that I feel ALL players should realize needs to be changed (and should have been changed years ago, for sure, but better late than never).

You are sorely mistaken in this assumption, my friend. Especially when you go as far as to think that a cheap pseudo-philosophical one-liner "life lesson" might do the trick and turn this entire thread into the mundane story of one sad mid-level player venting out his own frustration about how the game is treating him. Nothing could be further from the truth. I wouldn't have gone to such lengths if my goal wasn't to help and support the player community at large in raising its voice and awareness about this major problem in this game we all love, and that goal is considerably larger than my own little experience as one player among thousands who started "too late". I really hope that you will be able to see that and go past your knee-jerk defensive reaction, here (perhaps read my OP again, but without the "why is he so mad" glasses on; sometimes posts are long because there's a lot to say, you know). We could use your help in this actual discussion, friend. It's important!

4 hours ago, jelom said:

You were progressing fast in your first year but now you have reached the part of the game were your progress is greatly reduced and you realize that reaching the top levels will be not possible in a long time, and that will impede you getting enough kobans to get all the girls, that is the main objective in the game. [...] In fact I sometimes think hentaiHeroes can teach some lessons about the real world, especially about patience, perseverance and resource saving and management.

If you're sincere with this piece of advice, which I suspect that you are, then you're more out of touch than I expected, with how the game has evolved over the past couple of years for players who aren't a part of the specific 1% or so group of veterans you're a part of, who received a koban-printing machine a couple of years ago. Because that advice was definitely spot-on when you started two years before I did, and it was still somewhat relevant when Shal started a year later (and Shal is a mad genius, and what he pulled off in terms of almost catching up to the veterans was extraordinary, but even he acknowledges that it wouldn't be doable today). For someone who started not even a year ago, like myself, it's absolutely obsolete. It sounds good and someone who doesn't know better could even think it's wise, but the hard truth is that yes, life is unfair, and no, it is NOT possible to reach the top levels for me (let alone for anyone else who started even more recently) in the current system, EVER. For the record, I am patient, I do persevere, and I have a very strategic and long-term approach to this game. I'm way ahead of many other players who started out at the same time or even a bit before me. But I'll never catch up to Shal, let alone you, not even in a million years, under the current system. You start each match with two cities and a dozen free units, remember? I still have to make do with my one settler and my one warrior. By the time I discover the technology of Steel, you'll be deciding between building a spaceship or just a bunch of nukes to eradicate my civilization directly.

I'd like to quote another shark that haven't blessed us with his presence and actually wise words about the current system, here. He's one Level ahead of you Jelom. And here's what he had to say when I posted the first draft of what became this here thread:

On 6/19/2020 at 8:36 AM, Z-Wave said:

@DvDivXXX@ thanks for your really well written post, I like it a lot and agree almost 100%! Us whales were really baffled when leagues got introduced. It was so surreal knowing that in a few months time none of us would have to worry about not having enough Kobans anymore. The introduction of orbs which basically doubled down on these rewards were another feverdream. How will KK ever convince us to spend a lot of money again? I'm sitting on 5x EPx10 orbs, 30K+ Kobans, 1.3 Billion Ymens and right now I'm a silver card subscriber with far more resources than I can throw at the game. It's ridiculous and I'd rather have a real challenge with the game than privileges that become very boring after a while (that's why I desperately hope we won't get another level increase and can have a real league competition with thousands of lv 500 players, but that's unlikely to happen).

Sounds quite a bit more humble and realistic to me than, essentially, Jelom's combination of "you need to wish for it really hard, and some day your dream might just come true" and "life is hard, and so am I". And this comes from a guy whose profile history only remembers 35 times #1 in D3, and 1 time in D2. I'd like eyes to be wide opened for this discussion, please. Thanks in advance.

3 hours ago, Darsca said:

Working to the same sort of time-scale as club features, yeah?

Not only that, but as I mentioned with multiple examples in the past and in this very thread (not just in my initial essay), Kinkoid working on features and, even more so, major changes to existing features, on their own without player input or feedback is more likely to lead to bad things than good ones. So, knowing that they're considering a rework of the League system is great news, but it doesn't mean we should refrain from giving them our feedback and ideas, and just wait and see, hope for the best. It means the exact opposite! Now is the time to let them know as much as possible about what's wrong with the system we've had so far, and what the new system will need to include to be better and more balanced.

Thank GOD for George and you, by the way. We are so, so blessed to have you guys here. Trust me, I would know! ^^

39 minutes ago, Chthugha said:

Don't waste time trying to fix something that's broken.
Remove it, and build it from scratch.

Now that's the spirit! But, as I was saying, let's not let Kinkoid do it in the dark, let's raise every major point they really need to check for the new system to be worth a damn.

[Slynia]

I think I have posted my thoughts on the league system and its rewards before so I won't be dwelling into it too much here.
However, I still need to say what I have before, that it makes no sense what so ever in my mind that scoring low in D3 doesn't equal (at all) the 5-15 places in D2. Because EVERYONE in D3 has AT LEAST placed in the top 15 in D2, meaning that all opponents are strong enough to get into the top 15 in D2. IMO, placing 61-75 in D3 should equal the rewards of placing 5-15 in D2. 2-4 in D2 should then equal 46-60 in D3 and lastly, 1st place should equal 31-45 in D3. Should you then place in the top 30s, you should be rewarded better than winning in D2, just so you should want to stay in D3, the hardest league available. This is something that I think should've been the standard design from the get-go for every league. But I agree with Chthugha that it would probably be better to just redesign the entire system from scratch, as it doesn't and have never worked in a balanced way.
 

Less relevant stuff below here for those interested.

Before the league system change I pretty much always placed in top 2-4, I only had 2 wins in D3 before its change so. Back then I would have to go up before 5.00 am and try to just finish all my fights as fast as possible as soon as the leagues were made if I wanted to win, there were always rushers who were way faster than me, they must have used a plugin or something because they usually finished SEVERAL refills before me, so I just gave up on trying to rush for a win again. Why I am bringing this up is because if you tried to rush for a win back then, you would have to do about 20 refills which is 3780 kobans, and I usually got the 2-4 spot which rewards you 5760 kobans, so I "only" got 1980 kobans, minus the 180 kobans for 4 epic cordyceps boosters which were the best boosters back then. In the end, +1800 kobans a week was all I got from leagues in other words. Well then, if I won doing the exact thing I would have gotten +10440 kobans, that is 8640 kobans more than placing 2nd. Insane that it must be such a difference, and I was always questioning the totally broken system where someone 20+ levels below me could rush and grab the 1st place rewards simply because he was faster.

The updated system heavily favors stronger players over that of "fast refillers"... it's a step in the right direction IMO, but the rewards are just way out of place and should've been fixed years ago. I thought so back then, and I think so now.

[Troctout]

The first version of leagues was totally stupid, the actual one is unfair and unbalanced : I'm longingly waiting for the third one.

[jelom]

@DvDivXXX Thanks for your comments. I didn't want to discuss the league system because I don't have a solution to fix it. It is true that it is favouring the top level players (if they play well), and of course I have benefited a lot from it. I can point to the main problem in the league that is the reward distribution that makes gaming the system demoting every two weeks profitable for high (but not top) level players, that in turn makes medium level players difficult to get decent rewards and progress. But every solution the people has proposed have some problems in itself, not always obvious. My last and positive remark about the league system is that gives kobans, a few or a ton, to many players for free, without needing to use your hard earned real money.

P.S.: No, I don't have anything against you, my friend (apart from your ultra long posts, I read all of them, but many people don't, so you are losing punch there). I am not trying to psychoanalyze you either, it was just my impression of your posts (you will have to concede that you have insisted a lot in the level gap problem). And finally my last paragraph in the prevous post wasn't directed to you but to everybody.

Bonus, another "cheap"  oneliner: Try to do the most of what the game (life) gives to you (I know you are doing it yet 👍).

[_shal_]

18 hours ago, DvDivXXX said:

Fair point. But as I said, I only included this option reluctantly as a last resort, in case Kinkoid isn't ready to properly balance the PvP system itself. It would essentially kill the leagues as we know them, including the koban-printing machines held by 1% of the player base. That's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but even that is still preferable to what we currently have, for the health of the game in general. That's just how bad the situation is in my humble opinion. But of course, I really, really hope that something closer to my suggestion 2/ A) is adopted instead.

I'm also not particularly attached to the current league and division structure, nor do I think anyone should be. That's a super simplistic design and it could easily be replaced by something more robust and better suited for a balanced PvP system with proper rankings if they agree to rework the rest. So I'd like us to think outside of the "D1-D3" box as well, here. We're not married to that.

The most crucial issue, no matter how we look at it, is definitely the fact that league battles themselves are completely skewed by Player Level bonuses, in a system where XP progress is locked super tight and there's no way for David to ever catch up to Goliath, and yet they're still matched up together as is. This is beyond ridiculous and it's a disgrace to even call it PvP. The only other place you'd see this kind of unfair fights is on PvP servers in some MMOs; games in which the PvP aspect typically IS secondary to the main solo gameplay. Here, we have something that's more akin to entering a multiplayer session of Civilization or any other strategy game, but if your opponent's account is older than yours, then he starts with a couple of cities, a few dozen free units, and he's in a golden age already, while you start with your good old settler and warrior units, and that's it.

I'd be very interested in your thoughts on that, Shal (and others' as well of course).

Yeah, I pretty much agree with all that. The original sin, as it were, was arguably that Kinkoid didn't stick to the level 400 cap. Your OP also alluded to that in the context of asking them to keep the next level cap - sadly, I think that ship has kind of sailed now. 400 would have been a decent cap, requiring players to pay their dues for about 18 to 24 months before they get to be on an even footing with all older players, but 500 seems to be too high for that purpose. That's basically four years of playtime (or more), which is just an unreasonably long target even for a game like HH.
 

We were brainstorming on Discord after your post, and after what we discussed there, if I had to recreate the league system from scratch, it might look something like this: Player brackets determined by level and by skill, as kind of an extension of your proposal 2B. I'm of the opinion that there needs to be some sort of competitive aspect beyond just the weekly season itself, so grouping players only by level and having no promotion/demotion system at all would be rather boring, especially for the best players. (Who would find themselves with nary a competent challenger in any given week.)

As my previous post mentioned I consider it basically impossible to have a workable rewards structure across more than three tiers, so that would be my suggestion: up to three tiers with internal promotion and relegation for each level bracket. At the low levels there's not really any need for multiple tiers, since the vast majority of players will graduate to the next level bracket in a week or less anyway and won't even have time to promote up the ladder. Level brackets and tiers to be set up something like this:

20-50: one tier
51-100: two tiers
101-150: three tiers per bracket from here on
151-200
201-240
241-280
281-320
321-350
351-380
381-410
411-440
441-450 (player levels capped at 450...yeah, already too late for that now)

For the three tiers within each bracket (let's call them top, middle and bottom for now), the rewards would have to be heavily skewed, more than they are now; perhaps the top tier winner would have to be winning at least 3x as much as the winner of the middle tier, who in turn would be winning 3x as much as the bottom tier winner. On the other hand, the distribution within each tier would be much more gradual, to enable a distribution where most players in a higher tier are winning a lot more than players in the next-lower tier, to prevent tanking. Something along these lines (I'll only name some of the ranks to keep it short):

        top   mid   btm
1st    1800   600   200
5th    1500   500   167
10th   1200   400   133
15th    900   300   100
30th    600   200    67
45th    500   167    56
60th    400   133    44
75th    300   100    33
76+     200    67    22

(It doesn't have to be just these values; you could pay out a different koban amount for every single ranking position in between, too.) The goal here would be to have roughly similar payouts for roughly similar performance levels, e.g. somebody who can get 1st place in the bottom tier ought to be good enough for a top 30 in the middle tier as well, somebody who can get a top 5 at the bottom should be good enough for a top 45 further up, etc., to discourage people from fighting lower than they're capable. (Levels 20-50 would only have a bottom tier, 51-100 only bottom and middle.)

So that's the setup for one three-tier level bracket, let's say 101-150. Moving up to the next bracket (151-200 in this case), all payouts there would be higher by a small, but noticeable percentage, perhaps 20% - that would provide for approximately 5x higher rewards at levels 441-450 than at 101-150, being 9 steps up (1.2^9 = 5.16), encouraging people to keep leveling up while offering high-value rewards to the best players in every level bracket.

Promotion and relegation among each bracket's three tiers could work the same as it does now, with 15 players going up and down. Players moving up to the next level bracket could either be started off at the bottom again - it's just two promotions to the top tier, after all - or at the same tier they held in their previous bracket (but I suspect many would be overchallenged in their first week that way).

One other thing I would change is to give the same XP for wins and losses. Again this would be intended as an anti-tanking measure, rewarding people just for being as active as they can be, and at as high a tier as they can be (since a higher tier would likely mean higher-level opponents and thus more XP for every battle, win or lose). It would also go a long way towards avoiding the current issue that players who consistently finish in the middle of the pack keep losing levels relative to the more successful players.

Edited June 21, 2020 by _shal_

[DvDivXXX]

7 hours ago, _shal_ said:

We were brainstorming on Discord after your post

I'm really glad to hear that! And thanks for your reply. Your proposal sounds pretty solid to me.

The only thing I would consider changing is for the really low brackets, as going from Level 1 to Level 150 takes like a week now (if that) due to the massive early XP boost from one of the late 2019 patches, so I'm not sure it's worth having dedicated brackets below Level 150 at all. This could be the minimum level required to enter the ladder instead (similar to how they have a few very easy requirements to gain access to events or champions early on). IIRC based on players in my club who started in late 2019 or early 2020, it takes about a month to reach Level 200 now, so a 150-200 (or 150-199) bracket would make perfect sense (though perhaps not necessarily with three tiers).

Beyond Level 200, XP progress slows down drastically compared to that (I've just checked and the aforementioned half-dozen active late starters in my club are only slowly approaching Level 300 now, the closest of them being at 295), so smaller brackets and three tiers for each seems about right.

Similarly, you stop getting any XP boost (and the XP requirement per new level starts getting significant) past Level 300, so the brackets from then on will last each individual player a long time. Makes sense to make them a bit tighter again. And of course, past Level 400, progress slows down to a crawl, so a player with 10 levels on you at that point likely has a much bigger stat advantage than was the case in the 300s (bigger harem, better equipment, can more easily afford boosters etc.). So brackets would need to have a smaller range from then on as well.

And yeah, I'm at as much of a loss as you are as to what to do with the 440+ supernovae either. And I don't even want to imagine what it'll be like if they move the max level even beyond 500 once a couple of them reach it. Maybe at some point a "Congrats! You Won the Game!" animation followed by a permanent removal from the ladder, and perhaps a small koban retirement fund to make up for it would seriously be in order? I'm only half-joking.

Either that, or implement something where your own stats are ignored in actual battles past a certain point: you can shoot for Level 1000 if you want, but your stats will be capped in ladder fights beyond Level 450 or maybe 500 (even though I think there are less than 10 players actually above 450 as we speak).

Edited June 22, 2020 by DvDivXXX
typo

[Ol Sheriff Joe]

For the statisticians among you:

There are actually 6 players that reached level 450 or higher (2 450, 4 higher). And, as of today, the 441-450 pool consists of 28 players, growing every day... 
To compare to these tiny numbers, there's already 1202 players that have gone over level 410

[jelom]

11 minutes ago, Joe-da-G said:

For the statisticians among you:

There are actually 6 players that reached level 450 or higher (2 450, 4 higher). And, as of today, the 441-450 pool consists of 28 players, growing every day... 
To compare to these tiny numbers, there's already 1202 players that have gone over level 410

For a quick comparison of XP needed to reach higher levels

level 467 - 19.7 M XP (Gogeta)
level 450 - 16.7 M XP
level 440 - 15.1 M XP
level 430 - 13.6 M XP
level 420 - 12.3 M XP
level 410 - 11.1 M XP
level 400 - 10.1 M XP (2 years)
level 350 - 6.1 M XP
level 300 - 3.6 M XP (10-12 months)
level 200 - 1.2 M XP (1 month)
level 100 - 0.3 M XP (1-2 days)