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

[Lemus]

6 minutes ago, Z-Wave said:

And while as a business you probably want to increase profit

I don't know what they want there, but the fact is that in the last year and a half, all the changes that have been made in the game worsened the level of its monetization. I say this as a specialist who worked in this field. Everything, starting with the distribution of 15k premium currency to top whales weekly through leagues, ending with the "seasons" function that was introduced the other day, making it as miserable and unbalanced as possible, begging for money directly, but again stepping on the same rake as the league, where awards can only players of a level close to the maximum, and everything below 300 will not even get to the middle.

Therefore, I would not strongly hope that they will find an adequate solution. Most likely, they will simply ignore it as usual, and then do another inadequate nonsense that will only worsen everything.

[Z-Wave]

On 11/3/2020 at 6:56 PM, Lemus said:

but the fact is that in the last year and a half, all the changes that have been made in the game worsened the level of its monetization. I say this as a specialist who worked in this field

Edit: You might want to skip what I wrote here since it doesn't contribute to the main topic. I took offense in semantics and unintentionally started an argument. Lemus makes good points and goes into more details in his next post.

If you have the evidence to support your claim, please present it (and best in a constructive way). Otherwise please don't refer to your suspicion or opinion as "fact" since I'm pretty sure nobody except Kinkoid's inner circle knows the numbers and charts that show the effect of each feature on their actual profits. If this is solely based on your experience as a "specialist", I'd like to see some examples and more details about what qualifies you as a specialist in this field, otherwise your statement is not helping the case at all and might even turn KK further away from customer feedback...

This thread is, from my understanding, all about directing proper feedback and ideas towards KK in order to motivate them to make the game better and fix this heavily unbalanced power creep called Leagues. Shaming, insulting, pointing fingers or just ranting won't help that case.

Maybe KK experienced a profit spike each time they "worsened the level of its monetization", in that case why should they change their strategy? But maybe nothing changed or they even lost money with their newest additions and now they wonder how this could have happened. In that case this thread could be pure feedback gold to them and we might once again have a chance to guide KK one step in the right direction, resulting in a better experience for all of us. Btw. I've been told they have a meeting today addressing this issue among other things, so let's hope to get some new information soon. 🙂

Edited November 6, 2020 by Z-Wave

[Noacc]

@Z-Wave

Z, I don't think it's planned for the level cap to be increased. 🤔

23 hours ago, Z-Wave said:

23 hours ago, Z-Wave said:

I highly recommend doing at least the most simple of DvDivXXX's suggestions and do it the other way around: Unlock XP progression while keeping the level 500 cap forever so the unbalanced league can over time (a long time) fix itself.
 

This could be a good solution. 
I'll pass it to game design. 

I like the solution of what some other competitive games are doing with stars and ranks. (Heartstone, Dota, LoL) 
 

League and dota ranks- something like a small MMR with win/lose/inactivity system. 

Do you think this can be a solution for some PvP implementations in the game? 
(It's nothing official, only my thoughts, don't take it as a tease or anything that can be speculated) 
It's already in the game, with the Leagues, maybe something similar.

[Z-Wave]

Thanks a lot Noacc for opening up to the community. I'm sure we'll collect a great bunch of ideas here! I will take some time reflecting on constructive solutions myself (I'm yet lacking the knowledge of how the games you mentioned do the rankings), but people like @DvDivXXX, @_shal_, @Chthugha, @GeorgeMTO and many more will probably add awesome suggestions soon. From what I can see here and in other threads they have a much deeper understanding of the mechanics and which additions and changes would work well. I'm looking forward to it! 👍

[GeorgeMTO]

No. Don't tag me for bullshit like this.

[Z-Wave]

Sorry George (and also proactively to anybody who might be offended by the tagging, that wasn't my intention). I won't tag you guys again in this context, please know that it was purely because I respect your knowledge on this game and hope you can contribute in making a positive distinction. You definitely are more qualified than me in giving the right advice to KK 😅

Now let's get back on track and see what we can provide, shall we? 👍

[natstar]

1 hour ago, Z-Wave said:

Sorry George (and also proactively to anybody who might be offended by the tagging, that wasn't my intention). I won't tag you guys again in this context, please know that it was purely because I respect your knowledge on this game and hope you can contribute in making a positive distinction. You definitely are more qualified than me in giving the right advice to KK 😅

Now let's get back on track and see what we can provide, shall we? 👍

How about judges changing more often or boosters not lasting as long so it gives people a better chance of fighting people not boosted to easy to keep boosters up when they last 24 hours.  (could reduce the cost a little in market to make up for them not lasting as long).

[windia]

17 hours ago, natstar said:

How about judges changing more often or boosters not lasting as long so it gives people a better chance of fighting people not boosted to easy to keep boosters up when they last 24 hours.  (could reduce the cost a little in market to make up for them not lasting as long).

There was a very loud scream in the forum when the boosters got cut down to 24h instead of 72 hours.

Was not the only booster change back then, just the one that refers to your proposal.

[DvDivXXX]

More importantly, although I can see that he's really trying, and I appreciate the effort... The fact is that @natstar's perspective and understanding when it comes to the issues discussed here are just too limited for him to come up with relevant ideas.

Judges have little to no impact to begin with, and said minimal impact applies the same to everybody, so it has nothing to do with this discussion. Boosters themselves make a big difference for each individual player, but they're just a part of strategy and planning; and again there's nothing unfair or imbalanced about their presence, duration or anything else about them. Neither of these suggestions have anything to do with the great imbalance at the core of the league system, which this thread is all about.

[Lemus]

On 11/4/2020 at 7:00 PM, Z-Wave said:

If you have the evidence to support your claim, please present it (and best in a constructive way). Otherwise please don't refer to your suspicion or opinion as "fact" since I'm pretty sure nobody except Kinkoid's inner circle knows the numbers and charts that show the effect of each feature on their actual profits. If this is solely based on your experience as a "specialist", I'd like to see some examples and more details about what qualifies you as a specialist in this field, otherwise your statement is not helping the case at all and might even turn KK further away from customer feedback...

Please do not tell other people what they should or should not do, and then in response you will not know where you need to go with such claims and what you can do with yourself there. So communicate in such a tone with your wife or husband when he cooks a burnt dinner for you, and not with me.

Well, now that we have exchanged pleasantries, I will explain that everything I write on the forum is nothing more than my opinion, which is purely subjective. And while I do not violate the rules of the forum, only I can decide how and in what form to present it. And everyone else has exactly the same right to agree with me or not, to believe or not to believe, to consider it a fact or an invention, to answer or not to answer, and so on.

As for the facts, I cited at least two of them (over-distribution of gold in leagues and battle pass for real money instead of premium currency), but instead of proving me that they are wrong by giving at least some arguments against, you demand from me some more then "evidence", but at the same time stating in advance that I am wrong because I do not have access to the financial documents of the publisher's company. A typical example is when logic in a dispute is replaced by sophistry, after which there is simply no point in responding to a person. It's all the same as playing chess with a pigeon - no matter what moves you make, the bird will just scatter the chess pieces, shit on the chessboard and fly into the sky, confident that it has won.

But you are still not a bird, so one time I will try to answer. About the "specialist". I didn’t want to write about it, but once I got out I’ll explain what I meant. I worked for a long time in a company that bought mobile games in the Asian market and adapted them for the Russian segment, and I was engaged in the adaptation of monetization mechanisms. Believe it or not, decide for yourself - whether my personal data is the more the data of the companies with which I worked, I will definitely not disclose, this is already a court case. And yes, I understand that this is a different region, a different gaming platform, a different type of games (I had no business with ero games), and it’s been several years since I’ve been doing this, and this market is changing with lightning speed. Yes, I understand all this. But at the same time, there are some basic functions and indicators by which it is possible, albeit approximately, but to judge the success of the project. And I have been constantly seeing them for a year and a half already. And every time I feel very strange - as a player, I applaud standing up to such unprecedented generosity, but as a "non-player" I have bruises on my forehead from facepalms, because I see people recklessly breaking what works normally, and then trying to fix everything back patching up the broken by shit with sticks, and sometimes they do not have enough sticks, so they do without them with the appropriate result. As an example, I can cite a situation when more and more girls in the game began to "produce" in the game, and frankly to the detriment of quality, there were sometimes completely disgusting drawings, but even when a howl arose on the forum from this horror, they continued and continued. This kind of hell can only be done when incomes are falling and the bosses demand "to take measures to correct the situation or fire everyone." And the only quick way is to fill the project with the final content, even at the expense of quality. What we have watched with horror and surprise and are still observing. By the way, this happened, including after the uncalculated introduction of the league system, which at once threw all high-level whales out of the monetized base, which obviously did not benefit the project's payback.

There are many more such causal relationships in my head, but in order to present them all in detail with facts and arguments, I need to spend several days of painstaking work, and I'm not morally ready for this, and it's hardly anyone's interest, I think that here there are not many people who have the same professional deformation as me and who will be curious to study it.

[DvDivXXX]

@Z-Wave and @Lemus : Guys, this topic is important and both of you are making valuable contributions to it here, so I'd rather not see them lost because of the personal attacks happening in parallel between the two of you. I'm honestly too tired right now and I have a fever, so I won't touch your posts tonight. I would greatly appreciate it if you could set your differences aside and maybe remove or amend the parts of your respective posts I'm referring to (basically the first half or so of Z's post in which he took offense with the term "fact" due to misunderstanding the context it was used in, ie the figure of speech "the fact is that"; and, conversely the huge overreaction to that in the first half or so of Lem's post above). You're both grown-ass men, so please cut out this type of childish shit-talk. Thanks in advance.

Good night.

[Z-Wave]

@Lemus to make this short, I'm sorry about miscommunicating my intentions and misunderstanding yours! As DvDivXXX said, this is about much more than semantics.

[Čamuga]

16 hours ago, Lemus said:

There are many more such causal relationships in my head, but in order to present them all in detail with facts and arguments, I need to spend several days of painstaking work, and I'm not morally ready for this, and it's hardly anyone's interest, I think that here there are not many people who have the same professional deformation as me and who will be curious to study it.

Those are great points, but I'd like to point out something else- apart from the in-depth details, I think anyone with a working brain could infer and come to the same conclusions, albeit with less accurate expression, anyone should get the point and reach it for themselves. That whole "well you gotta be a specialist" to comment on X (in this case, monetization and quality of the game, which isnt freakin' rocket science) is a really retarded way of thinking that really needs to die.

[Noacc]

Chill or I'm locking the bloody topic.

@Lemus 
Mate, what the heck was that long-ass drama post on my profile. 

No personal attacks and no straying from the topic, please.

We want to achieve a good conversation that may get some implementations in the game. 
On that note, I talked with our lead design and there are no current plans to increase the level cap.

Any feedback on how to ingame progression could be handled is very welcome. 

One idea that comes to my mind is level squish like they are doing in some games.
 

[Kenrae]

1 hour ago, Noacc said:

Any feedback on how to ingame progression could be handled is very welcome. 

One idea that comes to my mind is level squish like they are doing in some games.

Do you guys know how the facebook game Marvel Avengers Alliance worked? In my mind, that's the best f2p ever designed (amongst those I know, of course, there are tons of them). It achieved a perfect balance:

• It maintained the casual and non-casual parts of the game clearly separated. Non-casual was basically PvP, if someone only wanted to play the story that was possible AND enjoyable.
• You could compete in the PvP without being a whale, but it took time and effort. There was a limit to it too, it wasn't a game of infinite grinding. You reached the level cap in a year of active playing if I remember it right. Paying would speed that up and give you some advantages in the middle game, but once in the late game there wasn't much difference between a whale and another active player, paying would still speed up some things, like getting a new hero faster than other players. AND if you stopped being active you were eventually left behind (getting all heroes was important for PvP, even the ones you don't actively used), unless you paid to make up for it or grinded some time again.

Of course it was a very different game and things can't be copied, but I think it's worth taking a look at it. It was a very successful game at the time.
 

Level squish can be a good idea here, to shorten the time needed to reach the cap. Just don't put a cap on experience gained, only on the level, otherwise there would be problems with some contests.

The number of girls you have should have a bigger impact on PvP, that would be the way to keep improving after reaching the cap.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Kenrae

[Z-Wave]

Okay guys, here's my proposal for a better experience for everyone. I'm looking forward to your feedback.

The changes:
1. Cap the maximum level indefinitely at 500. No excuses, no more quick pushes, simply and reliably 500. Maybe even make it that level 500 players don't get any more exp and instead some compensation rewards like gifts, books and orbs.
2. Make it possible to rush to level 500 (when enough payment is provided). This can be done best with PoP (just add exp as a fifth reward next to shards, tickets, EP orbs and GP orbs).
3. Optimize the league bracket selection similar to the seasons mojo brackets. Players should be put in their respective league (D3, D2, D1, S3 etc.) but only face people with maximum +/- 40 levels (so the highest level per bracket can only be +40 compared to the lowest level player at the start of each league). If you can't make a full group of 100 like this, you automatically are promoted to a higher league.
4. Keep everything else as is. Including the PvP mechanics, league rewards, the Harem Level bonus and the massive grind to level 500.

And here's the why to each change:
1. Nothing new here. Capping the max level will over time balance the leagues (especially at the higher end) and allow for real competition and fair chance for everyone, no matter how early they started the game. If you even remove exp rewards for level 500 players they won't push you so hard for a higher level cap and they can't try to prepare for another headstart by farming exp. Once you are level 500, exp becomes worthless and you need to focus on your fighting skills and stats (similar to the Marvel Avengers Alliance mechanics Kenrae proposed one post above). Therefore books and orbs rewards instead of exp are very welcome so players can increase their harem level for the last tiny edge in PvP.
2. New players need a chance to become competitive in D3 quickly (when paying money) so they don't have to wait 3-4 years without any chance of getting there. When adding an exp reward to PoP they have a shortcut. It is an expensive shortcut for real money payers (and it should be to not annoy the current whales). It however also adds a strategic element to every new player's gameplay: Do you spend your Koban rewards on better girls/stats/gear/boosters to be more competitive now, do you increase your harem for the slight endgame edge or do you want to level up as quickly as possible?
3. This is a huge one. If you find a solution that allows for each player to have a chance to win their leagues every once in a while, everyone will be much more invested in the PvP aspect. I think the +/- 40 level cap is a great balance between what is reasonable but also achievable. This way you should easily be able to put almost everybody in a good league and keep the whales among themselves. The automatic promotion in case you are out of your level range also solves the problem of tanking. Right now people tank to a lower league in order to not get their game ruined by whales (which is very understandable), but in the process they are ruining lower level player's game who then might tank themselves and so on. If you know that you'll have a +/-40 level bracket whatsoever, tanking won't make much sense anymore. And if you still choose to tank to an extreme extend anyway, this won't work. You either get promoted back automatically (when not enough of players in your level range try to tank as well) and therefore you just wasted a season with tanking. Or, even worse for you, you get demoted as you planned, but find yourself in a league full of other tanks and now you fight them for lower rewards. No matter what, lower level players get protected from tanks and whales. It should always even out your league (for example on the high end when you reach level 460 and can potentially face level 500 whales, you probably will still stay around in D2 because D3 is full of level 500 players and you'd get demoted after one season). Yes, there's still luck involved and you have to hope to be on the upper half of your level bracket for an advantage. But in combination with all the other mechanics, you should be able to win your league every now and then and once you reach 500, it will be all about your PvP skill and not your level anymore. The only issue now and then might be rushers who start with a +40 level advantage and then spam PoP to end up with a +60 advantage for example. But these are passing crazes that will only annoy you once and be in higher realms after one week.
4. Actually, many of the systems in place are already very good as they are. Sure, you can do some rebalancing to the classes and rewards system, but that's in my opinion a very secondary priority. If you fix the main issues above, you'll have yourself a great game that allows for every player to be competitive. And for the little issues left, players can still fix them themselves by changing their class or rush to a higher league etc. I wouldn't remove the harem bonus. It's too little of an edge to matter early on (especially when levels can be as far as 40 apart), but it will matter to the very whales that are looking for a competitive edge and it keeps them playing and paying for every new girl. With the MP mechanics and all the revival events, new players shouldn't take too long to get close to maxing out their harem if they really, really want to. Otherwise being a veteran gives you a nice, but fair edge. I'm level 464 with 543 girls (all maxed out) and was #2 right behind Gogeta in the harem level leaderboard when it still existed. And guess what, I have a mere 25.097 Ego bonus for that. It's less than a 5% bonus compared to someone on my level who only ever upgrades their PvP team. It's just negligible for every player who doesn't play at the very high end.

Okay, this is my super long post and I'm looking forward to your feedback a lot. Are these valid ideas that would work or did I miss anything? What else can be optimized? Let's hear it!

Oh and thanks a lot for reading so far, you're great! 👍

Edited November 11, 2020 by Z-Wave

[blaa]

22 minutes ago, Z-Wave said:

Okay guys, here's my proposal for a better experience for everyone. I'm looking forward to your feedback.

The changes:
1. Cap the maximum level indefinitely at 500. No excuses, no more quick pushes, simply and reliably 500. Maybe even make it that level 500 players don't get any more exp and instead some compensation rewards like gifts, books and orbs.
2. Make it possible to rush to level 500 (when enough payment is provided). This can be done best with PoP (just add exp as a fifth reward next to shards, tickets, EP orbs and GP orbs).

I agree, 500 lvl cap should be established, but more important, newer player should have a chance to catch up. Problem: If there isnt a fast (and somewhat payable) alternative, it only increases the advantages high level players already have; for instance, you Z-Wave, wont have any trouble to spend 5000-50000 kobans for some XP-upgrades, because you have gained the last few months so many you dont even know what to with it (that's one of the reasons why you easily can advance in seasons so fast) - and until newer / lower players will have caught up, the high tier players will farm the league for another two years (and gain more xp advantage for some months, especially since level 500 is far away for most players)

So, there should be a really good solution to catch up in XP. Since i dont see one, the only good solution for me is creating a totaly new PvP system, where higher level players dont have (this kind) of an edge.

22 minutes ago, Z-Wave said:

3. Optimize the league bracket selection similar to the seasons mojo brackets. Players should be put in their respective league (D3, D2, D1, S3 etc.) but only face people with maximum +/- 40 levels (so the highest level per bracket can only be +40 compared to the lowest level player at the start of each league). If you can't make a full group of 100 like this, you automatically are promoted to a higher league.

That's valid and then you even dont need a player level cap,  i guess. But i dont agree on the auomatic promotion, i would prefer having leagues with fewer players in some instances, like 80 or 90.

22 minutes ago, Z-Wave said:

4. Keep everything else as is. Including the PvP mechanics, league rewards, the Harem Level bonus and the massive grind to level 500.

yeah, just a small addition: Expropriate every player with more than 20 d3 wins with at least 1/4 of their koban wins and give them to the poor for the injustice they have experienced the last few months and years (not totally joke (but mostly))

Edited November 11, 2020 by blaa

[Z-Wave]

1 hour ago, blaa said:

But i dont agree on the auomatic promotion, i would prefer having leagues with fewer players in some instances, like 80 or 90.

The automatic promotion idea is not so much to avoid lower than 100 player brackets (although that's somewhat important since you don't want to miss out on the free exp earned through leagues). The main idea behind it is to avoid people tanking to a league that they are overpowered in and therefore making the league impossible to win for some players.
 

1 hour ago, blaa said:

Expropriate every player with more than 20 d3 wins with at least 1/4 of their koban wins and give them to the poor for the injustice they have experienced the last few months and years (not totally joke (but mostly))

Although mostly meant as a joke, you have a point that the rewards could and maybe should be more evenly distributed. That's what I mean with "secondary priority". If they fix the more important stuff, league rewards will be much less of an issue since everybody will have a shot every now and then to win #1 in their league while us whales have to really, really fight for it among ourselves. The rich will get poorer and the poor will get richer 😉

Edited November 11, 2020 by Z-Wave

[Kenrae]

1 hour ago, Z-Wave said:

Okay guys, here's my proposal for a better experience for everyone. I'm looking forward to your feedback.

The changes:
1. Cap the maximum level indefinitely at 500. No excuses, no more quick pushes, simply and reliably 500. Maybe even make it that level 500 players don't get any more exp and instead some compensation rewards like gifts, books and orbs.

The problem with capping also XPs is the amount of contests that depend on it.

[jelom]

3 hours ago, Z-Wave said:

The changes:
1. Cap the maximum level indefinitely at 500. No excuses, no more quick pushes, simply and reliably 500. Maybe even make it that level 500 players don't get any more exp and instead some compensation rewards like gifts, books and orbs.
2. Make it possible to rush to level 500 (when enough payment is provided). This can be done best with PoP (just add exp as a fifth reward next to shards, tickets, EP orbs and GP orbs).
3. Optimize the league bracket selection similar to the seasons mojo brackets. Players should be put in their respective league (D3, D2, D1, S3 etc.) but only face people with maximum +/- 40 levels (so the highest level per bracket can only be +40 compared to the lowest level player at the start of each league). If you can't make a full group of 100 like this, you automatically are promoted to a higher league.
4. Keep everything else as is. Including the PvP mechanics, league rewards, the Harem Level bonus and the massive grind to level 500.

1. OK capping the level at 500.

2. How fast do you want to rush? Example: If it is done 0-500 in a year, PoP or any other feature should give more than 60000 XP a day (that is, per cicle), excluding finishing early with kobans that would take more than a million kobans (6500 €) if 60000 XP are awarded each time.

3. Then your are sugestting leagues by level just as the contests are now. It won't matter, there will be always good and bad players, and the better ones will win a lot more times.

4. You cannot maintain the grind to 500 and also the rush of point 2, you have one or the other. If people get XP from PoP then the grind is reduced a lot both for P2W and F2P.

Well, a huge imbalance in contests due to the XP gained with real money, F2P players will be penalized a lot, and will win less contests, XP (=levels), kobans and girls.

[_shal_]

There's just no getting around the fact that the league system got fucked for good when the level cap was raised beyond 400. I mean, I'm at level 430 now after two and a half years, and I have half the XP required for level 500.

[Z-Wave]

2 hours ago, jelom said:

1. OK capping the level at 500.

2. How fast do you want to rush? Example: If it is done 0-500 in a year, PoP or any other feature should give more than 60000 XP a day (that is, per cicle), excluding finishing early with kobans that would take more than a million kobans (6500 €) if 60000 XP are awarded each time.

3. Then your are sugestting leagues by level just as the contests are now. It won't matter, there will be always good and bad players, and the better ones will win a lot more times.

4. You cannot maintain the grind to 500 and also the rush of point 2, you have one or the other. If people get XP from PoP then the grind is reduced a lot both for P2W and F2P.

Well, a huge imbalance in contests due to the XP gained with real money, F2P players will be penalized a lot, and will win less contests, XP (=levels), kobans and girls.

1. Nice, agreed! :-)
2. Yeah I honestly don't know and lack the skill and motivation to do all the math behind this. There are so many exp sources now and some of them depend on spending Kobans or even real money. Fact is we do need more exp somewhere so it doesn't take 4+ years even for the veterans to reach 500. Maybe a good estimate is that somebody f2p should be able to get to 500 in 3 years while somebody paying 100€ per month should get there in a year. Those numbers are super arbitrary though, so hopefully a smart person can answer this? 😂
3. I don't see the problem in your statement... Yes, there will be good and bad players and the good players will win. That's exactly how it should be, right? The problem right now is that winning depends much more on whether you have been around for longer, not on skill. My suggestion tries to solve that.
4. Yep, but as every F2P game there should be an advantage for paying players (otherwise why would anybody pay for it?). It must be somewhat reasonable though. F2P players shall have an enjoyable experience, but in order to be really competitive in the big leagues you'll have to either pay or wait more time... hence my suggestion in 2.

[Kenrae]

42 minutes ago, Z-Wave said:

4. Yep, but as every F2P game there should be an advantage for paying players (otherwise why would anybody pay for it?). It must be somewhat reasonable though. F2P players shall have an enjoyable experience, but in order to be really competitive in the big leagues you'll have to either pay or wait more time... hence my suggestion in 2.

Aren't DOTA, LOL or Rocket League considered F2P?  Because you don't get any advantage by paying. Having to wait more time to reach the cap is one thing, having an advantage once you're at the cap is another.
Unless you're only talking about that, the wait  

[Z-Wave]

6 hours ago, Kenrae said:

Aren't DOTA, LOL or Rocket League considered F2P?

I don't think there's a valid comparison to be made here. Your examples are first and foremost PvP games that are about winning and showing off in a leaderboard. Paying for customizations gives a real value to players who want to show off while competitive advantage would break the essential game. HH isn't such a game though, but rather a collectathon like Pokémon Go where your main goal is to catch 'em all. Customizations (especially in HH where our profiles are pretty hidden from others) don't give us much value. Skipping F2P waiting times and growing your collection faster (which makes your side-PvP more profitable as well) however is a value worth paying for.

I'm not saying the payment system is well done throughout HH, far from it! The inconvenient truth is though: As long as we can't convince KK that they will make more money by giving F2P players the opportunity to rush to 500 and being as strong as paying players, they won't change it. And I don't see how a game like HH can be as profitable without giving a substantial time advantage to paying players. If any of you does find a convincing suggestion, sign me up immediately! So far I I think my ideas are somewhat balanced with a massive grind for F2P (but not as massive as now, the PoP exp rewards should at least take a year or two off their journey to level 500) and a shortcut for paying players. 🤷‍♂️ And the main issue to be solved in leagues is not the player progression anyway, but the unfair matchmaking (hence my point number 3 with the level brackets).

I'm looking forward to your ideas and feedback, let's have it. 😉

[Observer_X]

8 hours ago, Z-Wave said:

F2P players shall have an enjoyable experience, but in order to be really competitive in the big leagues you'll have to either pay or wait more time

Do you mean that free players (or more in particular, long time free players) shouldn't have the chance to compete with paying players on an equal basis in Dicktator Leagues? Because if this is the case, I am prone to think that I won't be the only free player that will disagree with you. Don't forget that quite a number of players already expressed a negative opinion about the season pass cost in real money instead of kobans: IMHO when a game, that normally concedes the possibility to play both free and pay, starts to have parts of the game totally unreachable for free players, surpasses a very dangerous threshold, that may bring in the end to the game demise. As far as I know, as all players start the game as free players, more free players means an increased chance of more paying players, and the same sentence with "less" instead of "more" is also true.