Quote:
Originally Posted by bwiese3908
Do they really want more equal competition? That is the million dollar question... I am sure some do, but would venture to guess most enjoy taking candy from a baby!
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Put another way, what incentive(s) would a whale, smaller whale, manatee, dolphin or higher food-chain animal have to NOT leave their team in a lower less competitive small fry leagues, assuming it was within the Terms of Service.
(Remaining is a bit rambly)
There are no single silver bullet ideas that can resolve this I think, as it's inherent in these games (Open format CCGs), where you can pay money to gain advantage. It will need many small/medium changes that will add-up to what feels like competitive balance. I think of it as less "bug fixes" and more of a "comprehensive algorithm". Over the past few years since introduced, PT competitiveness has been very important to the Dev Team and the Content Team. It has manifested in the pyramid scheme (still developing), Twitch streams (6-7 days a week with PP giveaways), meaningful live card missions launched at the start, enormous variety of tournaments, are just some ways the entire Team is giving players opportunities to improve their rosters threw cards or PP, no matter the level. Yes you can throw darts at anything, but know they are improving the experience for everyone and don't appear to be stopping.
"Boredom" or "Sportsmanship" might be a kneejerk response as an incentive, but I'm guessing many of these players won't be bored from denying small fry PP, Wins, Awards, or Championships. Building a system (PT teams) that auto-farms video games (gets achievements, awards, championships, game score) into gold (PP) is a key enjoyment folks get from the game. Thankfully the money that goes in, doesn't allow for money to come out like on Ebay or elsewhere. Only game enjoyment and frustrations
At this point, I think about PT mode as just another tournament in the full list of tournaments. Its the grandaddy of Open No Cap tourneys.
As for pie-in-the-sky solutions? Here are my fairly unthought out ideas:
- Weighted Achievement PP payouts based on total card/team/roster cap for the type of achievement. There are problems with this of course. It would have to some combination of factors that would determine a team's weight for example.
- Many more Global/Player strategy items to manage that could sway lower CAP teams more opportunities if nothing else. Not just nebulous "Small Ball" either. If anything, as many options as Offline. There may even be some unique settings for PT managers though none come to mind.
- Make Live cards more useful in PT play generally even in Diamond/Perfect. The higher the level, the most likely a Live card will forever be in the Inactive pile. Every year brand new players have to learn that 90+% of their cards are useless as they move up the ranks, until they almost are non-competitive. The problem is the static nature of historic data versus the flux of live data. But clearly when 99% of cards are non-competitive there is a problem. In that case, PT should just be non-live cards. (This one seems really hard).
- Allow players to be injured. Again I know, this is problematic. It would advantage active players regardless of marine size, to constantly be in tune with their teams, thus even small fry get a bonus. Again problematic.
- Continue to make Packs cheaper and cheaper. The Gold pack move I hope has increased sales in those. I'd want to see the cost of a standard pack to 250-500 PP. Yep that's crazy. But I don't think winning 5 DoD 200PP tourneys should equal 1 pack (lowest tourney payout?). 2 tourney's worth seems right.
Bottom Line: Make in-game PT currency earned easier (more achievements types, more value) probably weighted somehow so a "lesser" team can potentially earn more for similar achievements. At the same time improve the playing value of live cards at upper levels, and make getting cards cheaper (aka drop Standard Packs to 250pp).
tldr: Sorry