Ladder rankings reset too aggressively and stops players from feeling progression
I've been playing Live on and off since closed beta and one feeling that really sucks is getting reset to the bottom of ladder every month. At times I've grinded a bit more and reached around 1600 points, but the amount you lose on every monthly reset gives you a lot of repeat work to do before you are climbing further then you did before and if you stop playing a single month you almost always end up going back to Poke League.
Looking at a ladder decay chart I found online, at most ranks you are losing half or more of your total points at every monthly reset which seems high, its not until you reach Master league that your decay takes away less then half your points but its still a lot relative to how much you had to win to get there.
While the system of a win being +20 and a loss being -20 isn't awful (its very simple but thats fine), many similar style card games will have factors that artificially help players increase rank over time. Hearthstone had winstreaks (starting at 3 wins in a row, every win gave you an extra star which would be like getting +30 points for winstreaking instead of 20).
Marvel Snap makes it so when you reach a new rank, instead of starting at the bottom of the rank they start you at the middle. This would be like when you hit 600 points (Greninja rank) you'd instantly jump to 660 points which is halfway to Houndoom.
While there are rank floors (you cant lose points to drop you into a lower League) it only applies between Poke, Great, Ultra and Master League. Another way to push players to higher ranks would be to have more "floors" throughout the Leagues that protect players from losing streaks and gives them more "checkpoints" to strive for to stabilize their ranking.
People might say "just play more and git gud" but using my own personal stats, I've had a 64% winrate over 900 games since I started playing on live which is relatively good for card games involving rng, but I still started this season at 300 points which feels like I've accomplished very little. I also dont believe its good for new players when more experienced players are getting pushed down to low ranks aggressively and every month newer players are getting beat by more experienced players because they have to climb out of lower ranks.
I feel the simplest solution is to reduce the amount players get reset every month, If players can gain more points on average then they lose, players will slowly get further and further on the ladder which ultimately should be the goal to keep players engaged (note this doesn't mean make it so easy so even players with low winrates reach Master League). All the other ideas listed above also seem reasonable to accomplish this goal, with winsteaks being the one I enjoyed the most from other games. Thanks for listening to my rant as I want to love Live but just want to see some nice quality of life features added.
P.S Rewards for reaching new player levels are worthless and should be increased so players actually feel good as they continue to play (rare cards arts or a bunch of credits to craft new decks would be great) and as a serious player we really need an action history text box or sidebar so I can know what my opponent got off super rod or search cards.
Comments
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I couldn't agree with this post more. What makes it worse it that the rewards you get for all this work are just so boring. It's the same sort of example every month. You get a free coin, then there are matching sleeves and deck boxes as a reward.
As a new player I thought those rewards look cool. It's not like you even see the opponent's deck box for more than 0.5 seconds anyways, so it seems like a reasonable accomplishment. Oh how naive I was. Playing Quick League I was like ok, still seems reasonable, then Poke League hits you like a brick wall without explanation. At least if you could click on a league or something it could explain it so you know what's ahead of you.
After a while of bouncing around, because I'm a new player, using a standard deck, I had to search online for answers. The calculations of how much time I would have to dedicate to playing this game in the upcoming month were astounding. What I thought was a mediocre reward would actually take up practically all of my video game time for the month. I'd probably also have to spend of time outside the game researching the meta and stuff to ensure my win rate was as good as possible.
There's a lot of games out there, so it's almost like why "just play more and git gud" at this game when I could get really good (as compared to my previous months) one month and my reward will be.... pink sandals for that stupid avatar thing? Greeeeaaaaaat.
P.S. PTGO was better at showing deck boxes. They look cool sitting next to your deck and makes it feel like a tabletop game. How many players actually earned that basic looking Mew deck box this month and are flaunting that huge accomplishment for 0.5 seconds if the opponent is paying attention?
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