Message to Developers - Ranking System

Unknown

- To the Developers:

I'm a fairly new player and I'm in the small percentage of people that support companies by investing money into well developed mobile and kick starter game that they really enjoy and will keep my interest i.e. Shadow Era, MPQ, etc. I started playing approximately a month ago and have been really enjoying the game; however, for the first time I've started developing negativity towards the game. From a psychological standpoint when players start developing negativity towards a game they lose interest and start searching for something new. I'm an MMO'er and this is something I am very familiar with and have seen over the past two decades. From a business standpoint when you lose players that are supporting your game you lose revenue. In the end the company needs to make money to continue development so there is continued interest from the players. The question is what brought on this negativity?

My biggest complaint is the current ranking system. I did well during the first simulator events on easy and hard mode. During the last simulator event my level 30 - 40 characters were up against characters 80+ in the hard mode simulator. Some might say that hard point is supposed to be hard--I do get this concept but characters double your level aren't hard they are "virtually" impossible and will at the very least down a few characters and leave the other characters almost dead. I decided to skip the hard event entirely this time to give my characters more time to level. I decided to aggressively play the current Thor Event to see how high I could get. I had a fairly good win to lose ratio and got myself up to rank 23 and went to bed happy nowing that there was a pretty good chance of getting a Wolverine Patch Cover if I put enough effort into it. To my dismay the ranking system adjusted my bracket and I woke up to 4 loses. This was disturbing but I felt I could make my way back up the ladder. When I logged in to play this morning I was astonished. I was no longer facing opponents between 30 and 50. I was facing opponents 50 to 100. I gave it a go, but was obliterated over and over again. This caused a significant amount of frustration and I turned the game off.

Again, from a business standpoint you don't want this to happen as it will cause you lost revenue if the player develops to many negative feelings and stops playing the game completely. I am not quite at this point yet; however, I highly suggest you take a hard look at the current ranking system and come up with a better approach. I would suggest fine tuning the brackets to ensure that featherweights are not facing heavy weights. There is no reason that players should be facing opponents that are 20 levels above the current character level.

- To the Players:

I'm thinking the best approach is to not play the event at all to till the last 12 hours to ensure that the dynamic system does not push you out of your current bracket. I feel like if I'd started playing 12 hours before the end of the event I wouldn't have gotten pushed from rank 22 to rank 66. I'd appreciate any thoughts or feedback on how to approach this.

Humble Regards,
dizlegion