HoD Prize Rankings Need a Re-Think

Brakkis

I like the idea of everyone earning rewards based on their final score out of what the highest possible is rather than a ranking system. Keep the ranking system for Coalitions as it is but alter the personal rewards to a tiered system that is determined by how close you are to the highest possible score.

GrizzoMtGPQ

bken1234 said:

babar3355 said:

[snip]

And for you guys that are complaining that you didn't know this is occurring... Are you serious?  You have never joined NoP, EC, etc and realized you were immediately in the top 25-50 or a 250 person bracket?  Do you just immediately join the events as soon as they are available? I am frankly mind-blown that anyone could be unaware that brackets were filling up... Honestly, I can't comprehend.

[snip]

I think you take for granted that you have been part of a community that has tracked this longer than pretty much every other community or group of teams that I know of -- since the QB days when everyone in Slack would do a channel call the last day when the bracket flipped.

First, yes, a lot of people join events as soon as the buy in happens. They don't know they are put into a bracket when they click "join". We've never even had this discussion here, and even if we did, there are 6000 players in Platinum -- how many of them participate in this community?

This is, until now, one of the most unintentionally best kept secrets in the game. It is the thing that I explain to players and teams all over the place struggling when they tier up. It's a good rule of thumb for helping you when you aren't quite ready to be in the bracket you have put yourself in. 

There is a clear benefit to joining a later bracekt, whether you're sniping at the end like what occurred in QB or more recently individual, small bracket events, or joining the second bracket in Platinum. 

As one of the few players who has 2 active Platinum accounts, both of which regularly play at a competitive level -- I can attest, over and over that my main always finishes higher than my alt with the same or lower score. My alt generally enters the first day of an event so I can clear it down a bit and be able to handle both accounts, my main joins on the second day. 

I think the biggest factor is the fact that the more competitive players, the ones who want to go for the big prize tend to enter earlier -- while the less competitive players, the ones who have other commitments or aren't as focused on getting all prizes enter later. That waters down rankings in the second bracket. 

However, most people don't look at their rank until they have a few matches. Even being part of a group that tracks this, I forget to do it more often than I remember when I enter an event. Sure if they enter on the last day and finish top 25, that's something they would notice -- but since the consensus is that people thought we were being evenly divided into brackets, most people don't bother to enter on the last day, for fear they won't catch up. 

Best kept secret? This was the last entry in the reddit readme.

span_argoman

GrizzoMtGPQ said:

bken1234 said:

babar3355 said:

[snip]

And for you guys that are complaining that you didn't know this is occurring... Are you serious?  You have never joined NoP, EC, etc and realized you were immediately in the top 25-50 or a 250 person bracket?  Do you just immediately join the events as soon as they are available? I am frankly mind-blown that anyone could be unaware that brackets were filling up... Honestly, I can't comprehend.

[snip]

I think you take for granted that you have been part of a community that has tracked this longer than pretty much every other community or group of teams that I know of -- since the QB days when everyone in Slack would do a channel call the last day when the bracket flipped.

First, yes, a lot of people join events as soon as the buy in happens. They don't know they are put into a bracket when they click "join". We've never even had this discussion here, and even if we did, there are 6000 players in Platinum -- how many of them participate in this community?

This is, until now, one of the most unintentionally best kept secrets in the game. It is the thing that I explain to players and teams all over the place struggling when they tier up. It's a good rule of thumb for helping you when you aren't quite ready to be in the bracket you have put yourself in. 

There is a clear benefit to joining a later bracekt, whether you're sniping at the end like what occurred in QB or more recently individual, small bracket events, or joining the second bracket in Platinum. 

As one of the few players who has 2 active Platinum accounts, both of which regularly play at a competitive level -- I can attest, over and over that my main always finishes higher than my alt with the same or lower score. My alt generally enters the first day of an event so I can clear it down a bit and be able to handle both accounts, my main joins on the second day. 

I think the biggest factor is the fact that the more competitive players, the ones who want to go for the big prize tend to enter earlier -- while the less competitive players, the ones who have other commitments or aren't as focused on getting all prizes enter later. That waters down rankings in the second bracket. 

However, most people don't look at their rank until they have a few matches. Even being part of a group that tracks this, I forget to do it more often than I remember when I enter an event. Sure if they enter on the last day and finish top 25, that's something they would notice -- but since the consensus is that people thought we were being evenly divided into brackets, most people don't bother to enter on the last day, for fear they won't catch up. 

Best kept secret? This was the last entry in the reddit readme.

That link was specifically talking about QB so some players may not have realised that it was the same case for Events. *shrug*

Also, the secret tip on the MtGPQ Reddit FAQ was deleted after QB was removed from the game.

In any case, I'm also in favour of the suggestion from @James13 so that the competition level between different brackets of the same tier will be more comparable.

I'm not in favour of giving rewards based on how close to a perfect score one is as it restricts the developers from ever again improving the AI to make the game more challenging. I can already see all the complaint threads that will pop up when people unable to deal with improved opponents accuse the developers of trying to deprive them of rewards.

Ranking Rewards being based on relative position to other players provides more flexibility for them to make changes to the meta and the game.

Kinesia

I'd actually think it'd be even better for the devs to put the brainy Greg back! Restrict rewards hugely until people actually evolve!

(Only slightly facetious.) The problem with brainy greg was only the matches causing cascades, so if they want to allow later abilities they can do it differently than last time by adding more rules to restrict use of the first ones, they've actually had some success with that. (With the "draw" abilities especially)

stikxs

bken1234 said:

A lot of veteran players are just as successful in pauper as they are using shiny decks, so I don’t think it should be a consideration in scoring.

If you can't compete in the tier you are in, you tiered up too fast --I did this and went through months of very low placements compared to where I was in gold. Eventually I made do with what I had and collected more cards and caught up. 

If vets can do just as well at the low end and high end, then making low rarity viable helps players with smaller libraries have a chance at being competitive. Though I don't mean to say that pauper should be better.

babar3355 said:

Totally agree with this.  Incentivizing players to use pauper decks rather than their coolest, most interesting, and complex cards gets a huge NO from me.

I didn't mean incentivize not using the rarer cards, just a way to allow new players to be somewhat competitive. If you mean for the game to only favor old players, you make it hard to get new players.

bk1234

stikxs said:

bken1234 said:

A lot of veteran players are just as successful in pauper as they are using shiny decks, so I don’t think it should be a consideration in scoring.

If you can't compete in the tier you are in, you tiered up too fast --I did this and went through months of very low placements compared to where I was in gold. Eventually I made do with what I had and collected more cards and caught up. 

If vets can do just as well at the low end and high end, then making low rarity viable helps players with smaller libraries have a chance at being competitive. Though I don't mean to say that pauper should be better.

babar3355 said:

Totally agree with this.  Incentivizing players to use pauper decks rather than their coolest, most interesting, and complex cards gets a huge NO from me.

I didn't mean incentivize not using the rarer cards, just a way to allow new players to be somewhat competitive. If you mean for the game to only favor old players, you make it hard to get new players.

Doesn’t the tier system — do this already though?. I think the only place it actually does work is in bronze. 

The system is designed so people should be playing with others who have like-collections. The problem is that people either tier up too early or sand bag in lower tiers. 

Incentivizing pauper will only mean that we have to play against more watered down decks, because everyone will flock to platinum. As vets, we are barely challenged as it is. I can’t speak for everyone, but I would rather not play this game then spend hours building and testing decks only to go into events and steamroll over pauper decks all weekend:  

When I tiered up to platinum in the fall of 2016. I was finishing top 5 in Gold; so I pushed up. I don’t think I even broke top 100 for 6 months. My collection was nowhere near the level of the other players back then. I shouldn’t have pushed up; I should have let it happen naturally, but I did my penance and worked my way back up. I would have never considered being rewarded for my bad choice — and that is what tiering up too soon was — a bad choice.