Death brackets should exist, but with commensurate rewards

Unknown

If you really think about it, the new way that they do brackets is really the way it should have always been. People who have stronger rosters should be playing other people with strong rosters. It's ridiculous for someone with maxed 3 star teams to be competing against people who have just started and have 1 star teams. But it is also ridiculous that the 1 star teams get the same rewards as the 3 star teams. Just compare it to any sport you like, professionals don't beat up on beginners, but beginners don't get the same prizes for the winning a game.

So D3 has gone half way here, they have segregated players and made them fight people who are roughly their level (granted, they need to do a much better job or sorting people, but lets move past that for now). Now they need to give people who have been sorted upwards better rewards in their brackets. Let's say there is a normal bracket and a hard bracket, if you are in the hard bracket the first thing that should happen is battles give 140 iso and 280 instead of 70 and 140.

Next they need to increase the standings required to get various prizes. Instead of needing to place 50th to get 1 cover, maybe make it 100 or 150. I know for myself, the amount of effort that used to easily get me into the 25-50th reward pool (well, actually a little bit more effort because I did push a bit) has been landing me between 70 and 130ish lately.

They should also make new prize levels at the top. Make first place get 2 covers for the 4 star hero, make 5th get 1 such cover, and let the prizes that used to be top 10 go out to 25th place. I might have the specifics wrong on where these should land exactly, but I think a good guideline should be that roughly the effort that used to get me 2 covers of a 3 star character should still get me that in these new brackets.

There's no reason for there to just be these 2 types of brackets either (normal and hard). They could fine tune it so there would be a slow ramp up of rewards. The stronger you get, the more difficult your opponents and the better your rewards. Seems like a pretty standard video game thing to me.

The other thing I was thinking about is this scales up for them, they have pretty well saturated the 3 star heroes at this point. They shouldn't make any more, but how can they add 4 star characters if no one can get them? (I remember a while ago IceIX said that people only use 4* as trophies) Well here it is, if you have a maxed team of 3 stars, you can fight other people in the same position to get 4 star characters. Perhaps the top brackets would have a prize pool that looks like the current one but with all of the characters 1 star up

Even longer term, what do we do when we have this same situation again with the 4 stars? Too many 4 star characters, a bunch of people have maxed 4 star teams? Do this again and introduce 5 star characters. Only the top brackets will see them, but they fight on and progress. The only remaining question is who would be the first 5 star characters? I vote for Galactus

Unknown

All good stuff. It'll take something like this to keep me playing. Right now it's just not worth the effort.

Unknown

The problem with better rewards for stronger teams is that it's a self perpetuating cycle where the strong become stronger and the gap between lower tier players and top tier players grows. Eventually the only way for the lower tier players to bridge the gap is to spend $$$ (hmmm... ignore that please D3).

Instead of better rewards for higher tier brackets, it makes more sense to have wider reward tiers for those brackets so that the 1st tier cover extends to 20th to reflect the higher level of competition.

Unknown

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Instead of better rewards for higher tier brackets, it makes more sense to have wider reward tiers for those brackets so that the 1st tier cover extends to 20th to reflect the higher level of competition.

I would be satisfied with that actually. Before the bracketing change I was able to get 50th pretty much whenever I wanted to, now it is locked out to me unless I push way harder than I care to (I managed to get a thor cover recently, partly just to see what it would take. If that is the new way of things I'm not sticking around). If they simply acknowledged that the brackets are harder and widened the reward tiers it would put things right in that respect.

DrUnpleasant wrote:

The problem with better rewards for stronger teams is that it's a self perpetuating cycle where the strong become stronger and the gap between lower tier players and top tier players grows. Eventually the only way for the lower tier players to bridge the gap is to spend $$$ (hmmm... ignore that please D3).

This doesn't really bother me. Top tier players have put in more time and/or money than lower tier players (generally). They should be better. At least with the FTP model, if a newer player wants to compete with the veterans there is an opportunity for them to catch up via their wallet.

But more importantly, the only alternative to the higher people breaking away by getting stronger that I can see is stagnation at the top. Because of my playing/spending schedule, the only way I would ever be able to be counted amongst the most powerful players would be if the top people can't progress any more and have been hovering around a static power level for a while. Assuming there is progression like I described above, the difference between my power and the power of the top guys will only grow. That doesn't bother me at all. The only thing I really want is to be able to progress in my own way all the time. My progression will be very slow, but that doesn't bother me and fits my play style/schedule.

Clintman

I hate to say it, but I am reaching the point of, "what's the point?"

These fights against other 141 maxed teams is so tiring. Right out the gate hitting maxed teams that take 3x longer is just not fun. It would be more fun if there was equal reward for the ramped up difficulty as the game matures, but I really do not think the Devs are paying attention to the evolution of their game at the top end.