Challenge of the Courts - what about the new brackets ?

Bil
Bil Posts: 831 Critical Contributor
I must say i was not surprised by the meaningless rewards for personal progression in Challenge of the courts .... but something i didn't notice at first glance disturbs me ...

Brackets used to be top 5 / top 25 / top 50 ... Not top 1/ top 5 / top 15 ...

- Is this silent change a mistake?
- Is it meant to become a future standard?
- 50 players receiving a bunch of jewels for 2 days of grind ... Did it seem too much of a reward to keep the original brackets?

Lots of questions for an enigmatic move ...


Comments

  • Volrak
    Volrak Posts: 732 Critical Contributor
    For this particular event I'm not too fussed.  No other Standard PvP non-coalition event even has individual ranking rewards, so in that sense it's like a bonus, and progression rewards already seem fine in this case.  Also, bracket size appears to be only 250.
  • Boogeyman
    Boogeyman Posts: 223 Tile Toppler
    Bil said:
    I must say i was not surprised by the meaningless rewards for personal progression in Challenge of the courts .... but something i didn't notice at first glance disturbs me ...

    Brackets used to be top 5 / top 25 / top 50 ... Not top 1/ top 5 / top 15 ...

    - Is this silent change a mistake?
    - Is it meant to become a future standard?
    - 50 players receiving a bunch of jewels for 2 days of grind ... Did it seem too much of a reward to keep the original brackets?

    Lots of questions for an enigmatic move ...


    I think the only thing to do is not participate.  They are not listening to this feedback unfortunately.  
  • jtwood
    jtwood Posts: 1,285 Chairperson of the Boards
    Did they shrink bracket sizes by 80%, too?
  • Bil
    Bil Posts: 831 Critical Contributor
    edited December 2019
    Volrak said:
    For this particular event I'm not too fussed.  No other Standard PvP non-coalition event even has individual ranking rewards, so in that sense it's like a bonus, and progression rewards already seem fine in this case.  Also, bracket size appears to be only 250.
    Nodes of power, terrors in the shadow, trial of ambition, emergency ordinances, fate is not fair... They all have individual progression rewards and regular brackets (and they represent the main part of our non coalition pvp content - dailies apart)

     It seems a bit weird to change this when there's no obvious reason ... I'd love to know what the devs had in mind when they did it.
      If it was about rewards they could have kept the brackets and just reduced the rewards.
  • James13
    James13 Posts: 665 Critical Contributor
    I was a bit surprised to see any ranking reward.  I'd probably just axe that.  The progression is worthwhile on its own.

    Especially if they are doing this apparant nodes only charge after getting unlocked thing.  Lose any of the first charges or not start right away and you're screwed for ranking.

    One or the other needs to go, anyway.  Either no rankings, or we should be able to accumulate charges on nodes without necessarily unlocking first. 
  • Bil
    Bil Posts: 831 Critical Contributor
    edited December 2019
    James13 said:
    I was a bit surprised to see any ranking reward.  I'd probably just axe that.  The progression is worthwhile on its own.
    I actually really liked the awaken inferno concept ... Because it was coherent. No ranks, a good progression reward, and you can play for fun after that.

    Let's say its an awaken inferno, with a small incentive to play more ... But why changing the brackets anyway... ? 

    The amount of rewards per player isn't my point here ... But the number of players that are meant to receive them is ... 50 players wasn't that much already.
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  • NickBKK
    NickBKK Posts: 97 Match Maker
    It’s still much better than TGT. So I say keep it. 
  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    I don't care that the brackets are small, my issue is how the rewards are distributed.

    15-30 jewels for the top 15, and then nothing for everyone else?  That's pretty horrifying to see, especially when there are *squints* 20 perfect scores in my bracket.
    (I count runes as nothing, I know they're valuable for newer players, but this is a Platinum bracket so I look at them as a vet)
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited December 2019
    Here’s how I see it. They made an event with great progression rewards and fairly non grindy objectives, which makes it easy to keep going with little effort. 

    If you want to keep going because you want something to do, it’s not a huge time investment; and if you do well, you get a lot of pinks. If you don’t do well, it’s a great way to grind runes and practice deckbuilding in the new standard. 

    If you want to stop at progression, you got a lot for the effort you put in. 

    We have other HUGE issues to tackle in this game right now. Like this: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/80626/direction-of-this-game This event kindof seems like a gift. Why are we complaining? 

  • Mburn7
    Mburn7 Posts: 3,427 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited December 2019
    bken1234 said:
    Here’s how I see it. They made an event with great progression rewards and fairly non grindy objectives, which makes it easy to keep going with little effort. 

    If you want to keep going because you want something to do, it’s not a huge time investment; and if you do well, you get a lot of pinks. If you don’t do well, it’s a great way to grind runes and practice deckbuilding in the new standard. 

    If you want to stop at progression, you got a lot for the effort you put in. 

    We have other HUGE issues to tackle in this game right now. Like this: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/80626/direction-of-this-game This event kindof seems like a gift. Why are we complaining? 

    In this case I don't think its complaining so much as confusion.

    Why are the reward bracket sizes changed just for this event?  Why are the rewards so ridiculously top-heavy?
    Why do the locked nodes not start generating new charges when the event starts, since we already resolved this issue in the past?

    I agree that this was a delightful little event to have.  The issue here is the playerbase has no trust in the dev team.  Every decision is questioned because we
    A )  Have no reason to suspect that anything is working correctly
    B )  Have little reason to suspect that changes are being made intentionally
    C )  Have almost no reason to suspect that intentional changes are being made for logical reasons.
    D )  Receive zero communication on changes like these, leading to the above points.

    So whenever something new happens, you get lots of questioning posts.  Its not really complaining all the time, but it does come off the same way.
  • bk1234
    bk1234 Posts: 2,924 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited December 2019
    Mburn7 said:
    bken1234 said:
    Here’s how I see it. They made an event with great progression rewards and fairly non grindy objectives, which makes it easy to keep going with little effort. 

    If you want to keep going because you want something to do, it’s not a huge time investment; and if you do well, you get a lot of pinks. If you don’t do well, it’s a great way to grind runes and practice deckbuilding in the new standard. 

    If you want to stop at progression, you got a lot for the effort you put in. 

    We have other HUGE issues to tackle in this game right now. Like this: https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/80626/direction-of-this-game This event kindof seems like a gift. Why are we complaining? 

    In this case I don't think its complaining so much as confusion.

    Why are the reward bracket sizes changed just for this event?  Why are the rewards so ridiculously top-heavy?
    Why do the locked nodes not start generating new charges when the event starts, since we already resolved this issue in the past?

    I agree that this was a delightful little event to have.  The issue here is the playerbase has no trust in the dev team.  Every decision is questioned because we
    A)  Have no reason to suspect that anything is working correctly
    B)  Have little reason to suspect that changes are being made intentionally
    C)  Have almost no reason to suspect that intentional changes are being made for logical reasons.
    D)  Receive zero communication on changes like these, leading to the above points.

    So whenever something new happens, you get lots of questioning posts.  Its not really complaining all the time, but it does come off the same way.
    NOP, EC and Terrors all run small brackets with far worse rewards and much more work. I didn’t even try for top 15 and managed to finish 13th with 2 losses. I got lots of runes along the way and 15 bonus pinks for my minimal effort. Mostly I just wanted to get a feel for new Standard which I’m really struggling with. 
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  • Bil
    Bil Posts: 831 Critical Contributor
    edited December 2019
    bken1234 said:

     Why are we complaining? 


    Note that there's no complaint as far as the OP is concerned ... Just curiosity ... 

    I'm always curious about the motivations when it comes to the small changes behind the scenes : The significantly higher proportion of rare+ cards in the recent sets is another example (almost 50% of the set for eldraine).
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  • Windy
    Windy Posts: 79 Match Maker
    One element on Challenge is that no matter what time you start, there's only time for 6 charges anyway. So even if you start 1hr before event end, you can still do the same amount of charges as somone that joined prior the event start.