PVP related ideas

[SeroZeroes]

Just battled my way to the top100 bracket. Which I plan to stick around the rank 90-99 range just to get the 200 pvp medals with wins.
I am a paying player, having set aside a budget of < USD80, per month to spend on whichever mobile game that catches my fancy. (I'm not a whale, but I do bring a pack of dolphins who spend around what I do when I find a great new game) 

That saying, I've spent < USD 40 on SWGOH now, to get to where I am.

However I am foreseeing huge P2W (F2P games surely have such paying systems, but if they destabilize the power-balance too much, it's a huge turnoff for free players, and paying players like me, want free players around to have someone to win against in the first place...) elements in the current PVP setups already. If I ever fall out of the rankings to even get 130/win rewards, even after paying, it would make no sense to stick around since I'm not going to be rewarded the value of money I spend monthly on the game. And this would happen once released globally, because I have to compete with... 100x more players now (based on 10k downloads right now in playstore, a starwars game even a non-fan like me appreciate, I would really expect a million downloads at least)

The rewards between PVP ranking brackets are HUGE, rank100 and better gets 200/win, however the next tier, rank101 onwards, only get ~135/win. This is terrible scaling, other mobile games which I've played, didn't give me such a heart-attack on whether I'm going to be able to stay within ranking brackets, it should matter, and reward players that pay/play well, but not to this extent.

Rewards should be tiered to maybe... in decrements of 25? And based on % of the server population? Reward the top10 with something significant, since they deserve it, however the rest of the rankings should be based on percentage and not specific ranking numbers. (I do not know if this is being done, since it doesn't show currently). For example: top 1% gets 200/win, top2-5% gets 175/win, top5-10% 150/win, so on and so forth... Somewhere along these lines. 

There should be some sort of ranking rewards to encourage us to hit higher, not like right now... (I rather an easy target around my rank of 90 than challenge that big guy at ranked 50-60, same rewards, why risk a harder fight?). So for fighting the 2nd/3rd choice in pvp, give us a 10%/25% reward bonus for skipping a few ranks by fighting a big boy.

Some other players suggested timed base pvp rewards. From all the mobile game's I've played, since you have limited pvp to 5/day, ranking tier rewards should be awarded fortnightly, and it should be something significant (crystals / a special character only from pvp rewards etc.)  So that we would plan and make sure our 5 fights/day are worth it. (and since you mentioned you would limit purchased fights)

Positive points:

Of course there are things I've liked.

1. The auto system forced PVP to be much more challenging, IF we had been able to focus our targets, we would win 99% of the time even against someone of say... 500 power higher, meaningless, just choose all the heroes with single target skills and you win. But right now, balancing single target hitters and AoE heroes is a must.

2. Limiting PVP fights per day is actually great, I actually had to plan my team well, choose my opponents right, to make sure i make the most of it. Not like other games which have a separated energy for PVP, and PVP just ends up being another avenue to spam finish my energy before closing the game.

[Sc1-T3k]

Speak for yourself when it comes to paying 80USD for F2P games. A game designed around that is something that be nuked from orbit. Players like you are the ones feeding the trolls that spit out those games.
I dont mind a F2P consept maybe 5$ on a starter pack or so or a single purchase to get you off in the right direction, but you want massive P2W, maybe you can give those 80$ a month to someone who needs it

I sit at top 10-20 and I want to drop to sustain victories. Some because of Arena rewards but even more for the daily quests. You need 3 victories to comlete daily qusts for any crystals at all.

Daily reward could solve it to some extent but store refreshes every 6 hour so the current way is best for that. I think everyone should get 200 regardless of what rank they are. But make losses not count to attemts like challenges.

[SeroZeroes]

It seems like to me you simply read the first paragraph of my post, and your "buzz off p2w player" switch is flipped. Well it certainly was unintentional, since I only started figures, which is a very sensitive topic as you can see right now, to paint a picture to devs what kind of player I was "which is a player willing to spend some money on mobile games I like". So that they can understand where my points came from.

Nothing I've said was really pointing towards P2W, actually, i wanted to ease the P2W feelings it gives now. I'm glad you can stay within the top10-20 ranks to benefit from the 200/win shards now, I'm 70/80 from a new character myself, I love it too! But what I'm sharing is >>>> What if more players join this game, players RICHER THAN me, they spend USD200 burning up PVP, making their teams full 4-6* characters and the best PVP setup they came up with. Players like you (who pay a small starter pack and make up for the rest of the pay-gap with skill/hardwork/strategy), players like me (who doesn't want to spend USD200 like those whales), there is no way we can stay in top100, no way for us to get 200/win.

So what do we get then? 135/win at the next tier? What if global launch brings more than 100 players of <USD200? We get pushed down to top500? top 1000? 5/win? 50/win? I was trying to show devs the alternative to this, which is to lower reward differences between tiers. The ones within top100 keep their 200/win, but other tiers should have closer point gaps... like rank100-250 gets 175/win, and not 135/win, which is huge difference with the top100 rewards. 

So I fail to see, what have I said in my earlier post which is P2W? I wanted to limit PVP daily as it is now, NOT turn it to a cash sink, pay USD20 more for 10 more fights per day. 

Additionally, isn't 200/win defeating the purpose of the pvp ranking system, there wouldn't be an incentive to climb the pvp ranks. If at rank 1000, fighting players with 50 power rating players, gives me the same reward as we are in top100, why make our own lives difficult, we should just stay in rank 1000 fighting 10second fights.

[Sc1-T3k]

Sadly I fear those whales will rise to the top like they always do, I don't care about rank really. I just enjoy playing the games. But not if its going to cost me an arm, a leg and my 1st born.

Summoner wars did it okay even if its a huge P2W aspect there to, but atleast you got enough to keep you busy. But eventually it got boring tho.

[NateVoV]

I bring whales, dolphins, and guppies with me from a couple other games. And one big freakin shark that will likely stay at the top, as long as there's an incentive to do so. As it stands now, we have to purposefully rank down in order to even be able to battle.

PvP needs a wider bracket to battle. Not just players ranked higher than you, but within reasonable parameters lower as well.

[aaronnemoyten]

Appreciate the feedback and discussion. As I mentioned in another thread, we're not settled on our PvP structure and want to introduce some major changes... but they'll take a while so I can't give you a date on when they'll be ready.

As for the pay vs free argument, I don't want to get into it too heavily but I WILL say that in order for ANY competitive free to play game to work, the designers have to provide value to payers while making sure that the game continues to be fun for free players. 

There are plenty of games that do this well, and a lot more games that do this poorly. We hope to be in the first set

-Aaron