Damo

So, the event has now officially ended and the prizes are soon to be distributed to our participants. The total ranking looks as following: Thank you very much @Ultralord for the great stream yesterday and also thanks to all for participating! See you in the next contest!

Hello Skylords and Skyladies! Like all good things, this contest is coming to an end. A little reminder: Please don't forget to send in your replays if you haven't already done so. The deadline is tomorrow night, 23:59:59 - either via Discord Damo#7332 or directly to me here in the forum. We will evaluate all submitted replays promptly and have already agreed on a date for the stream. The stream will take place on the 18th of May and will thankfully be hosted on Ultralord's Twitch channel. s

Imho the answer to this question is even simpler. Boosters alone are no longer a really big incentive for players. Not only do you get them every day, many players are now about to complete their collection or already have it. Cosmetics on the other hand, that can only be obtained over a short period of time, with which you can show "Date XYZ, I was there", are a better motivator in my opinion. And yes, a one-off cosmetic was also available in this case, but just for playing the map, not for participating in the contest. I have to admit that after the first standard run, I myself did not try to do an expert run. I already had the Cosmetic and - I have to agree with Liorans on this one - it wasn't that much fun after all to spend more time on a chance to get boosters. The fear of missing out on something is definitely not negligible if you're only aiming to reach as many players as possible with something. And if you want players to take part in the contest, the limited availability cosmetics should have been used for this aspect of the event and not just as a participation goodie. tl;dr: Since I said that it was simpler than Liorans reason: Booster for participation, limited availability cosmetic for the ambitious contestants.

Yea, you guys should indeed check out the ongoing event 😉

Hello Skyladies and Skylords, Welcome to the Through Ice and Flames event! Date: 21.04.2023 until 14.05.2023 Stream: 18.05.2023, 19:00 CEST https://www.twitch.tv/ultralord_t1421 Map Infos: Lyrish Uprising (made by @Hrdina_Imperia) : When Rogan Kayle was crowned as the new king, there remained several factions in Lyr that refused to accept this state of affairs. Taking advantage of this discontent, the rogue Dreadnought incited a rebellion in the city of Mraz, quickly overwhelming those still loyal to the new king and his Skylord allies alike. Now he is free to fulfil his true plan - to steal the divine power of the Soulstone, which resides within the city walls. This cannot stand! An Expedition South (made by @Damo) : Mora is a god no more - The Sundbridge Shrine was cleansed of the twilight curse and Mora's minions have been defeated. But the star trapped in the heart of the earth, which the shrine connected to its brother in the boundless void, had already been tainted with this very curse. The worst outgrowth of this new infestation has affected a fire tribe in a distant land in the south, a tribe that worships the planet's core. It was not long before the curse spread beyond the tribe's members and plunged the whole land into darkness. A group of brave lyrish volunteers undertook an expedition south to nip this new outbreak in the bud. Rules, Goals & How to participate Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event, there is no need to sign up separately In this event, you will be offered not one, but two brand new community maps - both are 2-player maps The goal is to achieve the lowest time on both maps You could also enter by submitting a replay for only one of the two maps, but this would automatically disqualify you from winning any prizes in the joint leaderboard (more on that later) There is no restriction on the difficulty of the map, but please note that any time on expert will always beat a lower difficulty, so Expert > Advanced > Standard in example: 35:21 Expert > 28:15 Advanced > 19:34 Standard An Expedition South only offers two levels of difficulty (Advanced and Expert), so any Standard run will also count as Advanced. The deadline for submitting your replays is 14 May 2023, 23:59:59 CET Banned cards: Amii Monument 😉 How to play the maps: Submitting your Replays: To save your contest hosts some headaches, please follow these naming guidelines: <"expedition"/"uprising">_<difficulty>_<Minutes>_<Seconds>_Players => in example "expedition_expert_25_09_Damo_Hrdina Imperia.pmv" Please send your best replay(s) to @Damo either directly via the forum or on Discord (Damo#7332) Leaderboards & Prizes There are a total of three different leaderboards for this event - one separated leaderboard for each map and a joint leaderboard for the best time on both maps combined Also there's one addtional task for each map, which is unrelated to the leaderboard If you participate with more than one teammate, only your fastest replay will count for each individual leaderboard The prizes for the per map rankings are as follows: 1st Place: 5 boosters per player 2nd Place: 4 boosters per player 3rd Place: 3 boosters per player 4th-5th Place: 2 boosters per player 6th-10th Place: 1 booster per player The joint leaderboard, however, holds the really big prizes: 1st Place: 5 boosters per player as well as one Promo Juggernaut and one Promo Construct 2nd Place: 6 boosters per player 3rd Place: 5 boosters per player 4th-5th place: 4 boosters per player 6th-10th place: 2 boosters per player Example: Gold Chest Bonus Task: The team that opens all 6 gold chests in the shortest time wins an additional 2 boosters per player Due to the fact that players tend to hate gold chest related event objectives, it is not necessary to open the chests to win boosters from any of the previous leaderboards Since only your fastest replay with a given partner will be included in the leaderboard, only that replay will be used to determine the fastest opened gold boxes Random Booster Draws: For each map ranking, 8 boosters will be randomly awarded to players below 10th place on the leaderboard Special Thanks @Dutchy handling social media stuff @T1421 creating the promo video @Titan creating the thumbnail @nukie, @Metagross31 & @Majora great help organizing this event Also, many thanks to all the map developers active on the discord server who helped us solve the problems we both encountered along the way! Future Events If you are interested in helping with these kinds of events for the community, or want to host one yourself as I do it here, don't be afraid and simply reach out! Send @nukie, @Metagross31, or @Minashigo Hiko a PM on the forum, or direct message via Discord (nukie#9354, Metagross31#1103, Minashigo Hiko#1126). They are happy to assist you with upcoming events and with sponsoring towards your prize pool! We hope you have a lot of fun with this event and are looking forward to seeing all your replays! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

Fire Altar Hype

For Volin's stream sake: S+ Batariel, who would've expected that. There are pretty much two valid reasons to play this deck. 1. motm competition, 2. a daily timer of 35/45mins. S-tier contains the top deck options to play when you either want to go fast but not 2fast or you're playing motms and don't have the power for a batarie ldeck because you had to place the shrines (cries in void power). Brannoc mainly reaches the A-tier for being the single best option for several t3 speedrun scenarios. All other decks - besides and - reach this tier only due to their splashability with spells (driveby superiority). Decks below that tier do not really require much of an explanation.

Since there was also a race for fastest 2p 9s alltime on the same map last month, I can't wait to find out what the standings are for the contest. Will this only be announced in the stream or is there already a publication of the rankings for the contest?

That's not the worst idea I've heard today...or read in this thread.

I have actually talked to my fellow rpve comrades quite recently about a similar idea for a contest. I think it's a great contest to show how much really small micro decisions can make and since it's singleplayer and only takes about 2 minutes it's easy to find room for improvement.

Good.

🧂

So first of all: I don't want to talk completely badly about what has been implemented here. I think that the new Reward System conceptually contains some good approaches. In my humble opinion, this could have been a great addition to the old quests (especially the booster quest). But I still don't see how it can replace the old system in a meaningful, long-term, and above all sustainable way. The market could have been kept alive by the daily boosters, while players will have the additional opportunity to earn extra Bfp by grinding whichever gamemode they like. Why take away the daily boosters from the players, which are essentially the last bastion of the already rotten market? I'll second that. What could be better in the last few weeks than to take half an hour of time during the home office lunch breaks to play some battleground. That was rounded off by opening the booster! This great experience is now completely lost. Another problem that I have with the current version of the new rewards is that daily active players will be punished additionally if they don't get their 60 minutes per day. If the Daily Boost is not played down to 0 BFP, the next day only 100 will be added to the pool. Normal players who played their half hour or less per day for the Booster this system takes away all the financial basis to be able to play the game at a reasonable level at all. In what world is that "a bit much"? The sense of progress for new players is already low and will now simply slowed down even further. This can't be seriously the idea behind all this. Slow down the process of getting cards until it takes months to assemble individual decks, under the pretext of generating long-term motivation. Most players I know enjoy playing with full decks and being rewarded for achievements rather than being left behind with semi-constructed decks for what feels like an eternity. Last but not least, I've taken some time to look up the prices of some of my battleground decks and listed how long it takes for each deck to purchase a single charge for each card in the deck broken down into "Quests + Daily" (400 Bfp per day), "Quests + Daily + One Reserve" (600 Bfp per day), "Quests + Daily + Full Reserves" (880 Bfp per day). Small note: This would be "60 minutes", "260 minutes" and "540 minutes" per day I did not even include common cards in the prices. The prices are taken from the market place today (~17:00 CEST). Fire Spell Support (Fire -> Nature -> Fire -> Fire): 4260 Bfp per charge 5 days (Quests + Daily + Full Reserves) - 540 minutes per day 7 days (Quests + Daily + One Reserve) - 260 minutes per day 10 days (Quests + Daily) - 60 minutes per day Grimvine + Ships (Nature -> Shadow -> Shadow -> Frost): 9660 Bfp per charge 11 days (Quests + Daily + Full Reserves) - 540 minutes 16 days (Quests + Daily + One Reserve) - 260 minutes 21 days (Quests und Daily) - 60 minutes per day Batariel Deck (Fire -> Shadow -> Nature -> Nature -> Shadow ): 13440 Bfp per charge 15 days (Quests + Daily + Full Reserves) - 540 minutes 22 days (Quests + Daily + One Reserve) - 260 minutes 34 days (Quests + Daily) - 60 minutes per day edit: Just wanted to mention that by fully charging the Batariel deck by playing 540 minutes per day you'd end up playing 540 hours (22.5 days) in 2 straight months => possible ≠ desirable. To sum up at this point: The normal rewards are too few. The Grind is not worth it at all. At the latest after the reset, the market will collapse like a house of cards, because there are not enough cards to satisfy the players' deck requests and very few of them want to buy boosters to gamble with the very last remaining money. @Loriens Yeah, that's indeed nice and neat. But unfortunately it is a fact that a superior proportion of the most expensive cards in the game are among those with a single charge. But yes, basically I'm on your side on this one. It's definitely gonna bring a little relief!

Amen. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the following: Many players (probably most) don't even buy boosters (because mathematically it's not worth it) and I don't think that will change because you get the boosters 100 Bfp cheaper after one hour of playing. With the old reward system cards where basically forced into the market with the Daily Boosters. This will not happen anymore. I would strongly suspect that there will be less cards in circulation and they will be much more expensive. Daily active players should not outpace less active players. I can fully understand the approach. But why is this solved by effectively punishing the players who are active every day? In order to get the maximum profit out of the new reward system, you would have to play one hour before work, use up the reserve pool and continue playing ten hours later. Last but not least: Back then we had those neat 1 Bfp Boosters containing either a common or uncommon card. Due to the high spread of cheap cards, new players with little capital were able to buy at least the foundation of a good deck very cheaply. That was great! Now you guys came up with a "similar idea": The 1000 bfp boosters. Whoever came up with that idea: Congratulations! You did clearly not understand the current market situation of this game Why do you even bother to give out fair rewards to players? I don't understand it and I probably never will.