Hello Skylords and Skyladies! Today I want to announce the next big Battleforge PvP Tournament!
Who is going to be the new Master of the Forge to show the world, that he mastered his decks and strategies to beat them all for fame, glory and obviously tons of bfp? Time to find out!
Who can participate?
Everyone! I will be thankful for every single participant! Even if you're not that confident at reaching grand finals to get a shot for winning the whole thing, there will be lots of opportunities to win prices and I would like to stream and review as many games as possiblle through all skillbrackets! It would be great to see a large variety of decks and playstyles!
SIGN UP TO THE TOURNAMENT: https://challonge.com/tournaments/signup/aUNkP0atnG#/signup/205xjl4u7pp
If you end up having problems with the registration talk to me!
Format
It will be a 1vs1 Double Elimination best of 3 tournament, the grand final will be best of 5 (one match, no reset). Winner and losers finals will be all played on stream (the basic Toggy-format).
Prize Pool
1st place: 5000 Bfp + Promo Construct
2nd place: 3000 Bfp + Wheel of Gifts
3rd place: 2000 Bfp + Juggernaut
4th place: 1500 Bfp
Every other participant, that shows up and plays his matches gets 1 Booster!! You don't have to reach top 4 to win something in this tournament!
Awards
There will be special awards for special and entertaining plays during the tournament. Everyone, who sends me the replays at the end of the tournament gets a shot at winning!!
-> Best match of the Tournament: By that I mean the closest and most instense games! Perfect mechanical execution isn't necessary to win this award, it just has to be super exciting! The 3 best games will be rewarded with 500bfp for each player who took place in one of the matches.
-> Creative Player Award: Make a creative deck or non meta strategy work in this tournament! The 3 most impressive strategies will be rewarded with 500bfp each.
-> There will be even more hidden awards like the Toggy Award, so stay tuned! In total I will use up more than 5.000 bfp (I might even increase that number) to reward special plays and matches regardless on how high you placed in the tournament. UPDATE: We got another 10.000bfp donation for awards!
To be considered for the award ceremony you have to send me your replays! You can upload them in this forum thread or send them to me via discord (RadicalX#0952)! Please consider, that I had to change my discord account, so don't send your replays to the old one! I want to upload as many tournament replays on my youtube channel as possible!
When?
On 11.07.20 starting at 2pm CEST (Berlin time), the stream will start about 30 minutes in advance!
How to watch?
There will be a livestream during the tournament: https://www.twitch.tv/radicalx5
I also want to cast alot of replays on my youtube channel and also announce the award winners: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3rZG7pzo3GYO0wR3Jx9F7w
Will be thankful for every viewer!
Rules
Disconnection during a game results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake!
Not showing up to your match within 15 minutes results in a default loss. The plan is to play a round of matches every ~30 mins.
After your match go to Challonge and insert the result. That is done by clicking on your match and selecting the winner/stats. The brackets will be updated automatically.
The Map Pool is: Haladur, Simai, Wazhai, Elyon, Lajesh, Yrmia and Uro (same pool as in ranked duel). The first match of the round will be played on Haladur, then it is losers choice. Second round will start with Simai, third one... you get the drill.
The brackets for the tournament will be shuffled before the tournament starts.
Please save your replays by renaming them after you game or selecting the safe all replays option and send them to me unless your game were played on stream!
Internal rules like "no wall agreements" have to be agreed on in text form to be an official ruling and if any of those internal agreements are violated it counts as a default loss
No insulting!
BANNED CARDS: CURSE WELL; MORTAR TOWER; PHASETOWER - using one of these cards results in a default loss. If both sides agree it is possible to have a remake!
Reply in this thread, if you have any questions! Big shoutouts to Yuah & MephistoRoss for donating huge amounts of bfp to make this large price pool possible!
Quick reminder, that we have a discord tutoring server. If anyone wants to prepare for the tourney, feel free to join here: https://discord.gg/dZzKexQ
All I can do at this point is quoting Toggy: "I would love to see this community grow again and the competitive scene develop aswell. Because BF is fun!"
Looking forward to a great tournament!
Hello Skylords,
we all know that Yrmia & Wazhai are not the best balanced map and EA didnt put it out without a reason. (Pure Fire, scorched earth overall mapcontroll, cliff orb -> orb)
So instead of asking me -> start voting for a yrmia or wazhai & ranked random generated maps.
If there are "enough" votes, yrmia or wazhai will delete from the ranked pool or random generated maps can be added to the pool.
Hello MrXLink,
First of all thanks for making this thread. I'm really convinced that a remarkable part of the PvP community would benefit from higher gold incomes and it can clearly enhance the overall game environment. Sorry for the upcoming wall of text, but I really need to talk about this topic!
Current PvP Values
I would like to start with some basics about the current reward system and potential problems. So let's get into the current formulas to check current rewards (They should be accurate as I double checked my calculations with gold incomes in some of my own games).
1. Winning player
During the interval [0;2] the gold reward is at flat 250.
During the interval [2;20] the amount of gold f(t) get's calculated as a function of time (t=minutes) -> f(t) = 250+((t-2)/18 * 1100)
After 20 minutes the gold cap of 1350 got reached and it won't get higher regardless of gametime. I assume this is done to prevent abuse of 2 people agreeing on completely afk'ing in the game.
2. Losing Player
During the interval [0;2] the gold reward is a flat 100.
During the interval [2;20] the amount of gold f(t) get's calculated as a function of time (t=minutes) again -> f(t) = 100+((t-2)/18*400)
After 20 minutes the gold cap of flat 500 got reached.
What does this exactly mean? I'll show some rounded GPM values at 5 relevant game spots throughout the game for some clarity. 2, 5, 10 and 20, 30 minutes marks will be used here.
time -> Winning player (Losing player) [50% wr player]
2min -> 125 GPM (50 GPM) [88GPM]
5min -> 87 GPM (33 GPM) [60GPM]
10min -> 74 GPM (28 GPM) [51 GPM]
20min -> 68 GPM (25 GPM) [47 GPM]
30min -> 45 GPM (17 GPM) [31 GPM]
Comparison: I'll take your rPvE 9 value from one of your previous posts for that (145GPM). This implies that our average rPvE player aproximatly needs 29 minutes on average to win one map. Given that I think the average game time is faster, but there is no 100% winrate for all of these players that may be a quite accurate value. The average player in PvP has a 50% winrate in a normally distributed PvP environment. I'm pretty sure it isn't given (players with avg. skill should sit at sub 50% winrates), but I hope some gold changes may motivate more players to step into action again to fix that matchmaking problem. Anyways, these numbers lead to some problems I see with the current system and make me think that just raw stat increases won't be the solution to the issue.
The big problems I see right now
-> GPM constantly decreases with increased game time.
-> Winning PvP (highly skilled) is getting compared to average rPvE times (moderately skilled)
-> Losing income is really low, which is very counterintuitive for new players
The constant decrease of GPM over time is a problem for balancing. If you straight up increase GPM values on by putting in a multiplicator onto the formula you end up promoting the easiest way of abusing the game which is straight AFK'ing & wintrading. An AFK player will always be finished off after 2-4 minutes. If GPM are at their peak during this time this is a problem for potenial buffs to gold rewards. The question about rewarding 30min games over 20min games is another discussion (maybe you could check the percentage of 30min PvP games, if that is possible for you). From my perspective I would set a soft cap for these last 10 minutes rather than stopping at 20min. If equally skilled players face off against each other in certain matchups games tend to last much longer than average PvP games once the players reach higher tech stages.
Another problem I see with most arguments is that the PvP Winner gets compared to the average rPvE player. I would consider myself pretty experienced in rPvE, but not top tier. I still get to finish 4 rPvE 9's in an hour. This puts me at a GPM of 280, which is completely out of the range of what I would achieve with my current 92% PvP winrate even in the proposed improved system. This is something that really should be put into consideration when talking about these calculations.
Matchmaking issues
So let's talk a little about this problem beforehand. Right now GPM are vastly decreased by high que times and a very high participation of Top 10/20 players in ranked games resulting in que times. I really hope that after the upcoming reset and potential improvements to the PvP environment it may be possible to overcome some of these issues. With more motivated PvP players there would be a higher gold outcome for everyone as it minimizes the loss through que times. When talking about values it should always be considered, that the gold loss during waiting times has a clear implication onto the true outcome. That said I don't want to include this inconsistent variable too much into my arguments.
Abuse of strong gold incomes
Let's talk about it as you emphasized potential abuse as an issue. I don't think it is possible to abuse the system in a way, where it ruins game experience for serious players. If a change manages to make PvP interesting enough to attract abusers it will attract more serious players aswell, which has a much greater positive impact onto the PvP scene. There are 2 ways of abusing a high gold outcome for PvP:
1. Que up and stay AFK
2. Try to delay the game as much as possible
For the first case, this may be a delay of 2 minutes. Finishing off an AFK is an easy task, should be done in less than 2 minutes and grants some valuable gold. I don't think anyone will be too sad about a free win. Since there is a report system nowadays you could also just threaten to ban people that are doing such things. The second case I mentioned is doable aswell. People that try to delay by turteling or running away will run out of gas pretty quickly. Mass towers allow early free wells that result in a fast T3 finish while running away without ressource generation will also be a death sentence, since ressource generation just works through immobile buildings, that can get targeted directly.
Sure there may be different ways to abuse the system to get gold with a friend, but that doesn't ruin the game experience for anyone as you won't participate in these matches. Even with an increased gold income for PvP it will never get close to certain abuse strategies. You could also team up with a friend in dwarfen riddle expert to let him solo the map. You can make some food during this time and get a 500 (?) GPM value for that. Soultree is also an option to boost gold incomes into different levels in case you are a solo player. Unless PvP rewards for losing players start being competive to
What are my goals?
Before I start talking about real numbers, I want to talk about long term goals. Overall I want to see an attractive game with enjoyable gameplay for the majority of players in all gamemodes. I think the PvP community right now is quite small, but this wasn't always the case. During early 2013 times we had a very strong community and a strong PvP environment.
1. Better new player experience (increased rewards for losing players that tried their best)
2. The possibility for veterans to grind without spamming PvE
I'm convinced, that the amount of people that would try out PvP within a much more begginerfriendly environment gets a little underestimated in general. A more consistent income would increase the ability to get decks and cards, that you see in your first games, where you surely end up getting crushed. But with a quicker removal of competitive discrepance through ressources you can start learning the game much faster and enjoy its beauty when the real PvP gameplay starts. Under equal conditions it is much easier to identify mistakes and improve. At that point the wins start to come in which brings in more motivation to go on.
So the next thing I'm talking about is also about the veterans, that used to play PvP during 2013. I think the majority of people in the PvP community do want to achieve their first playable PvP deck within one month of active gameplay. To get the big picture that means 170.000-260.000 gold depending on the faction you want to play. Sure you somewhat can start playing seriously with some cards being on U2, but I made the estimation, this value may probably the difference, that my final modell doesn't catch due to the loss of gold through que times. With a GPM of 125 this would range from 22-35 hours. Looks bearable for the cheaper decks, but keep in mind only the best players do have winrates above 80% over many games and I used the winner values here. Average values of 125 for winning and 35 for losing imply a 80GPM for 50% winrate players. Back to 35-54 hours of raw gameplay for the first deck again. But without a competive deck the winrate will most likely be lower than 50% at the start even as a veteran. A state where grinding for a deck still isn't worth it.
Sparring grounds
Not much I can add here. The potential for abuse is very high, but no rewards at all aren't satisfying especially for people who are afraid of ranked and the ones who want to get practice beforehand. Setting up a low percentage based on ranked income seems like a good solution for me.
What changes I would like to see
The gold value I would like to see for a reasonable grind would be the possibility for people to get an upgraded PvP deck in about one month of gameplay. If we say Mr. XYZ plays 1 hour on average each day, this means we "ideally" do have 30 hours of gameplay. A full deck roughly costs 200.000 gold on average. In order to achieve that, we would need 111 GPM. An average player shouldn't earn less than that if PvP should end up in a reasonable state in terms of gold gains.
The second value that I use to adjust my final proposal is the rPvE average value of 145 GPM. If an average PvP player ends up earning more than that, PvP might get vulnerable to that. So I would like to see an average GPM between 111 and 145. This would push PvP into a position where it still gets outshined by rPvE and especially cPvE, but may be able to bring some satisfaction to the people, that simply don't enjoy playing PvE.
So let's try to get to the final formula. AFK players shouldn't be rewarded here, so flat loss income for the first 2 minutes should stay the same, while the flat bonus for the winning party could get increased by a little bit. It's less vulnerable to abuse and brings more excitement to very dominant games and decreases potential frustration upon facing an afk player.
I decided to keep the income between 20 and 30 minutes for now in my modell. It could see a slight change in the future, but for now it should affect the lowest percentage of games.
My model also brings rewards for the losing player, that ended up putting a long fight. Unless the enemy manipulates the game aswell no abuser will last long in these games and I really think PvP needs to be much more beginnerfriendly than it is right now.
Final formula and comparison to initial values and other game modes
Winning player:
[0;2] -> f(t) = 300
[2;20] -> f(t) = 300+((t-2)/18*3200)
[20;30] -> f(t) = 3500
Gold income comparison by using the marks of 2, 5, 10, 20 and 30 minutes
time -> Winning player (losing player) [50% wr player]
2min -> 150 GPM (50GPM) [100 GPM]
5min -> 167 GPM (77GPM) [122 GPM]
10min -> 172 GPM (86 GPM) [129 GPM]
20min -> 175 GPM (90 GPM) [133 GPM]
30min -> 117 GPM (60 GPM) [88,5 GPM]
These GPM values are what I would look for. It would be possible to farm upgrades for an entire deck within a month and a decent PvP player still gains below avg rPvE values while high lvl PvP player are still out of contention with PvE speedrunners.
TL DR;
-> Increased scaling for losing players by 240%
-> Increased flat winner bonus for winning games during the first 2 minutes (150% -> 200%)
-> Decreased gold over time multiplicator for winners (175% -> 88%)
-> GPM for an average PvP player will roughly stay 15% lower than the average rPvE player
-> GPM for a high ranked PvP player will roughly stay 70% lower than a top rPvE player
Thanks alot for reading and I really hope, that the PvP community can come back strong again! If there is anything you want to talk about, I'll be around for discussion
Best regards,
RadicalX
Sad, this was my way of pushing the hype. I dont care about my post count, feel free to revert it to whatever you like. In the majortiy of cases, I added interesting Information on BF and its cards, people also liked.
This will be my last post, due to your regualtion.
oldblood liked a post in a topic by RadicalX in Skylords Reborn Championship (11.07)