pvpPlayerMatter Pls make pvp reward higher

[vmde2]

Hey folks,

during the good old days a played a lot battleforge. I played almost exclusively pvp because I am not so much into pve. Now that battleforge is back I picked it up and it is a blast to play pvp again. I already played against Radical and TopSecret who thrashed me like in 3 minutes but I still enjoy it so much! SO WHY DAFUQ DO I HAVE TO GRIND PVE TO GET GOLD?!??!?!?! You get like 0 gold from pvp. I have one decent pure fire deck and it took me like a month to get all the upgrades. So could you maybe pls up the reward from playing pvp? most of the time I have to search around 3-10 min until I find an oppenent and then after a 10 min game I get like 600 gold. whats up with that. I would have to play around 16 rounds to get 10k gold which takes around approx. 4 hours and then I can upgrade like two common cards. Just add a 0 to the end of pvp rewards and It would be fine.

Warm regards 

Misconceived  

 

[Kubik]

so for your points:
I already played against ... - there is not much others actively searching for oponent
You get like 0 gold from pvp - what? 0? I know PvP rewards giving less than PvE, but they are higher on the paper, and as I said in other threads I will not increase them .to be even higher  you may come up with correction for the calculation thou.
So could you maybe pls up the reward from playing pvp - if I get correction why they are that low in reality while they are higher than PvE on paper.
I have to search around 3-10 min - not enough PvP players right now, people saying majority of PvP players is waiting for final reset.

[Navarr]

Classic thread where a wild Navarr jumps in and takes the side of the newcomer.

So, I can only speak from my experience but I have gotten far far more than 90% of my gold from PvE. In direct comparison PvP isn't (from an economical standpoint) worth playing for anything else than the 4 pvp matches quest. I think there was a thread where Radical talked a bit about the numbers. I don't care about the math and all that. Just saying that from a player that wins the vast majority of games in pvp, I still get so so so much more gold from pve.

Edited April 26, 2019 by Navarr

[RadicalX]

This is the one point I don't understand. In which world does PvP have higher rewards than PvE on paper? While the PvP high ranked community seems to be always begging for gold people from the PvE faction are laughing about me with millions of gold. 

 

A high elo speedrun PvE team could farm about 100.000 gold in an hour. 

A high elo PvP player can get up to 6000 gold.

An average PvP player will sit on about 3000-4000 in an hour (searching times not even included into the calculation). Might be even less since the skill level isn't normally distributed due to the high activity of the top10/20.

 

I somewhat got in touch with a big amount of former/new PvP players and discussed their problems with the gamemode and alot of them are simply not playing because they hope to see an improved PvP reward system. I will make a video quite soon to break down the problem a little more specifically with a possible solution about the current problem of PvP for new players and former veterans without an upgraded deck. 

[Kubik]

Link said it is fine as it is, because it is just a stress test and he seems convinced enough that his calculations are correct  
As PvP winner you should get 4050-7500 per hour
As rPvE winner you should get up to 12000 for rPvE diff 10, or just 4500 for rPvE diff 6
As cPvE winner you get upgrades which speed-runners exploit
but calculation here is: that average without speed-runners times it should get 12800 after disenchanting 4 expert upgrades  and just that is higher than PvP
Link must have mistake in his calculation sheet somewhere let me check his source

Everything in the sheet is based on tokens
and here PvP give 25-40% more tokens that are additionally boosted by 200% and then converted to gold.

Feel free to come with new gold rewards proposal (and ping Link about it)

[RadicalX]

I think at least 2 things are clearly problematic in this calculation.

1. No one will use rPvE 6 to farm gold. Almost no player will use rPvE 10 to farm gold unless the MotM is super easy to allow 3 runs per hour. rPvE 9 is the realistic measurement for an average PvE player that farms gold. You can easily go for 12.000 gold per hour here without being super experienced at the game. Just build 8-11 Windweavers, fight to T3, build Amii, spam lost spirit ship and that's it for the 1p version. 

2. In rPvE 9 it is at least 20 times easier winning every single game. Especially with Map of the Month you can collect information about difficult camps beforehand and improve strategies to get more effective with each run. These maps are easily beatable in 20mins, which gives you about 12.000 gold. An average rPvE player should get about 95-100% winrate while an average PvP player probably sits at sub 50% due to the top 20 being much more active than other PvP starters. 

[Chibiterasu]

5 minutes ago, RadicalX said:

1. No one will use rPvE 6 to farm gold. Almost no player will use rPvE 10 to farm gold unless the MotM is super easy to allow 3 runs per hour. rPvE 9 is the realistic measurement for an average PvE player that farms gold. You can easily go for 12.000 gold per hour here without being super experienced at the game. Just build 8-11 Windweavers, fight to T3, build Amii, spam lost spirit ship and that's it for the 1p version.

Spam this post 10 times and you would get 10 upvotes from me on this.

You need as much skill to beat diff 6 as you need to loose a PvP match. Seriously I think you should get the same amount of Gold per hour for loosing 3/4 of your PvP matches as you get for only winning rpve diff 6.

[TBird]

1 hour ago, RadicalX said:

I rPvE 9 is the realistic measurement for an average PvE player that farms gold. You can easily go for 12.000 gold per hour here without being super experienced at the game. Just build 8-11 Windweavers, fight to T3, build Amii, spam lost spirit ship and that's it for the 1p version.

And here I thought I had achieved something, when I managed to beat rPVE level 9 out of 10 a few days ago...seems it's indeed not that difficult.

[Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]

Let's see a current situation.
>Most Gold rewarding are cPvE maps on expert difficulty +- some rng of the upgrade drops. Most of them are better for gold mining. There is a table somewhere on forum with 'gold per hour' numbers. All of them are realistic with a proper deck and execution. For example, Soultree Expert can be done within 10-15 minutes, gives about ~2k+ per game, up to 7k if you are extra lucky.
The table topic under the spoiler

Spoiler

 

>rPvE can be considered as starter gold mining spot. You need relatively cheap deck (even starter cards are enough to deal with it) and a decent team. That's all you need to beat rpve lvl9, unless you encounter lost souls, which is a pain in the ass no matter what. Gives ~4200 per game and can be done within 12-18 minutes (if it is not lost souls or twilight, and you have decent decks).

>PvP unranked gives 0 gold. Abysmal and pointless time waste, unless your purpose was to test a deck or smth else in those regards.

>PvP ranked gives 250-1000 depending on length of the game and 'Winner' state (Y or N, if you won, then evidently you get a bit more). I consider low ranks and not higher ones, because there on high ranks matches are played a bit differently, due to skills being matched. Let's look at real situation of regular player. Queue times and skill mismatch are took into account. Here is the thing(s):
.A) you lose, hence you likely won't never get that Winner bonus gold coeff. Ok, maybe you once match someone of your real skill level and it will be a game, and you might win a game or two;
.B) you play around 10-15 minutes, more common to play shorter then 10 minutes and less often exceed 15 minutes line (about 60% to 40%, but this proportion leans towards 15+ minutes in skill-matched games, which are - again - not our part of the topic);
.C) besides 10-15 minutes of actual gaming, you also spend lots of time while queued for about 5-10 and sometimes even more. + if you exceed a certain time limit, then you are matched outside of you league and get rekt => see .A).
 In total you earn garbage 1-2k of gold per hour of continuous loss (about 3-5 games). Maybe exceed 2,5k if you get lucky. This is less than an rPvE, even lvl9 can be done within 20 minutes+5 for waiting in a random lobby.

>Criticise - suggest:

A) PvP should be able to compete with rPvE at least to some extent. Let's count under the spoiler, so it won't be all around the place, but i will write total numbers outside of it.

Spoiler

So, we try to compete PvP with rPvE lvl 9.

Given data: 
4_players_rPvE_lvl_9 [4-rPvE-9] {
Gold per match [GPM] = 4200;
Time per match [TPM] = 12-22 minutes;
Queue time [TQ] = 1-5 minutes;}

Approximations and assumptions:
1) Consider 'time's within only those brakets, everything outside of it will be considered as outstanding;
2) For PvP, assuming that player base is more populated due to it being more interested and active;
   a) Therefore from p.2), approximated WinRatio of a given abstract player is ~50% (which, ofc, can be ~80%+ or ~20%-), because with more active player base there will be more of same skilled players.
   b) Queue time is same as of rPvE, again, due to p.2)
3) Average Time per match will probably lean towards 15 minutes, with 13-17 minutes time brakets. Also we assume that it is the most common and usual in terms of probability.

Solution:
TPMavg = [TPMmin+TPMmax]/n = [12+22]/2 = 17 minutes - Average Time per match for 4-rPvE-9;
TQavg = [TQmin+TQmax]/n = [1+5]/2 = 3 minutes - Average Queue Time for 4-rPvE-9 (same for PvP - look p.2,b));
{GPHmax = Hour/[TPMmin+TQmin] = 60/[12+1] = ~4,62 => 4 - Max Games per hour, 5th game goes outside of the 1 hour braket (62 minutes, if time starts when game begins and not from queue), just take it into consideration;
GPHavg = Hour/[TPMavg+TQavg] = 60/[17+3] = 3 - Average Games per hour;
GPHmin = Hour/[TPMmax+TQmax] = 60/[22+5] = ~2,22 => 2 - Min Games per hour, 3rd game ends at 74 minutes;}
{GoldPHmax = GPHmax x GPM = 4 x 4200 = 16800 - Max Gold per hour for 4-rPvE-9;
GoldPHavg = GPHavg x GPM = 3 x 4200 = 12600 - Average Gold per hour for 4-rPvE-9;
GoldPHmin = GPHmin x GPM = 2 x 4200 = 8400 - Min Gold per hour for 4-rPvE-9;}

So our GoldPH brakets are [8400;16800]. That means PvP ranked should give, if not greater, then at least same ammount.

To do so we need to count how much one game should give - GPM for PvP, and let's put it for losing side, hence making 'winner' reward more essential on paper.

GPM = GoldPHmin/GPHmin = GoldPHavg/GPHavg = GoldPHmax/GPHmax = GoldPHavg/{Hour/[TPMavg+TQavg]} = 12600/{60/[15+3]} = 4200 - average Gold per match
Basically same with rPvE, with a bit of long term differences.

To make PvP competable with rPvE it has to give 4200 average gold per match for a losing side, but while rPvE has it as a constant ammount, PvP's can differ according to length of the match, plus 'winner' bonus. This also makes PvP highly rewarding, if you win a lot and consistently. Then you probably will reach the 17k+ per hour, depending on how high the bonus is.

Include more PvP quests + related achievements in the near future, and it looks quite fair. Remember that economy will be slowed down by about 233%, i didn't take this into consideration.

The real problem i see is that PvP was thought of as a lategame content back in EA. Obviously due to marketing reasons, it was made to be expensive, hence making clearly more powerful cards rare and ultra-rare. Remind a Firedancer and Fire Stalker and say which one is obviously better on total, and not in a specific situation. There are plenty of examples. That's the reason why PvP deck is more expensive then regular PvE (expect speedrunning ones and pure decks, they were always a hecking expensive).

P.S. Many words, so that i could have slipped a mistake somewhere.

Edited April 28, 2019 by Chimaka( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[MrXLink]

The major problem with PvP rewards is their sheer vulnerability to abuse (e.g. AFK, doing nothing, partying up and surrendering). There's a good reason that Unranked does not yield rewards, as this would simply lead to people actively AFKing just to extend PvP matches and get their gold. In this case we deem an environment with less abuse and less wasted games to people who are actually serious more important than a substantial gold gain. 

However, with the current apparent ease of farming considering all you need to do anything in rPvE is to have a Lost Spirit Ship, I understand that PvP doesn't stand up to the fight whatsoever. Admittedly, BattleForge is not a well-balanced game difficulty-over-reward-wise. Conversion rates for cPvE have been outrageous in the old game (yet to this day I hear complaints about cPvE not being rewarding enough, but I digress) and so was rPvE farming, let alone PvP was utterly useless back in the day for farming as well. Considering the calculations I made are vastly based on token conversion, the current rates do reflect EA's original ratios and even there I have already manipulated PvP rewards to be more fruitful, by about 100% on a loss and 200% on a victory (roughly and very simplified), which in game design terminology is easily a huge shift and means rewards are doubled for losses and quadrupled for wins as compared to EA BF.

I have gone through the numbers, and I have roughly come to the following ratios for PvP over rPvE 9/10 and cPvE with "average" rewards. I'm involving cPvE in this by means of pointing out how terrible a point of reference it is. This data is based on a 10m PvP game and does not account for queue time, so we can imagine gold incomes to be even lower for PvP. For the sake of clarity, numbers and percentages are rounded but based on live data. 

Quote

PvP Victory: 72 GPM
rPvE9: 145 GPM (+102%)
rPvE10: 196 GPM (+172%)
cPvE Expert: 286 GPM (+297%) 

Mind that baffling enough, this is QUADRUPLE what EA used to offer for PvP and it's still grossly out of proportion with the rest of the map earnings (not to mention cPvE which is terribly out of balance but seems to currently be in a good enjoyability spot and does encourage players to actually revisit campaign maps over non-stop rPvE so we're currently making do with that). Either way, yes, PvP falls back way further than it should if you want to balance out game modes. However, this is not accounting for abuse, and this is a topic I'm sincerely worried about due to the nature of PvP. 

The PvP community is relatively small by itself, and the community that wants to play PvP to actively gain gold through PvP is even smaller. What we want to avoid is for PvP to become profitable enough to have pure gold rushers come in to PvP and ruin the experience for more serious players, especially in ranked. Current live data shows that abusing PvP is not all too profitable compared to other game modes. This takes queue time differences into account.

Quote

Normal PvP Victory: 72 GPM
Quick-Loss (Min. Time, Losses): 34 GPM
Quick-Win (Min. Time, Wins): 86 GPM
Max. Time Wins: 89 GPM

The annoying thing here is that consistently winning at minimum time gets awfully close to consistently winning at maximum time. The problem with this is that we can't exactly penalise people for finishing their matches quickly, but we can also not promote system abuse either. There's a delicate balance here that needs to be kept. 

A change is needed for sure, but let's for the sake of simplicity state that we're going to up the PvP bonus to +200% baseline rather than +100%. This roughly means that instead of victories gaining x4 gold compared to the original game, they now gain x8, and losses gain x3 gold rather than x2. Since there's a logarithmic relation here, the gap between winning and losing does change, which is to account for abuse. Now the winning numbers start to look vastly different:

Quote

PvP Victory: 160 GPM
rPvE9: 145 GPM (-10%)
rPvE10: 196 GPM (+22%)
cPvE: 286 GPM (+78.32%)

Ignoring that yet again cPvE is grossly out of balance, this would put PvP more in line with rPvE. However, it needs to be taken into account that this PvP victory path makes more gold than an rPvE9 victory, yet losing a PvP match would also net about 76 GPM, so you'd be ignoring losses completely in these calculations. This is fair enough for your seasoned veteran Spirit Ship spammer, but for regular players this is a significant difference which isn't too hard to be found out. After all, an average of 118 GPM is quite a nice boost opposed to the 72.5 GPM rPvE9 would offer if we account for a 50-50 win/loss ratio. Would this bring more people to PvP? Probably. But it would also bring less seriousness into the mix, which could prove to be a big dent in player experience.

Let's have a look at the "abuse" ratios again with this new model:

Quote

Normal PvP Victory: 160 GPM
Quick-Loss: 49 GPM
Quick-Win: 187 GPM
Max. Time Wins: 198 GPM

Now, ratio-wise you can see that there's a bigger gap between winning and losing, making an AFK strategy less viable and that's good, but with an average GPM of 118 for abuse strategies, this by far crosses the line of rPvE's aforementioned 72.5 GPM at the same win/loss ratio, and that's not accounting for queue/startup times for rPvE despite those being minimal. I'm not too fond of a 49 GPM abusive strat to even get remotely close to rPvE averages, because everyone can lose a PvP match and gain gold for it. rPvE7 has a 45 GPM ratio, and that would require you to win half your rPvE matches whereas the 49 GPM doesn't require you to do anything. 

Long story short here; the PvP gold distribution is incredibly sensitive and intricate related to the rest of the game and messing around with it can massively change up the game environment, which I consider to be the top priority within this project. I hope it's clear that this is a lot more complicated than it seems on the surface, but I hear you and I agree that PvP could use some change. So, I've come up with the following GPM changes to better match other game modes:

Quote

PvP Victory: 125 GPM
rPvE9: 145 GPM (+16%)
rPvE10: 196 GPM (+56%)
cPvE: 286 GPM (+128%)

This will actually put PvP at an average GPM of 78 as opposed to rPvE9's 72.5, making PvP in theory slightly more profitable at a 50-50 win/loss ratio, and roughly on the same line when taking the extended PvP queue times into account. Comparatively, it is generally easier to win an rPvE9 so it would hopefully not cause too drastic a mainstream gold farming shift to PvP and hopefully promote the gamemode more than to tank its quality with players that don't play seriously. Just for comparison's sake, here's the presumed abusive data:

Quote

PvP Victory: 125 GPM
Quick-Loss: 42 GPM
Quick-Win: 146 GPM
Max. Time Wins: 175 GPM

A maximum-time win on PvP in this model fits snugly in-between rPvE9 and rPvE10 victory GPMs as opposed to the current version which doesn't even come close. The 42 GPM ratio for consecutive PvP losses does not seem too penalising, and lies slightly off the halfway point between rPvE6 and 7, to which I agree, rPvE6 should be achievable to most players and definitely most gold rushers. Whereas I am still concerned about how this will impact the general PvP environment, I believe this balance should definitely help the gamemode way more than it hurts. Also, be mindful that AFK-ing or "just kill me" matches may be reported, and may get abusers banned. 

The biggest problem currently lies within the base threshold of rewards for PvP matches. There's a baseline gold reward in place to make short matches less underwhelming, but this also means that in turn surrendering early technically grants about 7 GPM more. This is a low number but it is a difference, and hopefully this will not be a huge threat to the PvP environment. Still, the following idea might help counteract this slightly:

I get that getting no reward for Sparring Grounds can be frustrating, but due to the high vulnerability of the gamemode (being able to terminate matches at will and the possibility of group abuse within that issue), the gold rewards will never remotely be able to stand up against any other game mode. Using an undefined minimum match length, though, we could allow a gold reward on Sparring matches equal to 33% of a Ranked match. With a 1167 gold reward for a 20m match win and an average GPM of 42 per win, this should not at all be a profitable pursuit, but still allow Sparring players to feel at least a bit rewarded for their games, and might help people refrain from purposely quick-losing ranked matches where their GPM will be the same.

TL;DR:
I'm proposing the following changes to the PvP reward system:

• Increase average Ranked PvP rewards for wins from 72 Gold Per Minute to 125 Gold Per Minute
• Increase average Ranked PvP rewards for losses from to 27 Gold Per Minute to 35 Gold Per Minute
• Sparring Grounds will now earn gold equal to 33% of ranked rewards after a set time has been played

Beware that these changes are not live yet and won't be final, but let me know what you think, and hopefully this will help breathe some life and motivation into the PvP sector of the game again!