I don’t want to find faults with implementing Casual Mode in Duelyst, but I see faults. I only rarely argue the point just to argue the point and this is not one of those times. =S If it’s any consolation, I prefer your solution to deathsadvocate’s. =P Desolation-atmosphere-conjuring Ladder wait time and less Rank inflation for casual players are less problematic than the serious feel-bad abuse potential deathsadvocates’ system introduces.
I mean, we can Brexit to Casual Mode right now, but I doubt that the overall casual experience improves because of it. You can get a few "Friggin’ A"s giving 'em what they ask for, but they’ll quit on you all the same when what they ask for and what they actually like better turn out to be very different things. Right now at least they have the fantasy of a no-drawback-they-care-about Casual Mode to look forward to. =S
That too makes no sense to me at all. You seem to basically be saying that since some people might not be happy with the new feature they are all saying they want, we shouldn’t bother implementing at all. What’s the reasoning here?
Anyway, I am done. To me, the arguments about casual mode always seem to boil down to this:
Pro Person: The majority of players want casual mode.
Con Person: It will split the playerbase and increase queue times!
Pro Person: It will cause people to play more because they can tinker without worrying about losing ranks, and it will increase the playerbase total by attracting casual players so that splitting it matters less.
Con Person: It will split the playerbase and increase queue times!
Pro Person: …
Hitting critical queue time is a major concern for game developers as this is a key customer culling indicator (I don’t know why it’s called “customer culling,” since it’s more accurately termed “company culling.” =P ). Once you fall below a certain threshold, the whole thing just implodes. This is why I say “desolation-atmosphere-conjuring” wait time. We have a tiny minority that even visits the forums here, while the entire player base may experience desolation-atmosphere-conjuring wait time and feel like they are playing a dying game first hand if we Brexit right now.
Of course, the introduction of Casual Mode may increase the total number of games played, but depending on the actual breakdown of the split, one of the two modes may still have too feel-bad a wait time. As long as it leads to a substantial number of queue instances falling below a feel-bad threshold, it’s not going to be worth it for CPG to Brexit. Given that they have just resorted to the desperate measure of negative reinforcement in tweaking the quest system to try to get players to play more, I’m surmising that they may be right on the cusp, one way or another.
It may be that they are right on the cusp to be able to afford a Brexit, (if so, great) or that they may be right on the cusp of imploding altogether. In case of the latter, I’m not going to just sit here and let people characterize this as CPG unreasonably not listening to players in a no-drawback scenario. Sorry. =S
So what are these issues and abuse that you keep referring to? I have not actually seen you list any examples other then a vague fairly nonsensical reference to “Farming”. And it certainly would not add anything that can not already be done.
I don’t see how having a little control is bad, you gain nothing, while your opponent can, there is nothing for you to abuse, the only reason to do it is if you want to play casually or test, which is only a benefit for the opponent who is trying to rank up.
Near as I can tell this is the only compromise that gives both a casual mode without increasing que times or splitting the player base. You certainly have not proposed any ideas, nor given constructive criticism, just lots of sarcasm and shooting everything you see down.
idk why i selected yes i wish i could revote. overall its true splitting the queue would cause much longer waittime and ppl will lose interest fast the game needs to grow more… if yall want casual challenge your friends my friends list is ever growing. this is what i usually do once i reach a division i test decks from there i dont see a problem with it. if yall dont wanna face the meta then dont rank up so fast its just that plain and simple
Yeah…I don’t know if you can call it abuse, more like a potential construed outcome for rankers. I imagine @Sorostaran is thinking that the ranking system would become imbalanced when people start flooding it with non-competitive fun decks in a casual application of the “switch.”
I do see both sides of this issue and, really, there are not enough of us on this forum to fully represent the majority of the playerbase. There is a true fear by the developers that a split queue would lead to a negative spiral of dissatisfaction. Whether this fear is warranted or not is really hard to determine when the developers have not CLEARLY and CONCISELY expressed the full reasoning behind their apprehension, beyond the one or two sentences scattered around. I can stand behind whatever they decide, when and if they provide us with honest statistics and detailed information on this matter and are not so seemingly dismissive of the topic.
That’s fair, but it already happens, either your playing for rank, or you hit your desired division and then go casual since you can not drop from your division. Adding this shouldent add more.
It may not be perfect but I was just trying to come up with a compromise between having casual and having no casual. I still don’t see any issues it would create that are not already there, but I do see how it could improve things.
Longer Que times and splitting the community is a concern, so any solution, other then having no casual mode, must not cause those.
That already happens due to the checkpoints at rank 20, 10 and 5 and 1.
It is true that @deathsadvocate’s proposal could be abused to intentionally inject chevrons, but that is already possible with the current system. What is currently not possible is to remove chevrons from the pool. But first why would anyone waste their time doing it; where would be the benefit and the potential for abuse? Second maybe removing chevrons would actually not be so bad since it counteracts the chevron inflation. It think it is an excellent suggestion and so far I have not read anything to convince me otherwise. It seems like the best solution at the moment.
EDIT: Now that I think about it some more, one can actually also remove chevrons from the pool with the current system simply by losing to S rank players.
Of those expressing a preference, the yeas are over the nays by a factor of 3 to 1. And the vote is, if anything, biased against casual players because the more casual they are, the less likely they are to bother being on a game forum (or even know it exists).
So CPG should ignore this, and all the potential players it could attract, and money it could make, because of obscure edge cases that might affect an ultimately-meaningless ladder? I don’t get it.
The time to put casual mode back in was after the Steam release. It would likely have led to better retention of these newer players. I hang out in #new_players on Discord and the dropoff in discussion there compared to two months ago is palpable.
This is a small title put out by an independent game maker. They need to be careful, but they also need to be bold. Refusing to do something that could have a major positive impact, and that people said they want, because there may be imperfections – this is not how you get things to grow. It’s how you get stagnation. And this game right now is stagnating.
Chevron inflation is intended design, nothing needs to counteract it. I think it was sorostaran who made a very detailed post on it in the past few weeks (which got a reply from you!) which explains why that is.
My vision of casual mode has a lobby, where people can gather into rooms in whatever numbers CP can support on their servers.
Everyone can chat in a tab to the right that mirrors the history tab on the left. There is no timer. When the game ends they go back to the lobby where someone else can queue up a match.
The hosts can put up descriptions or rules for game modes or friendly tournaments in the lobby.
There would be no rewards or penalties other than tips.
Like this, people could mentor new players and set up various unofficial game modes easily and without time constraints or new players needing to go out of their way to find that information.
Oh right. The great tale of the floating plywood. I member.
Still I cannot see how chevron inflation is an integral part of the ranked ladder necessary for it to function and not just something which cannot be avoided and has been accepted because it causes no big problems.
It’s a common tool used to give players who might not necessarily be that good at the game but like it regardless a sense of progress throughout the month, rather than stagnation. It’s not necessary, no, but it’s certainly useful and absolutely contributes to a large amount of feeling of progression for a good deal of players.
That’s not the true reflection of the current poll. Its 56% saying yeah we want it, while 44% are saying no or I don’t care. While we don’t know how the vast majority of players who aren’t on the forum would vote, but can only guess. But if we went by guess work then UK would have voted against Brexit and Trump wouldn’t be the next US President. If CP wants a better reflection, then a way to do it is to make a poll (or something similar) in-game and try to get as many answers from as many people as possible.
Does this mean CP should ignore this? Of course not. But saying it’ll attract potential players can’t be said to be true. I haven’t heard anyone who has joined a game just because it has a casual mode. Most people tend to join a game because it looks fun, or through seeing someone else play or recommend it. It is more likely to help retain players or keep people playing for longer though.
[quote=“qeltar, post:28, topic:6356, full:true”]
The time to put casual mode back in was after the Steam release. [/quote]
People seem to be ignoring that it was here and got removed. Obviously according to data we can’t see and don’t have, CP decided it wasn’t worth to keep that mode and that the steam release wasn’t going to change it. Otherwise, it would be still here, but that is not to say it can’t come back at some point in the future. After all, things can change.
CP can’t be careful and bold, its kinda of contradicting terms. It could have a positive impact, but it could also have a negative one. CP has data from the last time the game had one and probably had a negative impact otherwise it wouldn’t have been removed in the first place. Also just because people say they want something doesn’t also mean that they’ll use it. Which is why there is a saying which goes “Do as I say, not as I do”.
Anyway, I’m not shooting down your points and just saying no, no, no, no, just for the sake of it. I’m trying to show the counter-arguments to what you have written and that the perceived benefits that you think are there, could not be. Also, as a whole I’m not personally against the idea of a casual mode altogether but at this current moment in time I don’t see it helping the game.
More player control is precisely what you don’t want when it comes to rank-manipulation. There is already more than enough potential for abuse with what little control players do have.
Right now in the Chevron part of the system you can intentionally create Chevrons only at Rank 20, 10, 5, and S and destroy Chevrons at S, so CPG has a substantial buffer from MM, as MM preferentially matches you with people closer to your rank. Chevrons intentionally created takes games to trickle up through the ranks and you cannot effectively collude with your group of cohorts through the full spectrum of ranks.
If you give players the ability to create Chevrons intentionally at any rank, then the buffering effect won’t be of much help anymore. Now you can hand each other free Chevrons from any rank. It doesn’t even have to be arranged collusion. Players can simply settle into you-scratch-my-back mode and, say, for example, every day they get on they concede 15-30 “Casual on” games and play 5 Ladder games.
I mean, imagine every day, climb climb climb 5 games, concede 30 “Casual on” games as “community service” just because you are “nice” with no trickling buffer. This is very different from only having the choice between climbing and rank-manipulating at a select few “Chevron bases.”
The “newbie farming” problem also gets worse. Right now, the “newbie farmer” has to give the Chevrons back to the rank environment by conceding back down. If they can just park there and win 90% against newbies and destroy Chevrons in the lower ranks farming 15 Gold, then you are going to have more problems. First of all, the Chevrons may not be zero-sum, but the win-loss difference is. All that inflated win rate has to come out of newbies’ pockets. Remember that, it’s not about the number of players, but the number of games played. 10x 40-game-a-day newbie farmers affect 100x 4-game-a-day newbies’ playing experiences.
Not only can they make newbies lose a high percentage of games, even the “sense of progress” Chevron inflation design newbies are supposed to experience may stop working altogether with enough newbie farmers playing enough game when they don’t have to concede the Chevrons back into the system to stay in the low ranks.
Strictly speaking, there is no S-Rank floor with regard to the S-Rank system: You lose/gain rating when you lose/win, period (shit breaks down when this doesn’t happen for a seriously competitive system). Even if the system is not strictly zero-sum, it’s very close to it (I suspect there is a very slight inflation right now). Zero-sum or very close to it is how a seriously competitive system needs to be. If there is too much inflation, then the competition becomes disproportionately a late-season grind where progress made early in the season near the top becomes trivialized as the season progresses.
I don’t think I need to expound too much on how stupid a rank system with rank deflation is. You have already seen this in action due to poor CPG design. S-Rank players observed a small rating leak (likely in S-Rank-vs-Diamond mechanics) leading to a system with ranking deflation. Remember how stupid it made the competition? Yeah. For your best chance to compete, they had to play as early in the season as possible and as few games as they can. If you didn’t get lucky early, then you were basically fucked. =S
Now imagine players having enough control to rank-manipulate the S-Rank system away from its near zero-sum point both ways. They don’t even have to fuck with the rating sum all that much to make a complete joke out of the competition. 20 days into the season and Solafid is 1725? No problemo. Let’s put that “Casual on” and troll/concede/play badly all day while we watch Westworld, we’ll say we are just screwing around. Two nights of mass “screwing around” later, 1725 goes from the cutting edge to the new middle of the pack. Grats Solafid for all your early season hard work getting your cutting edge rating. Welcome to the new troll order.
That is even before considering selective arranged collusion in the high ranks with a tiny player base, where random MM offers not enough protection against it. Have fun policing that, CPG.
Because of rank floors, which are in general a good thing, this is already possible and adding my suggested method changes nothing. This bizarre community service thing, or auto conceding bots does not become any more likely with a button that prevents you from gaining/loosing. I find this weird Scenario already far-fetched, and also completely irrelevant to what I am suggesting as it is already possible.
If someone is desperate enough to farm Newbies, despite that just ranking up is probably a better reward, They can already just prevent division ranking up with ease. I find it odd that someone would even do this…but again adding a casual button does not change this bizzare thing in anyway.
Ok yes I suppose it could be abused in S rank, although the chances of you or a friend of yours actually getting benefit from it are rather slim so there is little motivation for it. It would also be incredibly obvious and pathetically easy to monitor, I could probably code something to watch for multiple concedes/time outs and send out auto warnings/temporary bans in like an hour, or at least just put a limit on how often you can concede/time out. In fact this already can exist in S rank for those who don’t care about their own rating, while yes my suggestion would make it a little easier, this obvious abuse is absolutely no different then someone trying to hack the game, and is even easier to deal with. In fact I have seen that exact system in effect before to prevent that exact kind of abuse, if you conceded or timed out often you would automatically get an exponentially scaling temporary ban.
So yes there is one minor flaw in my suggestion, but there are many ways to deal with said flaw. However fixing that minor flaw is well worth the effort considering how beneficial my suggestion could be.
So again…instead of being nitpicky, and throwing out insane, bizarre, theoretical what ifs, how bout you put all that thought into trying to be constructive. Excluding S rank these perceived problems you keep coming up with simply do not exist, or if they do, putting in my suggestion does not change them. And solving any S rank issues is pretty simple. So please get on topic, either suggest your own thoughts, give constructive criticism to mine, or simply say you do/don’t think a separate casual mode is good or bad.
Aside from needing to trickle up due to MM preference for matching you with players closer to your rank, having to HALT PROGRESSION in order to keep generating intentional losses/free Chevrons is a HUGE de-motivator/deterrent. The “community service” also serves your self-interest by making your own climb easier, inflating the ranks of those in your immediate rank vicinity, but only if you are interested in climbing, and if you are climbing, on most days you DON’T EVEN HAVE THE OPTION to generate intentional losses/free Chevrons for the players in your vicinity to self-help your own climb without giving up progress in the current system. In your system, you are given exactly that option.
I don’t see how that is such a difficult concept to understand.
Sure, of course I don’t mind explaining it all again. =S
I guess ask Qeltar why it’s better farming Gold winning 80-90% in the lower ranks than 33% in Diamond+. He can probably explain the motivation better than I can, not that it’s really needed. I mean, if you are down to farming 15 Gold bonuses, it’s not difficult to see why higher win percentage (sans the maintenance intentional losses =S ) is better for this.
Secondly, as I have already explained, you can prevent division rank up right now “with ease” if you hand back Chevrons/wins to the system. This is very different from being able to farm ranks endlessly without handing the Chevrons/wins you take back. In fact, if you are a really good high-game-count newbie farmer, you can actually help make newbieland easier overall by handing back more Chevrons/wins than you take in the current system (thanks to the win streak bonus). In your system, you can simply take wins and destroy Chevrons at the expense of newbies.
You may even be so ruthlessly effective that you have to be at Rank 20 yourself because you are so good at pinning the newbies you farm there. In the current system, you can farm the newbies, in a sense, but overall you don’t hinder newbieland progress/win rate as a whole with your “farming,” because everything you take you have to give back in order to stay in the low Ranks. In the new system, you can just take and take and take at the expense of the newbies.
I don’t see whats so hard to understand that you can already do this, and so what if you don’t hand chevrons back. I still don’t think someone would do this, and again even if they did, and if it was a problem, which I doubt it really would be…ok you don’t get casual mode until you are at least at gold, since bronze/silver are basically casual mode anyways. Another simple solution to an unlikely perceived problem. Or an even simpler one, you don’t get gold rewards with casual on.
Yet again instead of being nit picky, disrespectful, and off topic you could simply be making little improvement suggestions like that, instead you just look like your not taking the time to read the responses of the people who bother to try and explain things to you.
Yea my suggestion is not perfect, so what? Suggest something better, or suggest an improvement or a fix to an issue you see. You keep coming up with wild extreme scenarios that are easily solved and are about as much of an issue as hacking is. Your replies are helping no one and derailing the thread. I am done replying to you unless you can actually start being constructive.
I know I did not officially state my preference. Just so we’re clear, I voted yes for casual and would very much like it as an option. My speculation on Sorostaran’s “abuse” scenario was not really indicative of my own, true feelings. I know it already exists because I AM one of those division campers, especially when I reach Diamond. The grind to S-rank is unbearable to me.
I am truly appreciative toward the passionate members of the playerbase on this forum and always thoroughly enjoy reading topics where players such as yourselves have crafted reasoned and cohesive arguments (which I do not necessarily disagree with, by the way!)
The main theme of my post was not as complete as I could’ve made it:
I want a causal mode and I hope CP will find a way to get it up and running soon.
I want polls like this in-game so the is at least some indication that CP is attempting to gather a majority of the playerbase’s actual preferences.
I want to at least see some hard data on the “casual mode fiasco” that happened in beta. (I was there for that and it wasn’t fun in its design at the time, for sure.) I also want the developers to have another roundtable specifically for the full and complete discussion of a casual mode, with graphs and charts.
I want pie now, for some reason.
I want this game to be around for as long as possible, with a robust and civil forum.
I want to find a way to end this list without it becoming self-aware…🕪
🕪