"IllePhilosophus;736236" wrote:
"medetec;735216" wrote:
"rank at X time" based payouts are bad, especially for short time frames and small groups. It's almost always going to be an inconvenient time for a moderate percentage of your player base. It makes scheduling maintenance almost impossible for an internationally played game. It encourages "cheesy" gameplay like clock wars instead of playing the actual game.
Rewards should be based on the highest rank achieved during X time period, NOT the highest rank held at exactly X time. Look at Hearthstone, they pay out their arena ladder once a month based on the highest rank hit at any point that month. It's pretty universally liked, allows Blizzard to take servers down entirely at pre-scheduled times for proper maintenance without negatively effecting players, it allows players to play when they want, and it allows players who have reached their goal for the arena season to play fun decks instead of metasheeping 24/7.
Bingo. I think your suggested solution is the answer. It still requires daily focused action from the player and having an adequate team or teams to climb ranks. I can't imagine this scenario not being beneficial to everyone. Technically it could promote more crystal refreshes because people who have weaker teams that are still competitive may want to try again when they lose to a team or hit a difficulty wall. As it stand now, refreshes are a complete waste to these individuals because climbing during their payout would likely be a futile endeavor for them. Not only do they struggle to beat teams on offense, but they get knocked back while doing so because they are easy targets. Seems like it would be an opportunity for more refreshes.
There's a problem with this (for EA/CG) -- the top 10-15 (i.e., the people most likely to use crystals in arena) will have a very easy time colluding so that each of them ends up at #1 at some point during the window.
Capital Games Team
