Spinterlands Leagues 2.0 - A possible plan?
(Edited)
Points of consideration for returning lower leagues back to ranked play in Modern format. Gathering comments made in Discord today from @fatjimmy @royaleagle & myself.
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Objectives
- Gamify lower parts of the game.
- Provide lower-level goals and objectives for players.
- Create more competition and bragging rights situations lower down the game.
- Encourage players to level up their decks gradually.
- Prevent blocking of players from higher leagues due to lower-level league pros blocking access.
- Ensure good match liquidity in each league.
- Avoid special extraction situations.
- Minimise additional design and development time.
- Align the design with any existing gamification plans.
Specification
- Add back leagues for Bronze, Silver and Gold in Modern format only.
- The league is selected at the start of each season or when you first start playing during a season and is locked for the rest of that season.
- You can select from multiple leagues according to your relevant card collection power, but only the highest copy of each different card counts. E.g. someone with a reasonable Gold level deck would have access to all leagues. Someone with a single BCX account might be restricted to Bronze, maybe silver
- Consideration would need to be given to rating, does this work as existing with the current reset amounts?
- Consideration would be needed for SPS battle rewards at each league. As leagues could be selected, there could be ‘000s of gold-level players in diamond, and players should not receive extra rewards just by selecting a higher league. On the flip side, if players have a gold set and play in Bronze, they should not receive more than Bronze level rewards. This would also have match liquidity implications.
- Leaderboard rewards would need consideration and could be mostly or entirely soul-bound, as the priority here is gamification. If mostly soul-bound, the number of leaderboard spots could also be much larger, which might be important if player numbers increase dramatically.
- Implementing this in a way that reduces risk. There are several moving parts to this, which could take some time to assess and refine correctly.
Other Points
- There may be existing gamification ideas already planned, which would make lower-level leagues redundant as a concept.
- It's suggested this is implemented before Conclave Acana is released so that players can buy and level up cards accordingly.
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I've had some feedback on this. The big question is "What are the underlying issues that need to be addressed?". How do they benefit new players?
I'm all for re-introducing league caps but that might re-introduced some of the issues that made them remove it in the first place.
What would be best for the game solving a lot of issues for new and existing players also making it more fun is a game mode where everyone is on a level playing field which can be played at any given time without missing out on rewards. I broke the idea down some weeks ago how this easily can be done (Link)
Sounds like a great idea. I was supposed to ask but you already mentioned it. As a new player, I also look forward to the benefits that the game would bring. Thank you very much !BBH
@jedielf! @day1001 likes your content! so I just sent 1 BBH to your account on behalf of @day1001. (2/20)
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I think the current model is quite acceptable.
What's more, they're going to reformulate some things so that beginners feel more comfortable entering the game, as was revealed in Town Hall.
Jedi, this is a great starting point for discussing any potential compromise regarding leagues.
For me, the ideal ranked solution would have these benefits:
1: Choose your League based on where you think you can compete
In the past, the inability to compete in a league befitting your cards was a problem, and we don't want to return to that type of situation.
Choosing your league (bronze-diamond) for the season is the perfect solution to avoid players being stuck facing lower-league specialists gunning for leaderboard positions.
If you pick the wrong league (either by accident or misjudging, you can start over in a different league).
2: Avoid underqualified accounts from climbing or swarming
The way I see it, gating leagues based on Collection Power (CP) or average card levels could be ineffective, unduly punitive, or even manipulated (depending on whether players rent before playing, when snapshots are taken, how delegations are handled, duplicates and reward card stockpiles, etc).
I'd propose that, instead of enforcing a barrier based on CP or specific deck-based rules, we could consider the fact that the reward formula is directly related to Ratings^3, and near-zero ratings have near-zero earnings.
3: Rework the Ratings - Each league starts from zero
4. Change the winstreak rating bonus
The current winstreak bonus is simple - 20 points each time you string together 3 wins in a row.
Let's assume the average player has a 50% winrate - that means 12.5% chance of getting a winstreak going. If a typical season is ~350 matches, that means around 40-45 winstreaks on average for everyone - this is around 800-900 points of rating inflation.
We don't want the underlevelled decks to be getting 800 points of rating, but we want to reward the strong players that can string together long winning streaks.
If we drop the winstreak rating bonus to start at +5, but increase by another +5 each consecutive win, up to max of +40 winstreak bonus, that further limits the ability for underlevelled decks to inflate themselves just by sheer random statistics.
5. Liquidity Bots can be more effective
Right now, the modern liquidity bots are designed to lose. They have ratings decay, so they can arbitrarily push up players to be in the "target rating" - and the Support team need to keep resetting the rating back higher and higher to push players to "where they should be".
Instead, assuming these bots were assigned to their target league, they could be tuned more precisely to knock down under-levelled decks towards the lower rating limit, capping their earnings and effectiveness, while giving liquidity exactly where it's needed.
6. Increase the appetite for SPS at lower leagues with a higher max multiplier
Right now, bronze and silver decks get most of their glint and earnings from the first few thousand SPS staked.
I'd like to give these players a reason to stake more than that!
I'd even suggest it may be worthwhile to consider increasing max multiplier from 13.3X to 20X to reduce the diminishing returns on higher stakers.
Champion players sometimes rent hundreds of thousands of SPS to increase their multipliers... I suspect we could increase staking demand in the lower leagues if we allow higher ratings and higher multipliers, and more of the pool will go to players near the top of the leaderboard or with larger stakes (both of which I think are desirable outcomes)
7. Separate, targeted rewards per league (again)
We know the team has added achievements to league climbing with chests at each Tier - these could easily be adapted to Rating levels or mini-Tiers. That should be fairly straighforward.
And, we used to have SPS pools split by League, and that system worked fairly well to incentivize each league. If we had liquidity bots in each league that didn't need resetting, they could knock down underlevelled accounts, and support good competitive decks, it would seem a much healthier ladder. If needed, we could tweak rewards in each league up or down with glint minimums or multipliers for each league too if seemed warranted.
Maybe we can get some data
Long ago the team had provided some data on league participation. I wonder what it looks like now - this was back in 2022.
Good data can help make better decisions.
sounds great. would love to have leagues back. I have been renting max cards for 6 months now but its not sustainable at all for me so i would stop playing altogether if no changes are made.
Thanks for organizing these concepts! The old system was like 90% there, we just need to tweak it to get it right. Players choosing league of play is vital. It may also take some experimentation with things like ratings, which is why we need to do this sooner rather than later to have it fine tuned before the marketing push...