I like the second approach better, but ultimately, I would like greater fray flexibility. I'm an MMA fan and in that sport there's a saying, "styles makes fights", or better put, styles makes interesting fights. What if we could put a Chaos Legion team against an Alpha/Beta team? There could be an additional points award for using teams made up of earlier editions.

This would allow for guilds made up completely of new players to compete against established guilds. It would also allow for easier recruitment because you wouldn't necessarily be limited to the confines of the particular restrictions an open fray. The points bonus would provide an incentive to buy older additions as well. And it would also expose new players to the older cards as they would meet them in battle.

To be clear, I guess what I'm thinking is the frays being open to all cards but with limits on card levels and gold/regular foil, and with additional brawl points being awarded for using cards from older editions. The older the editions the more points awarded.

Either approach can work but you need to make this align with where you want players to focus. No point having wild frays in Tier one if you want new players using modern cards.

The strategy needs to be consistent to where the game wants to grow.

Hello Mr Eagle

Proposal 2 please!

We need to keep new and old players engaged with the brawls - it is the last touch point players have when they give up on ranked before we lose them from the game :(

As an officer in the starter guild - Shadow Academy - I have found the hardest frays to fill are the Rebellion only frays - having the option of more sets in proposal 2 can only make it easier for people to interact with brawls and stay engaged with the game.

I am also an officer in several older guilds - keeping people who have been here for a long time still engaged to fight every week is getting harder and harder. If we end up with several longer term players with wild decks fighting over a limited number of frays we will lose more players, please give us as many options as possible so that people can still maintain regular contact with the game.

Rotating frays would probably be a pain especially with season rentals looking very likely to pass.

Reducing the GF frays would make life easier :)

Appreciate all you do Mr Eagle and as always if in doubt then .......... weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Hey Mr. Eagle!
Brawls are an important part of the game, and I personally know players who don’t engage in ranked play but still actively participate in brawls. It’s a game mode that keeps them involved and engaged, so making sure it remains welcoming and competitive is key.
With that said i’d prefer option 2, but I’d like to keep the Adept in Fray 1 until Tier 5, that setup just feels better. Also, I think it would be better to remove Alpha, Beta, and Untamed from Fray 1. That way, Fray 1 would be super accessible for new players, making it easier for them to be competitive.

I’m not really a fan of the idea of rotating frays, could make things more complicated than they need to be.

As for the GF frays, it’s a complicated matter. As a guild leader, I know how hard it can be to fill those frays, but as a player, I also wouldn’t want to devalue the worth of GF cards.

Thanks for sharing! - @azircon

Make a poll.

It’s a complicated poll. Not sure how will you seek input but figure something out.

I will always support driving more value to older editions. This strategy also drives value to current editions, ie if players are confident investing 'early' (ie while an edition is in print) will pay off long term by seeing legacy editions being respected and remaining useful and relevant, confidence and incentive to buy current edition cards increases. Focusing too much on modern only makes me think twice about buying cards at all if they will not be given use cases and be next to useless in two years.

The more diversity the better!

It should be balanced between wild and modern so proposal 2 makes more sense to me, Ca should be in every adept and novice level brawl to give new players an option that enables them to play without being forced to get older cards too

Please don‘t punch GF players in the face more and more. With pack updates for CA you might devalue GF crazy if it‘s not required anymore. Please don‘t say land now.

Why not keep it simple and have Modern, Wild and survival-(random), what is with all the complexities. I know each Guild is just going to pick what suits them best. but this needs more study on my part.

!PIZZA

In all honesty both proposals feel like I've had the rug pulled out from under me. I play because I love the game, not to make money. I put most of my money into the game for U and CL, but at some point I had to make the call between levelling up them and buying Rebellion. I've been levelling them up thinking that this fray would stay and trying to grow my staked SPS to be able to buy the wild pass each season without having to unstake, but brawls have become my main reason to continue to level up cards.

I also have an account playing GF fray 16. I bought Rebellion and GF cards for this fray specifically, but suspected it would stay in modern and knew I wouldn't be able to keep putting funds into it. I really didn't expect to be losing both frays to modern, however. There was a small hope that it might stay as ClR, (thank you for that small hope @mattclarke) in which case I would have invested to expand and level up the GFs for that account.

It feels like the only way to keep up is to be selling old cards to buy new, but with them having less and less use cases I'm not sure how worthwhile this even is. As it stands now, it looks like I'll no longer have a spot in guild brawls if these proposals go forward.

I would favor for proposal 2. More diversity to chose from else guilds might end up unable to fill fray's.

If the power creep of Ca is well designed (not to much not to little 🤣) it should favor for people playing with Ca imho.

Don't usually log on here anymore but had to jump on and have my say, before the new changes get rolled out.

In a landscape where we have obviously lost a lot of players (judging by the amount of guilds that cant fill fray spots), I feel like having only R & Ca frays is going to make matters worse and the game will lose loyal players who have supported this game from the very beginning.

I reckon, ditch all the R & Ca only frays, include CL in Modern, and find a way to include a points system. EG. Extra points if Ca cards are used in a match. Just like how A & B & Untamed have bonuses when used on land.

I've been playing since 2018, started off thinking awesome - game is tracking well, my cards are holding if not rising in value, then subsequent updates later and my account is a fraction of what it was worth.

That is absolute crap. How can new players invest in good faith when its obvious older cards do not retain their value with every new deck release.

I say bring us back to SPL 2018-2020 era. SPL really needs to figure out how to bring back value to the older decks, to show newbies that the game is worth investing in. Lets be really practical here. Would you spend $100 on a card knowing it will lose value the moment a new deck comes out? Would you spend $100 to buy a seat at a guild knowing the fray spot you own can switch and become redundant at the next deck release?

Come on SPL. DO. BETTER.

Lets not alienate older players for the prospect of new players coming in, when new players aren't guaranteed and older players have proved their loyalty over the years.

PS. Don't rotate the frays. That's an dumb idea. Make it easier, not more complicated.

These recommendations are based on my experience as the leader of a top guild. We were once ranked #5 and in Tier 5, but we've dropped down to ~15 and have been unable to recruit the players we need to fill specific frays and move back to Tier 5.

• Too many GF frays, not enough players to fill them; reduce the number of GF Frays by 1 per tier to increase accessibility and competitiveness across more guilds.
• Change all frays to Modern or Wild. Anything else makes it extremely difficult for guilds to recruit members needed to fill specific frays.
• Across RF tiers, decrease requirement for older cards and increase requirement for newer cards to increase accessibility for incoming players who are buying packs and looking to enjoy our ecosystem.
• Tier II frays have a disproportionate member-to-fray ratio when comparing hall level to relative tier. We should reduce the number of frays in Tier II from 15 to 14 to bring its "percent members on the bench" in line with the member-to-fray ratio of other tiers.
• Tier IV has more Intermediate frays than Tier III. As Tiers increase, lower level-cap frays should decrease, and higher level-cap frays should increase.
• Across all tiers, guilds are bleeding players and unable to replace them... except by sniping them from lower-ranked guilds, creating a trickle down shortage at all levels. Recommend reducing the number of frays across all tiers by 1. Rather than decreasing demand for cards, it should allow more guilds to be competitive, spark excitement in older guilds unable to find members, and increase accessibility for new guilds.

I am not at all a fan of single set frays, let the competitive nature of having all available cards push for the necessity of the latest set, not the rules.

If CA is well-designed and properly compatible with RB, for example, CA will be purchased and played in all formats, brawls included.

We've been pushing to get the game to a place where we all have different deck compositions / levels / etc... - somethin I think we have all been looking forward to. In order to lean into that even further, I would much prefer see a flat modern / wild across the board. I realize that may not be possible, so a modern 1.0 (UT+CL), modern 2.0 (CL+RB), modern 3.0 (RB+CA) would be a cool compromise. Wild editions are a bit more difficult to systematically group up, but a rotating group of fray compositions (similar to one of our wild tourney series) would be awesome (and I say this without really having the full context of how wild players operate). Also, perhaps that modern system helps create very natural fit wild fray (ie., modern 1.0, 2.0)

All of this said, I’d be perfectly content keeping frays as simple as possible, modern and wild, each league & rf/gf

i also think 1 deck frays is not a good idea while just having all modern and wild frays is too broad. I think we need at least 2 decks in a fray so different people can be competitive while also giving value to those sets .

I like that you are trying to tackle a very complicated situation and at the same time taking feedback from the community to help shape it. I don't think there is anything wrong with any of the 3 approaches, and its great that you lay them out for people to see the thought process.

I see a lot of insight in the comments and its good that players voice their thoughts when trying to help you make this decision.

I believe all 3 could work, and they will all achieve slightly different objectives. Therefore, the "what is best" is really in the eye of the beholder. Different people value different things, and see the significance of Brawls in different ways.

Personally I like to keep as many people happy as possible at this time because I feel that we have other tools coming in the future to create excitement. Therefore I would like to have the "least friction" possible while we wait for those things to happen.

I also think that @azircon's suggestion of making a community poll is a good idea, but I would add a twist to it. Let's revisit it in 2 months after release.

In other words, lets maintain flexability. Whatever is chosen by the community now may or may not be the choice after we see the implementation. This will give all people on all sides of this a chance to see results, judge the impact, and evaluate if we need to change course (or not).

We have a lot of great things happening in the future, lets make sure we have as many onboard for that ride as possible!

Put me down for option 3 now. I think that would be great.

Can we lose the gf frays for fks sake. There is no way in hell any of our members are going to fill 7 gf frays every round. Just bring it down to 2 and open the frays to regular players that want to participate but cannot in the current environment. Idk why we still are forcing the antiquated fray system into CA. @royaleagle

As one of the top guild that consistently gets bottom of the pack scores simply for not playing Gf matches, it feels bad. Our players are pretty good, almost all players own their decks an dont need to rent. The GF frays are an unnecessary burden on players still.

Want benefits? Play tournaments. We do not need them in brawls anymore.