How can new players enjoy this game?

...every ... 2 ... weeks...

 

I, along with the others who have responded, also strongly disagree with Infamy-caps.

 

Here's what happens...
Day 0 - The Nightmare players between 4000-6000 reset to 4000, they are now ALL mixed together at 4000.

Day 1 - The Nightmare players win most of those, and rise above 4000.
The players who were "naturally" at 4000 lose most of these matches, and are "pushed down" to now mix with the 3500's.

Day 2 - Those natural 4000's win most of those, and rise above 3500.
The players who were naturally at 3500 lose most of these matches, and "pushed down" to now mix with the 3000's.

etc......
etc...
etc.

You get the idea. This is how it gets pushed down every 2-weeks. Things then slowly re-settle as players play games to get them back to where they should be.

By the end of 2-weeks, if you play enough, you can rise back to your natural Infamy (i.e. where you should be).
But if you don't play enough, you can expect to lose a bit more than you seem to remember (because tougher players were pushed down to your natural level).

If the seasons are long enough for things to naturally and completely re-settle again before another downward shove from the Nightmare reset, this is an irksome cycle, but not a huge problem.

If the seasons are not long enough, and things do NOT completely re-settle again, guess what.... the next downward shove is still going to happen!!! Then all the people who fell previously are already starting lower, which means they have twice the work to get up to where they should be. And it means the players getting shoved down on them were players who were either naturally better and also don't play enough, or were naturally equal strength but put in the effort to climb back up and just got pushed back down on them in this new cycle again anyway. Either way they're hardly playing against the players who should naturally be at that lower level.

The less players play... the less they re-settle back up their natural levels... That's how the legitimately good players will see their Infamy plunge, which is bad for them as individuals, AND it puts downward pressure on the entire system of players below them...

One solution is to play more. Play A LOT! PLAY A TON!!!!!!!!!!! (I do this.)

An alternative solution is to have longer seasons. Rovio could easily do an analysis to see player Infamy levels over time to see if this is needed. (My guess is that it is needed!)

Other alternative solutions are to reduce the Nightmare reset from being so impactful:
Like... drop "half way to 4000" (i.e. the guy at 6000 only drops to 5000).
Or like, everyone above 4000 drops up to 500 Infamy (but they can't go below 4000).
Things like that.........

 

Yes, that is exactly the point.
The very lowest skilled players would stop dropping in infamy no matter how much they lose.
They will lose more than 50% of the time as a result.
They may get frustrated and quit as a result.
That's why it's so important to have properly placed Infamy-floors so most players aren't negatively affected by this.
Actually, having just written the post above about the downward Infamy push as a result of the Nightmare reset, this could actually add a significant counteractive force ("barrier" may be a better word) preventing that downward push from affecting all the way to the bottom of the Infamy depths...
(The more I think about Infamy-floors, the more I like them.)

Yes, I'd bump them up to the appropriate Infamy-floor. Even if they're in an mk6 and have NEVER before reached 1500 infamy (or whatever).
That's why it's so important to have properly placed Infamy-floors.

 

OK, I'm getting the problem with the season reset better. I still want to run some simulations and actually see the theory generate the observed symptoms but in theory I get it.

I am still loath to talk about infamy floors and caps. Like the seal-clubbing floor they are inherently artificial and so likely to cause more trouble than they are worth. Isn't the better question to ask, "Why do we reset at all and if it's necessary to do so, why are we doing it in this way?"

 

I was about to respond "well the reset is completely artificial too!"... but then you basically just acknowledged that...

I just happen to think that if the Resets aren't going away, then I think the Infamy-floors are a pretty good solution, artificial or not...

So... should the Resets go away?
Hmmm................. I'm out of time for today, but I'll think about this...

 

Pending simulation proof of the the theory I tentatively agree. If the season resets are not going away then some other solution needs to be found. Does anyone here have any explanation for the rationale at all with that? I generally don't care about ladders in video games so I don't really understand what problem the reset is addressing.

Apropos of this thread I seem to have put Battle Bay down and it's all related to the infamy system and that cursed seal-clubbing floor. I find myself afraid of winning, losing, and upgrading my boat. If that's not a disaster I don't know what is.

 

I wouldn't want to have the different tiers (i.e. 4000, 5000, 6000).
If you have two players, at 4999 and 5001, the 4999 guy drops -999, the 5001 guy only drops -1. Feels yucky to me...

If you don't want guys above 6000 dropping all the way to 4000 (and maybe they shouldn't!), then I like the rule I proposed yesterday:
- Players above 4000 drop "half way to 4000"
6200 --> 5100
6001 --> 5001 (round up when Infamy is odd)
5500 --> 4750
5000 --> 4500
4100 --> 4050
etc..

I think this will help A LOT to mitigate the overall downward push every 2 weeks.
And it still gives newer Nightmare players a chance to reach players who have been up there a while.

 

So I haven't paid much attention to ladder systems in games but the thing I do remember is of Path of Exiles. They did a "season reset"... I'm assuming they did it for the same reasons Battle Bay does. But they reset everyone and seasons were much longer. So all that really happened is an initial phase of "sorting" and then people ended up where they belong. There was plenty of time for people to find their proper place again. I wonder if something like that would work out better?

 

Yeah, League of Legends did that each season too.
But seasons weren't 2 weeks, they were more like 1-year.
The KEY being - there was plenty of time for everyone to settle again, long before the next reset.

 

If this is all correct (and I do believe it represents half the problem), then there is a trivially easy fix for Rovio to make unless I'm missing something. They could double (or triple) the season length and adjust rewards accordingly. How would ladder players feel about that?

 

Increasing season length as stated by @Spinners71

Sounds convincing

 

Diablo III does this as well with seasons being roughly 3 months in length. The ONE major difference is that everyone is reset back to 0 in Diablo III and you have to basically grind for a couple of weeks to re-gear your characters to an acceptable level, and then from there, grind to get better and improved gear. It gets very tiring after a couple of seasons, so my play time with Diablo III is that I sit out a couple of seasons and if I see any interesting changes, I will participate only for that season.

I am not sure I want to have that same reset happening in Battle Bay as that would quickly sap all reason for playing. It also doesn't gel with the Pay-2-Play concept as I am very sure you wouldn't want to lost your purchase at reset, nor will it be fair to others that purchasers keep their gear, but those who didn't spend a cent would have to grind.

Another thing to note - Seasons in Diablo III are optional, and you could choose to continue with your character in the Non-Seasonal path however you would not get the "rewards" that the Seasons path would give.

 

Omg ash you used my screenshot! Honored!

 

So many things to read through and I can't think of what I should say so I'll just leave this here
Back in before global launch you can climb to 1000infamy with an mk2and tier2commoms casually, not playing extra defensive

 

You still can. In fact a fair number of people other than me seem to do it judging from posts on these boards. It's just what you find there is M5 and M6 foes and so you end up playing ultra-defensively which many find un-fun. So they come here and post and we end up with discussions like this.

When that happened to me is when I realized that I simply could not allow infamy to take care of itself. I had to manage it because Rovio was clearly not handling it well.

 

Hey i got to 1100 with mk1 shooter

 

Yes!! Finally someone says this im an mk 2 and cant get past 600 infamy because of all the damn mk4 and mk3 with all epic gear while im dwindling around with an uncommon swift torpedo and a rare cannon how is this fair?

 

Totally agree with this.
I have experience this in most of the game.

PLEASE, Developer!!! As logical thinking, how can a beginner who has only MK1-2 defeat a MK4 or higher MK level.
Lets say, one MK2 vs one MK4 on same time, both boats are equip all T1 Level 1 Common item, 100% hit per shoot (no missing shoot). MK2 will still lose. WHY?! Because MK4 has more HP than MK2.

What I can suggest is for MatchMaking System is include Captain level as a part of MatchMaking algorithm. So that, both teams have the similar Captain level to fight with each other. This will be eventually fair to each player in BB.

Thank you.