Battle Rewards - Solved

I, like several people, thought I noticed a reduction in battle rewards. The developers responded that the average battle rewards haven't changed. So, I started a before and after spreadsheet to double-check.

I noticed three things:

First, battle rewards seem to have some RNG multiplier. Oddly, similar performances had a 20% or more range in battle rewards.

Second, in my best games, I am currently receiving about 10k less per win on average than I was a month ago (i.e., NML/max captain maximum rewards dropped from the upper 50k - mid 60k range to the mid 40k - low 50k range). So, that max win reward is likely what people noticed.

However, the third thing I noticed was that my losses were paying out around 11k or more on average. My "best" losses went from around the mid 20k mark before to the mid 30k mark now.

Anywho, I believe that the players were correct in that their best 'wins' were paying out less, but the developers were also right in that average battle rewards (including 'wins' and 'losses') are consistent with previous rewards.



* I tossed out a few extreme outliers both before and after, so your actual range might be broader if you compare your stats.
** If you've fallen more than 800 infamy from your highest mark, your battle rewards will be cut in half until you pull yourself out of the infinity-tanking "penalty."

 

This is what I'm seeing and have reported. Thank you for another independent confirmation. Means I'm probably not seeing ghosts

I made a small program to read the gold and sugar rewards from battlelog screenshots (using some image cropping and a OCR library).
I fed it screenshots of the last 2-3 weeks - and got about 200 data points.
And looking at it, the result is really clear. All data points get compressed towards the average.

On average I earn the same as before (over time..).
However, the variance is way down. My STDEV(pre-event) was 12600, STDEV(post-event) is 7701.
(For the non-mathematically inclined, this means that 68% of my rewards was within 12600 gold from the average pre-event.. and reduced to 7701 post-event)

We players noticed our reduced winnings, we didn't notice our increased rewards for losses.
Devs investigated using averages and sums over time - which didn't change.

My thinking is that some factor got unintentionally changed during last event.

Thank you

 

Based on these conclusions, it’s safe to say that the value of vip has increased, because I only watch ads for wins to get the most out of an ad.

I don’t have vip, but I am still fine with this because when I started I was watching ads for lower rewards than I am now at a higher level.

Edit: but I wish the devs mentioned this in patch notes

 

@xArrogance @Cpt Obvious thank you both for your time solving this

 

They didn’t because it didn’t happen during a regular (client side) patch. It happened during the event. And it was probably an honest mistake as part of a minor server tweak

There’s no reason for Rovio to change this, it doesn’t affect the bay economy in any real way (except for nightmare players who only play a bare minimum of games, and thus mostly win - or for people who very selectively watch ads). The only real effect is that players feel they get shafted, which definitely isn’t a goal for rovio. So I think we can safely assume it was unintended

Now that they have multiple game modes they probably do some kind of code re-use (inheritance, composition, etc). The balance between Do-Not-Repeat-Yourself and keeping things decoupled is a fine game, it’s easy to cause unintended consequences when doing seemingly unrelated changes.

 

It would help if the DEVS actually explain these changes in the rewards before they introduce rewards on average. in turn that would spare us all complaining on the forums! And allow us to play the game more

 

brilliant analysis I think a few thought this was the case but could not prove it but well done now we can get back to the normal moaning about matchmaking and nerf sniper etc

 

• we have two captains obvious, lol-this was said before
• for me, it looks like rewards were somehow levelled, the worst and the best rewards dissappeared, yet the rewards overall stayed same
• imo all those who accused devs of not telling us the truth should apologize, dves were right, but so were players-rewards looked like reduced, yet the average rewards were same

 

It would also be nice if the Devs didn't emphatically deny any change when asked directly if rewards changed. It's not the first time they've been caught up in false denials or misleading semantics.

https://forum.battlebay.net/threads/do-battle-rewards-decrease-after-3-1-patch.21101/#post-162154

If win rewards decreased and loss rewards increased, that would be a *decrease* in VIP value.

 

For one, it could have been as simple as a change in star calculation that ended up having an effect on battle rewards (e.g., if they reduced the absurd bonus fire users get or tried to increase fixer rewards). So, it is very possible there was no direct modification to the formula.

Two, I'm still getting the occasional 60k battle reward, it's just less often, so that would suggest there was no hard cap put in place. It may simply be harder for me to get those outstanding games now.

Lastly, I do think the VIP subscription should do more - such as increase your coin rewards by the same 50% as normal matches ....

But, I didn't explain the net difference very well. I am receiving more rewards overall now than I was before, and I would assume the same to be true for everyone. Although it's not exactly rare for me to quad or penta kill and do more damage than my entire team, I have far more quality losses than Rambo matches .. so the net difference is more rewards. I would assume it's the same for everyone.

 

For nightmare players you’ll end up slightly lower than before (more wins than losses). But difference is tiny. Graphing the trend line mine had a slight dip.

 

Full disclosure - "Stats" was my least favorite class and I rarely look at my battle rewards. So, I'm not disputing your analysis ... you obviously went more in-depth than I did.

But, in the 50 or so before and after that I looked at, my average loss rewards increased significantly more than my average win rewards decreased. Also, (other than when I got a call that disconnected me) all of my loss rewards increased, whereas only some of my win rewards decreased.

So, I found that I was actually making significantly more overall than before ... but, then again, it was a smaller sample size and I didn't get overly scientific with it.

 

Yeah, I probably need more data than I have to say for sure, I was just extrapolating from the following assumptions:

• The average reward (over time) did not change significantly - or devs would have spotted it when they first checked.
• Something simple (and unintentional) changed, like a factor controlling the span/amplitude of rewards being slightly lower than before. And that it would affect loss and win exactly the same.
• A nightmare player has more wins than losses (i.e. able to move from 4k to 5k before reset)

Anyway, that's a minor detail, and not really our point