Give bonus rewards to the 'Underdogs'.

Yes, I know their is multiple threads complaining/criticizing (depends on how you see it) on the problem with people intentionally dropping infamy, but lets be real, this long suggestion to alleviate the problem will be buried and forgotten real quick. Besides, its akin to more to a suggestion then an actual discussion.

To make this clear, I'm not advocating dropping infamy nor I do I drop infamy myself (Hah! jokes on you! I drop infamy because my lack of luck with matchmaking and underleveled items friend), but I'm sympathizing with those that do, even if those are usually placed on my side of the matches for some inexplicable reason.

So, why do people intentionally drop infamy? Easy, this has been answered quite a lot of times; because it is easier to gain resources by fighting lower level players.
Let me ask another question: Is their a reason to push up in infamy (besides fairly shoddy season rewards)? No, their is not, their is no point in pushing up and knocking down high leveled/skilled players only to be greeted by even higher leveled/skilled players for inconsistent and honestly poultry rewards. Oh and you get basically zero stars because the average contribution have been pushed up way beyond your item's levels.
You wanna know the depressing part of all of this? People already knew this, but have been failing to realize that this is the main issue that the system is working against the player.

Now after that wall of context, how do we fix this problem? I propose to you the Underdog System. A system that DOESN'T CHANGE THE MATCHMAKING IN ANYWAY (even though the matchmaking is severely flawed and we all know it), but! Does motivate the poor schmucks that are unlucky and underleveled to truly fight with all they got.

The system works like this: After the game places all players in both sides with the regular matchmaking system, the game starts totaling the ship marks, captain levels, and weapon levels of each team and sees which team is considered the 'underdog'. This underdog team if win or lose will get a bonus of rewards depending on how much the 'overdogs' have the odds stacked against them. The overdogs will get the same bonus without any change.

This will give incentive to the lowerlevels to actually try as they have the potential to win huge and feel like their work has paid off whereas the average to high players will generally be unaffected, but are given the motivation to push up beyond their current rank. Not only will this alleviate the many complaints the community have regarding the (trash) progression system, it will overall improve the best part of the game: The Combat System, as the (trash) matchmaking system now utilizes its drawbacks to create a unique experience because no sane dev would do this for its 'competitive' game. Plus free bullet point on the app store! Hooray!

Mostly unrelated side note. I love this community, I truly love it on how its willing to actually discuss and improve the game that we all love (and hate) rather than becomes just a sad pile of toxicity and memes. The devs? Eh, no, while I give huge respect that they actually interact community (which is standard for most games, but null for mobile) actually listening and compromising is just, no. In fact, the reason why this community is like this way because the game is severely flawed whereas good games are a pile of memes (and a pinch of toxicity) is because they have reached a point of near perfection, a strong compromise between the community and devs.

Cheers.

 

Cool. I like it. +10 chars

 

I'm not entirely on board with your solution because I don't think it would be enough to fix the problem. You point out the right problems though. I recently spent some time at 1100 ish infamy, and I always got 1 star for winning and 0 for losing. I just don't have high enough weapon (or healing item) levels to do meaningful contribution there. Today I had a bunch of terrible teams in a row, and when I dropped below 900 infamy, extra stars started appearing for me again. Now I'm at 700 or so, and getting an extra star every round, win or lose.

So yeah, I'd appreciate if the devs did something about this. The star system is the worst part of the game in my opinion. It very clearly punishes you for reaching a high infamy level, and then we're not even talking yet about how unfair the contribution mechanic is sometimes, especially towards fixers.

 

Possibly, I've seen the limits of what an underdog can do against a seal clubber.

They could implement the end of battle rewards based on four criteria.

Hypothetical award: 10k (x)

1) Team performance : overall score determines 60% of the award threshold.
2) Individual: Personal contribution = 40%
3) Underdog: Number of hits given / taken. (lower level players will be capable or delivering more hits without killing a player, as opposed to higher levels that kill within 2-4 hits). +10%-50% multiplier based on performance rating.
4) Player rated: individual with the highest votes minimum 2 @ +25%, 3 @+ 37.5% , max 4 @ 50% (+25% to 50%). Bronze, silver and golden frogo award.

Then either two players can get 25% (or) 25% & 37% (or) one player gets 50%... Depending on how the team feels.

And if the underdog also wins the golden frogo, the entire team receives a random crate... And the underdogs medal is upgraded to platinum.

Might encourage team work, and lower levels to engage more. Considering a good team, with an underdog... Would receive some sweet bonuses. Up to 2x the rewards + random rarity crate at the extreme end.

 

Well, its something, most games rarely turn from shoddy to amazing in one update, but yeah, the star system is quite trash and I'll probably make another post elaborating probably, maybe.
Also, apologies on being extremely late to reply, I have a sever case of nightowl and drop dead as soon as daylight strikes.

 

So a voting system? Interesting idea, but due to how the stats are shown in the results screen, most would just vote on the top damager and possibly fixer whereas yellow ships main ways of contributing (scouting/diverting/protecting/slowing/stunning) are incredibly vague to the end result screen (only way to see contribution is stars and we all that system is flawed) even if that one low damaging speeder successfully diverted 3000s of damage worth of shots from the team or that enforcer protected the team's fixer from near death with a tesla shield. This itself manifests from the dev's incredibly ambiguous explanation on how the star system works.

 

Anything is better than the unfair system they have now

 

Well maybe if they remove this free star chest system might ease the situation. Just set it to give out 5 free uncommon chest per 24hr with interval xhrs to open them, hell might as well throw in an additional free premium chest per week. There are some games out there using this system for F2P players to have progression compared to wallet warriors.

For those that dropped their infamy on purpose, I think they did it mostly to get enough stars to cover their free star chests, gold and sugar can still be farmed easily at higher level play even if you lost a game. I'm now at infamy 3k +/- 200 average and noticed that I have to spend longer amount of time spent to farm enough stars to open the 5 daily free star chest.

End of the day a balance need to be strike out between free and paying player in all MOBA games. Loose the free players and the pool of players to match up to playing players dropped sharply.
F2P players might be dropping the game already as we discussing as I also noticed that the amount of time for a match up actually took longer for the past 1 week or so.