“•PvP Glory and Rank rewards have been revised. Personal score no longer grants rank. Instead, there are now flat bonuses for playing and winning games. Games lasting less than 7 minutes will have proportionally downscaled rewards.”
Discuss?
Today there were some changes to how glory and rank points are handed out at the end of a match. First off, instead of being based on personal score they are now based on win or loss. Secondly, rewards are now interpolated based on the duration of the match up to a time we have determined to be a little shorter than the typical match.
Laying the Groundwork for New Game Types
There are several reasons for these changes. The biggest reason is to lay the groundwork for new game types and map mechanics. By normalizing rewards we can be much more flexible with map layouts, game types and mechanics. Game modes will need to reward players equally without directing players to one mode or another based on perceived differences in rewards or encouraging players to play a specific way in order to maximize rewards. As an added benefit, we can also begin to be more flexible with Custom Arena settings.
Time interpolation falls into this category as well. If we introduce a mechanic that leaves the potential for the match to be over very quickly, such as regicide, we need to ensure that doesn’t lead to collaboration to farm rewards or encourage players to play this mode simply to maximize their rewards.
Team Based Rewards
The second big reason for this change is that we have seen that certain builds are much more effective at scoring points than other builds. For example, we see that typical bunker builds score lower than all other types of builds because they serve a vital role of point defense. All members of a team should share in the rewards equally. Again, this lays the foundation for new game modes. We don’t want to limit ideas for new modes because it creates one role that is potentially more or less lucrative than another role.
The numbers chosen for the rewards are based on the data we have collected. On average players who earn the most glory earn about 120 glory per match. We therefore set the minimum numbers to be on par with this number and scaled up from there. Along with this change you will see that Solo Arena and Team Arena both reward significantly more glory and rank points for winning. This is both to compensate for the queue times as well as to reward the higher risk that is taken in these areas.
As an added anti-AFK and botting measure players will need to score at least some points to get rewards. The standard AFK detection continues to be in place and players detected as AFK will receive no rewards.
Also, as before, players will continue to earn a small bonus for having the highest score personal score in each of the game stats.
What was meant is that both Glory and Rank Points follow this method. The wording on that wasn’t clear.
To clear things up, below you’ll find a list of the glory/rank points you earn in each queue. These numbers include the bouncy-chest bonus you get after you load out of the match.
Custom Arena / Hotjoin
Solo Queue
Team Queue:
Being auto-balanced provides you with an additional 25 glory, and each top-stat you earn gives you another 5.
You can also use a Glory Booster to get even more glory (650 in a tournament win, for example), but those do not apply to rank points, which is why I excluded those numbers.
It is unintentional. I can’t give you a hard date for when it will be fixed because we’re between hot fixes and patches right now.
My main man Lesh-the-Fresh knows about it.
@Sudden – There’s a lot of great points in your response, and I appreciate you taking the time to put it on paper.
Like you mentioned, I come from the community – I’m a player. I don’t get to play quite as much as I’d like to anymore, but I do try to play as much as I can (much to my girlfriend’s chagrin). That said, the recent changes to glory and rank gain are the foundation on which we can begin to build a better version of PvP. Now that I’m privy to all of the ‘insider info’, I can say (as a player) I’m genuinely excited for our team’s vision for sPvP in the coming months.
The team’s top priority right now is to work on providing better incentives for playing in PvP. We want players to not only enjoy playing in matches, but also feel adequately rewarded afterwards for doing so. Meta obviously has a role in the ‘fun’ factor of PvP, and that’s something the Skills and Balance Team has been focused on as well. (Stay tuned.)
While we’ve been working on the above, we’ve also been working on prototypes of new maps and gametypes. Having these rank/glory changes in place is going to ensure that one game mode/map isn’t more rewarding than another, and you won’t feel compelled or required to participate in a certain gametype simply because it’s more profitable/rewarding than another.
On the topic of hotjoin, we hope that once the dust settles, players will drop the farm mentality and start playing to win. The existing system has been in for quite a while, so it may take some time for the entire player base to adapt. We’ll be rolling out additional changes in the future that should incentivize playing to win even more.
