New Update 11/18/2013: Blood Gods Team Rankings & Chamber of Power Gear Changes

[crow]

Nate,
Personally I have enjoyed this format better than any other this game has ever had. Fight everyone except the few that are aligned with you. This gives us the truest champion this game has had. There are no avoids or excessive challenges to boost rankings. Even though I have for the most part gotten my ass handed to me in Blood Gods (except for Erupt) I have been enjoying this format. Heck the best part is after a few months we start from scratch and the old records erased. Now you can prove if you have improved or not.
I believe the balance of the different classes is fairly even. Granted I think power theatrics are struggling right now in the overall game. Also 2-hand wars are not as successful right now, especially considering there success in the past.

I have been seeing a lot of complaining, with little or no ideas for a solution. I can definitely see where this can be tricky to balance. Some managers might take a break, others might be inexperienced against top glads. Or the glads are just not ready for the blood gods, lord knows some of my boys suck right. But until I read some good ideas that are simple to implement and make sense to all, quit all the bitching and complaining. I would much rather have our developer finish up a major project such as conquests instead of revisiting something that's works but is not perfect to some. Then after some good ideas and suggestions he can make a path forward to correcting or modifying this part of the game.

Have a nice day
Crow

[Kreegan]

There's something which I already suggested - instead of putting everyone against everyone, no matter where he/she is in the bracket, increase the chance to fight some of his/her "peers". I.e. top performers fight top performers more often while newly ascending gladiators get to fight someone from the bottom of the bracket more often. This can be based on season rating, overall points or current position, the idea is to have more "even" fights than what we currently have. There can be some fights between the top fighters and the new recruits every once in a while - this will even be a reality check how well your fighter is building up - but I don't see why someone still in his Primus gear has to fight gladiators who are greatly overpowered compared to him/her regularly, it's not like the result is unpredictable or something. From what I've seen from this game, its ideology has been steadily evolving toward providing better means for the players to compete between each other and for the most part it's doing OK in that regard - however it certainly needs some tweaking so the end game doesn't feel like a fight between gladiators who are several tiers apart - like Warlords bracket fighting Primus bracket.

Edit: another solution is to split Blood Gods into two brackets or sub-brackets. The gear unique for the bracket can be available upon entrance but obviously those who perform better will move to the upper bracket/sub-bracket while thew new entries will have an easier time with the acquisition of the new equipment and will steadily move up when they are ready and if they are good enough.

[Prinny]

Agreed with Crow~

@ Kreegan, I can see where you are going but god please no, this results into an unfair overall ranking. It is indeed unfair for them to go up against orange wearing glads but this "unfairness" has always been part of the game, have you ever seen a glad that wasn't wearing purples on the throne back in the days of Primus? There may have been 1 or 2 that got into the top 10 but that just proves they're either that good or were (ab)using the challenge/avoid system.

I would say the problem doesn't lie with the blood gods bracket but with how new gladiators get into the bracket and afterwards aren't able to get out. Take Penn for example, the poor glad has 7 wins and 120 losses. Im willing to bet those records can't be fun for the manager of the stable especially if the glad could perform well on primus lvl. I have some that perform bad aswell like Gurren Lagann but instead of selling him (like I should) I've probably revised his build and strategy atleast 5-6 times by now, I'm just going to wait patiently for Nate to take a look at the low winrate performances and will keep revising his strats and build till I get something that works in the current bracket.

Also it isn't like it's warlord vs primus bracket and you know it, it's more like Primus vs Maximus. Most of the glads that enter blood gods will have their build (nearly) complete if not they just did so well in primus with their unfinished build that they got the privilege to go up to the next bracket. The wall that every glad encounters multiple times throughout the game (Juggernauts, Elite and so on, you know what im talking about ) simply repeats itself. The thing that sucks the most is the requirements to get points in the bracket, if you take a good look at them it says this:
* In order to receive any points at all a gladiator must initiate at least 20 fights.
* If a gladiator has initiated at least 20 fights, they then must win at least 30 fights to receive full points. Gladiators failing to win 30 fights will receive less BGP than they otherwise would have.
These rules were placed in order so inactive gladiators don't get points or get half of them, I've suffered from them firsthand a while ago whilst on vacation
Problem with this was my underperforming glads couldn't or barely could get to 30 wins each week which ment they only got half the points they normally would've gotten and this problem is currently repeating itself. So ontop of losing alot of fights and not being able to gain access to the currently low rating cost orange equipment (1k for armour and 2K for weapons) they could only get a few pieces of blood gods purple gear aswell which doesn't add up to their performance.

To sum it up there are only 2 real problems:
#1 ~ Gladiators that enter the bracket can't get out, an effective way to counter this would be that a gladiator is allowed to get back to primus and stays there for the rest of the season if they have under a 30%? winrate.
#2 ~ Gladiators that don't perform well get penalized in the form of being unable to get new blood gods gear, an effective way to counter this would be to remove the atleast 30 wins rule but keep the 20 initiated fights as this rule alone is enough to counter inactive stables.

~Prinny

[Sotc]

Work in Progress
Note: I am not going to claim that any of these ideas are perfect or that they will be easy to implement; I know all to well how a 'simple' change ends up blowing up. I have tried to split my proposals based on the complexity of the change proposed and tried to favor numbers changes rather than complex systemic changes.

Let's analyze the factors that will most strongly dictate a w/l ratio for a new entrant or any poor performing glad. Proposals will follow each analysis with the goals of 1) smoothing out the transition for new entrants to seasons or 2) making a path forward for low performing glads.

1) SKILLS:
New entrants enter the Blood Gods with anywhere from ~1k-1.5k fights. Their builds are likely not even complete yet (Not at 100 skills yet). They aren't playing with a full deck, so to speak.
New entrants are also unlikely to be Olympians yet and therefore have 9 less stats across the board than fully trained glads.
Low performing glads often have skill builds that are just not suited for the metagame. Skill swaps have long lead times while reducing the glad's performance further in the meantime. This makes them a pretty unattractive option. Nate has tried to alleviate this issue with the 200 training point prize at the end of the season.

2) ACHIEVEMENTS:
New entrants are unlikely to have unlocked good achievements yet (haven't trained stats yet, haven't done enough tavern quests yet, etc.) or pay for the extra slots to house them. Nate has alleviated this problem with some free weeks of achievement slots for new glads in the past and by adding the +200 hp bonus for becoming a Blood God.

SHORT TERM PROPOSALS:
These proposals are meant to smooth the transition from Primus to seasons.

a) Increase the minimum rating required to graduate a glad from Primus to seasons. Instead of around 340k rating maybe bump it back up to around 350k+. This will prolong the time the glads in Primus have to grow and be on more equal footing in terms of skills trained, and allow Primus to become the proving ground it used to be rather than dumping fresh 1k fight glads into the fire of seasons.

b) Increase the number of training points awarded to glads at the end of seasons. Perhaps a bump of around 400 would give managers the boost they need to make skill changes.

LONG TERM PROPOSAL:
Allow glads that have finished a season to retire if they want. This would occur on the 'dead day' between seasons. This would enable managers who have invested much time in their glad only to have it perform poorly in seasons to salvage some value out of it. Additionally it would preserve the population of Primus for at least the length of the season so that the numbers of glads won't drop suddenly mid-season and mess up team rankings.


3) STATS AND GEAR:
The gulf between the stats of a new entrant/poor performer and a BG veteran is clearly plays a huge part in their respective w/l ratio.

Considering that enhanced purples/oranges can have base stats up to 20%+/40%+ better than regular blacksmith items (not even touching on the stat boosts on the items), quicker access to better gear is essential for new entrants to not be hopelessly overwhelmed in the 'arms race'.

Nate has attempted to address this two ways:
a) Nate has steadily lowering rating requirements season to season making better gear easier to access.
b) Nate has also opened up the Gauntlet for oranges/enhanced purples. However, this takes a significant investment of trophies or a significant investment of cash (even Arrrrrgh in full oranges can take 1.5 mil to do a nightmare run, I can't imagine how painful it is for a young glad in only regular purples)

c) The third way this issue could be addressed is the way that BGP is awarded.
- The question then becomes: How do we make BGP rewards more fairly distributed yet retain their competitive nature?
- Ignoring the small chance of winning BGP in a street games dice roll, the only two sources of BGP are weekly awards on a per glad basis and weekly awards on a per team basis.


BG WEEKLY BGP REWARDS PER GLAD

Sources:
- Rating: ranges from about 1k - 2k+. If a new entrant were to meet the weekly reqs, he would make about 8k BGP all told. This is enough for an orange piece and one enhanced purple weapon or around 4 enhanced purple pieces (Assuming you paid the trophy cost).
- Wins/Week: a punishing requirement for new entrants. Getting your BGP slashed for losing isn't going to help you win more fights, it will just be a downward spiral.
- Matches initiated/week - A reasonable activity requirement.

SHORT TERM PROPOSAL: Remove the wins/week requirement as Prinny said. There is no need to further punish low performing glads.

[Sotc]

BG TEAM WEEKLY BGP REWARDS

Before we start making suggestions regarding this subject, lets get a snapshot of the current state of the Blood Games.

Data sampled: 10AM 12/14/13

1) light blue
2) orange
3) red
4) purple
5) dark blue

1) 490/430/7 - 2365
2) 408/423/15 - 1674
3) 351/312/10 - 1488
4) 429/522/2 - 1412
5) 292/283/1 - 1033

Total number of fights
1) 920
2) 831
3) 663
4) 951
5) 575

The regression equation is
C4 = - 671 + 9.37 C1 - 3.72 C2 + 5.26 C3
R^2 is 99.9%

Let's calculate how much each team would have to improve their w/l ratio to catch up to the current front runner.

-671+9.37*w-3.72*l+5.26*k=r
w+l=total number of fights

w is your wins
l is your losses
k is your kills
r is rating of front runner

We need to keep a few variables constant because we don't have enough known equations.
Assume:
1) Same number total fights
2) Same number total kills
1) Pretty safe assumptions given that number of total fights is mainly affected by how active your team is each week and how many glads are on your team.
2) Constant kill assumption is more shaky but the k number is small compared to w and will have a much lesser effect on yield (team rating)

Win Ratio needed to catch up to front runner (have equal team rating)
1) 490/430 53.3% (front runner)
2) 462/368 55.66%
3) 416/247 62.75%
4) 501/449 52.74%
5) 395/180 68.70%

Across the Board Improvement needed to catch the front runner.
1) 53.3% + 0%
2) 49.1% + 6.56%
3) 52.9% + 9.85%
4) 45.1% + 7.64%
5) 50.8% + 17.9%

If we wanted to capture how these numbers trend over time we would need to run this analysis more times to gather enough data.
In the meantime, this will serve as a reasonable snapshot of the current state of the BG team competition.

A few comments:
- Team #5 must improve their win rating a whopping 18% across all their gladiators to have a chance of winning the weekly prize
- The smaller the team and therefore the lesser total amount of fights, the the higher the improvement requirement becomes.
- Smaller teams were selected from higher performing gladiators, the higher performing the gladiator, the more insensitive to changes the w/l ratio becomes. e.g. It is mathematically easier to raise a 20% w/l gladiator by 18% than a 70% w/l gladiator (referring to sheer number of wins required).
- Low performing glads often have structural issues that have LONG lead times to fix: inferior gear, a skill build that gets chewed up by the metagame, etc.
- Therefore the claim that a team can 'easily' raise its w/l to make the team rating more competitive is simply not true.

Provisional Conclusions:
- Let's define competitive as the chance to catch the front running team. By this definition, in a highly competitive system, the five teams would be all close to each other in team ranking and small improvements would shake up the rankings.
- Clearly this is not the case with the current system. This analysis shows that the current system does not appear to be any more competitive than the previous system used in Season 4 by being highly resistant to shake-ups in the rankings; no one had a chance of catching the front runner under that system either.
- Compounding this is the winner-take-all reward structure. Low performing/new glads on the losing teams are completely shut out of one of the two 'reliable' sources of BGP.

Here are some proposed solutions:

SHORT TERM PROPOSAL:
We can alter the reward structure - rather than winner takes all, each team gets some degree of bonus every week. Good for new entrants since they may accumulate enough to grab an extra piece of gear or two.
Example:
Team Rank Reward Schedule
1) 1.0*Weekly BGP Bonus
2) 0.67*Weekly BGP Bonus
3) 0.5*Weekly BGP Bonus
4) 0.33*Weekly BGP Bonus
5) 0.25*Weekly BGP Bonus

This way the BGP Bonus still serves as an incentive for your team to perform better since you want more BGP. But now since everyone gets some BGP it doesn't increase the gap as widely between the haves and have-nots in terms of access to BGP gear.

LONG TERM PROPOSALS:
1) We can alter the team rosters - very disruptive to do this now, new teams may be unfair again.
2) We can alter the numbers in the algorithm - subjective (you can fiddle with the coefficients but this will take time to run simulation to test out a 'fair' combo of coefficients) and may be political (i.e. smaller teams would benefit more from w/l based formulas or a smaller coefficient on weekly team wins, larger teams would favor the opposite).

[Kreegan]

@Prinny, "getting back" to Primus is not a good way to improve one's motivation to invest in his gladiator(s), the only thing it could potentially achieve will be give him/her some time to breathe and rebuilt his/her fighter if the current build is that terrible. The thing is, before you acquire enough Blood Gods pieces, you can't be sure if your build and strategy aren't good or you're just losing because you've brought a knife to a gunfight. All of my new entries steadily improve their performance as they replace their Primus gear with the bones 'n rust that become available in Blood Gods and start winning more fights without significant strategy tweaks and usually no skill re-training. The thing is, in order to swap all the 8 pieces of gear with Blood Gods purple equivalents, you have to play around half an year (provided that you don't spend trophies in the Blacksmith) and lose a huge amount of fights during the first 2-3 months. Patience is OK but is it necessary? Right now the game forces you to lose now so you can have a chance to win later instead of providing you with the means to actually compete all the time. Back in the Primus days, a gladiator needed to reach level 50 to get access to the best gear in the game and then it was a matter of completing his/her training, both of which happened in around 1-2 months after ascending from Maximus so even though it was hardly a fair fight initially, it was much more even than what we have now in Blood Gods and you had the chance to pick up faster. Now you need maybe a full calendar year to get a mixture of BG purples and oranges if you rely on the Blacksmith only (and tons of luck or trophies in the Street Games, respectively tons of gold in the Gauntlet).

I agree, the removal of the 30 wins per week will help a lot. It needs a substitute though. I'm yet to figure out how BGPs are awarded - two of my gladiators have 30+ wins per week, however one is with 48 and the other with 35 and next week they receive nearly the same amount of BGPs (the better performer gets 5-6 more or so). What's clear is that at 30 wins you get 1k BGPs and below 30 they seem to be 800 or less. So if anything, a new system will have to take these values into account and compare them to the price of the Blood Gods gear if it is to be a good replacement of the current one.

@Sotc, nice posts. One addition though - I think the extra training points should be awarded upon entrance in the bracket and not upon the completion of the respective season. It makes no sense to have undertrained gladiators in Blood Gods, there are too many imbalances that the new entries have to face even without taking into account the difference between fully trained and still-being-trained gladiators. If your fighter manages to get past Primus top 10, then he/she certainly deserves this small boost.

[Apoca1ypse]

There's something which I already suggested - instead of putting everyone against everyone, no matter where he/she is in the bracket, increase the chance to fight some of his/her "peers". I.e. top performers fight top performers more often while newly ascending gladiators get to fight someone from the bottom of the bracket more often. This can be based on season rating, overall points or current position, the idea is to have more "even" fights than what we currently have. There can be some fights between the top fighters and the new recruits every once in a while - this will even be a reality check how well your fighter is building up - but I don't see why someone still in his Primus gear has to fight gladiators who are greatly overpowered compared to him/her regularly, it's not like the result is unpredictable or something. From what I've seen from this game, its ideology has been steadily evolving toward providing better means for the players to compete between each other and for the most part it's doing OK in that regard - however it certainly needs some tweaking so the end game doesn't feel like a fight between gladiators who are several tiers apart - like Warlords bracket fighting Primus bracket.

This was done in the first season IIRC and stratified the standings far worse than they do now. This also occured in the old primus days. AFAIK the current system is the fairest system ever since bloodgods were introduced.

To sum it up there are only 2 real problems:
#1 ~ Gladiators that enter the bracket can't get out, an effective way to counter this would be that a gladiator is allowed to get back to primus and stays there for the rest of the season if they have under a 30%? winrate.
#2 ~ Gladiators that don't perform well get penalized in the form of being unable to get new blood gods gear, an effective way to counter this would be to remove the atleast 30 wins rule but keep the 20 initiated fights as this rule alone is enough to counter inactive stables.

~Prinny

I like these suggestions


Another short term fix may be to award newly promoted glads to the winning team of that week. The team will get the points, but also have a handicap in the form of an incomplete gladiator. at the very least it would make for a round robin of the top spot + BGP's opposed to 1 team getting tanked hard all season.

[Prinny]

Kreegan you are completely right, getting back to primus to take a breather is exactly what I am intending to do with that proposal.
That's the benefit to it although there's also downsides.

Benefit:
Gladiators can crank up their winrate and are opted to retire their glad for a new premium slave.
Example: Gurren Lagann has an overall winrating of 45.6%. In order to retire he needs a winrate of 48.5%. His current winrate is blood gods is 35.6%. This means that he will never be able to retire as things are now, having the option of going back to primus would make this possible.

Downsides:
The gladiators that go back to primus won't be able to get bgp for new gear.
The gladiators that go back to primus might have a few bgp gear pieces on them which makes them "superior" over the other glads in primus in terms of gear.

There's likely alot more benefits and downsides to it but these 3 should be the main ones (it's early and I can't be bothered to think to much on an empty stomach ).

[Alba Kebab]

I generally agree with Crow's sentiment also, if we can come up with something better that isn't too complex to change, great; if not, then let's not bog Nate down when he has other things like conquest to work on.

Allowing glads to go back to primus would only be sensible if they are not allowed to use their legendary gear, otherwise it would be an unfair disadvantage to other primus glads.
One other potential problem with allowing glads back to primus would be if enough glads start going back, it may become increasingly difficult for new glads down the track to reach BG if they have to battle more and more BG returnees and unable to reach the primus throne.

Sotc's tiered rewards idea for teams sounds nice, atm I can't think of any downside to this.

@Kreegan
On the question of whether it's the gear that's making the difference or the build/strat for newcomers sucking in BG, I generally follow this rule: if your BG newbies is holding up ok against other BG newbies or getting close, then you should probably be patient and grind, if you are not just sucking vs the top guys but are having a bad time against other low rank BG newbies like yourself, then your glad is probably not gonna make it anywhere no matter what.

Which can be another potential downside to allowing BG glads to return to primus, if there are not enough other BG newbies in there with your BG newbie, it becomes very difficult to judge whether your guy is losing simply because of weaker gear or losing because his build just don't work, and it will make it very difficult to judge if it's worth going on or not when there isn't enough glads similar to you to give you an idea of your potential.

[Alba Kebab]

Another option: Give a single chance to accept/decline entering BG or remain in Primus when you meet the requirement to move up, the choice is permanent and there is a strict time limit on how long you can wait and decide(only to accommodate real-life possibilities of player being away for 1 or 2 day etc).

If you accept the challenge, you willingly take on all the heartbreak/butthurt that might come with it, you will reach glory or die, and you can't look back.
If you refuse, you will be marked as having turn down an offer from the Gods, and you will never be able to change your mind afterwards or be given the chance again.

The Gods will offer you the chance and offer it once, either take it and don't whine, or refuse and live with the regret and maybe a mark of cowardice(maybe a compulsory negative title or something just to give a bit of lore-flavour fun).