Hello fellow Splinterlanders!
This post is a follow up to the discussion we've been having in the Discord DAO Discussion Thread found here: https://discord.com/channels/447924793048825866/1181632935540039731
EDIT: The ENTIRE section about reworking tournaments has been removed! It is being discussed instead in the "Tournament Rework" section of Discord which will have its own proposal. This is now SOLELY for discussion and implementation of a RANKED League Lock and anything to do with tournaments will be handled separately, including what tournaments you are able to play in without additional fees based on your Ranked League.
What is a League Lock?
A league lock would be a choice that you make when you start playing in a new ranked season. You would start by choosing what league you would like to participate in (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Diamond, Champion) and you would remain in that league for the entirety of the season. There would be set minimum requirements in place to ensure that underprepared accounts could not enter a league they would not be competitive in (a combination of staked SPS / CP) to prevent ratings inflation by win trading. During the season, you would not be able to move up into the next league, nor down into a previous league. You can always choose a new league next season if the one you previously chose was either too easy, or too hard, as long as your account meets the requirements. All players would start a new season with the minimum points for that league, and even if you go below the minimum you would remain in that league. The league lock would apply separate for modern and wild, with different requirement to enter each. You can be in a different league in Modern vs Wild within the same season.
Benefits of a League Lock:
- Prevents being forced to move down a league at end of season and fight your way back up through a league you don't want to participate in.
- Allows you to use the cards you've leveled in the appropriate league instead of being stuck in a lower league than your collection would allow (IE: you have a gold level deck, but are stuck in bronze)
- Encourages card / SPS purchasing / renting since you would immediately be able to use them at higher leagues.
- Allows new players to "skip" bronze and move into a league where there are more abilities to get a better feel for the mechanics of the game.
- Prevents returning players with established collections from having to reenter the game in bronze.
- Allows players to "try out" different leagues to find the one they like most and play in it consistently since each league has a different meta.
- Creates "fighting champions" within a league since players will all start at the minimum point level and have to work their way up along with everyone else.
- Prevents playing for only a few days and locking up a leaderboard position, then switching leagues since no one will have a "head start" with a point lead when starting a new season (ties into above re: "fighting champions")
- Ensures you are battling other players in your league, not getting matched up with players in a higher league where you are (typically) disadvantaged, nor matching with a lower league where you are (typically) advantaged.
- Simplifies the league experience as "tiers" (IE: Silver 1 / 2 / 3) would be largely just for visual purposes since earnings are based on SPS staked and there would be no "seasonal ratings reset", just the choice of your next "league lock" the following season.
EDIT: As per a great suggestion by @GhostlyBG only Bronze, Silver, Gold and Diamond would start off "unlocked" and available for anyone to enter right away. This would allow you to play ALL level of cards, up to max, aside from Champion. To "unlock" Champion you would first need to get the appropriate amount of points ONCE (3700 points), then it would be available to be "selected" in future league locks. This ensures you have the necessary skills to enter Champion league instead of just getting to choose it without proving your skills and putting in the "work" to get there. EDIT2: The addition of Diamond was made in order to allow use of cards that may be max level, ensuring that all cards you owned would be able to be played where they've been upgraded to. Thanks GhostlyBG!
Minimum Requirements per league:
This is up for discussion, but based on the pre-existing requirements and penalties I would propose a combination of both CP and SPS staked in order to enter each league.
The SPS staked would follow the existing formula, with minimum entry being around the 6x multiplier point. This could be increased or decreased based on discussion, but entering (for example) Silver with only 515 SPS staked when you start at 1000 points, and moving up in points to even Silver 2 (1300) would result in very little earnings since to retain 6x RP you would need 1411 SPS staked at that point, requiring you to rent more to earn anything at all. Again, this "minimum starting point" could be modified through discussion, but we don't want to make the SPS gate either so low that people enter and we have ratings inflation, nor so high that current players become locked out.
As such I would propose the following minimum SPS staked for each league:
Bronze: 0 SPS
Silver: 500 SPS
Gold: 5000 SPS
Diamond: 25000 SPS
Champion: 50000 SPS
From a CP standpoint there has already been much discussion in regards to Wild format in the anti-bot discussion started by Bronko. I believe those numbers are fair for wild, but would need to be reduced to allow new players to participate in modern, especially bronze league so that a new player would be able to start playing right away.
So to start with Wild, there are the proposed numbers from the anti-bot proposal for consistency:
Bronze: 20,000 CP
Silver: 50,000 CP
Gold: 120,000 CP
Diamond: 250,000 CP
Champion: 400,000 CP
When it comes to modern I would propose the following numbers:
Bronze: 0 CP
Silver: 3,000 CP
Gold: 12,000 CP
Diamond: 50,000 CP
Champion: 100,000 CP
The CP of soulbound cards would not count towards these calculations unless they have been unlocked.
To summarize then, these would be the total Requirements to enter each league and format from both an SPS and CP standpoint:
WILD
Bronze: 20,000 CP / 0 SPS
Silver: 50,000 CP / 500 SPS
Gold: 120,000 CP / 5000 SPS
Diamond: 250,000 CP / 25000 SPS
Champion: 400,000 CP / 50000 SPS
MODERN
Bronze: 0 CP / 0 SPS
Silver: 3,000 CP / 500 SPS
Gold: 12,000 CP / 5000 SPS
Diamond: 50,000 CP / 25000 SPS
Champion: 100,000 CP / 50000 SPS
Going lower than these minimums once you are locked into a league would result in you being unable to play until the minimums are once again restored, and would remove you from being able to claim leaderboard prizes until meeting the requirements. This prevents people from renting to the appropriate CP / SPS at the start of the season only to then drop their rentals and play below the minimum requirements thereafter.
In summary, a league lock would be beneficial to both the new player experience, as well as the existing players based on the points raised above. I hope this proposal can find support from the greater Splinterlands community as I feel it would be a valuable addition to the game.
Thank you for reading, and may the RNG ever be on your side.
Psilence!
(Edit: Thank you to @davemccoy for helping shape this proposal and offering his feedback before publishing it!)
I absolutely 100% emphatically think that league locks are crucial to fixing the competitive environment. Picking your league levels will create much varied team compositions in each league and enable people to use the cards they have bought (instead of just playing the meta cards or dropping into oblivion).
Also eliminating the league reset will stop one of the worst creators of frustration. Games should be fun and this dynamic has caused many people to quit out of frustration.
I will completely support and hope we get this to a vote so we can make it happen. Good job @psilence!
Thanks Dave! And thank you for helping me on some of the finer points of the proposal, looking over my drafts, and crafting it into what is now presented. Appreciate you always looking out for the Splinterverse and willing to help us with these kinds of things <3
I like this proposal in general but I'm a bit wary as to how much dev time would have to be invested to get this coded.
Did you have a chance to talk to cryptomancer or yabapmatt about this?
We do know that the NPE will be a priority for 2024 and this somewhat is a part of that although it obviously also affects the old player experience.
So if that's something the team would be willing to implement and that could be done with a reasonable amount of dev work, then I would totally support it.
Thanks for the feedback! I'm not expecting this to happen instantly, but as part of the NPE when the team starts working on that. It could be a base for a general framework, and if the community wants it, they could make it happen as part of what they were going to do anyways. They were already using CP as a previous measurement so I'm hoping they could dust off the old code and repurpose it somewhat. I know WeirdBeard was already looking to achieve something like this so I'm making the broad assumption that he wouldn't have been pushing for it if it weren't something the team was capable of delivering given time and focus to do so. I'm sure Matt / Mancer will chime in eventually with their own thoughts on this when they work into the NPE phase they were describing for 2024. This may just take some of that work off their plate by having a general consensus / idea to build off that the community has already accepted to make their lives easier.
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As a relatively new player (4 months) to SL in general, who just started playing Wild in the last week or 2 and made it to Silver for the first time in either league, I believe the CP requirements for bronze and silver in Wild are effectively a ban for newer players. I can't deny that my deck feels under powered in Silver III, but so far I'm hanging in there.
I think Botters will have no trouble making the limits, but actual bronze level players in will be forced to play modern.
I am happy to discuss the CP requirements and modify them as needed to ensure everyone can continue to play, these are not set in stone so opinions from newer players like yourself are very valuable. Just looked at your account and you presently have almost 20k cp. You would be able to play into Gold modern with that CP. I don't know if you were aware, but to rent the additional 30k CP to play in silver wild under these new guidelines would cost 6dec a day right now just to put it in perspective (0.6c a day / 4.2c a week). YOU are the kind of player who we really need to focus on so I really appreciate your comment!
I'd like to see this go for in-game proposal, so let's get it :)
While I think your proposed CP requirements in Modern are about 50% too low, I think you've put together a great argument for the league locks portion.
RE Part 2: Decoupling from tournaments
I wouldn't say the previously implemented restrictions were a failed measure, but they do still have their flaws. I agree with points 1 and 2, however, it gets a little murky around points 3 and 4. Yes, cards owned by Champ players are limited to the league of the tournament and yes, the meta is different in lower leagues, but a quick look at tournaments results down there will show you that doesn't seem to be much of a problem for them.
First, you can't ignore the significant card advantage they bring with their collections. Yes, other players could rent those cards to lessen the advantage, but in a lot of cases, that's just not financially reasonable if you're hoping to come out ahead.
Second, even though the meta is different, that doesn't seem to make much of a difference. We constantly see Diamond and Champ players dominating Bronze and Silver tournaments. Some of it is due to the card advantage that comes with having a larger collection and some of it is skill.
I can't speak much on point 5 because I don't pay attention to the number of entries in Novice, Gold and Diamond tournaments, but I can say that both Bronze and Silver tournaments still manage a pretty good amount of players.
I've always been a fan of the "one up, one down" idea for tournaments and I think that could still work well in conjunction with your league lock proposal, but there would still be a couple things that would need to be addressed. One up, one down would function exactly as it sounds. you can enter tournaments one league up or one league down from your chosen league. Being that Diamond and Champ players wouldn't be allowed to enter Bronze or Silver tournaments anymore, the number of Diamond tournaments would need to be increased, and even though the card levels are the same between Diamond and Champ, I also think some Champ tournaments created.
Thank you for your feedback! I agree that it is an imperfect solution in regards to the tournaments, but even you say in your reply "We constantly see Diamond and Champ players dominating Bronze and Silver tournaments" so the present system has not been effective even in its current implementation. Removing this barrier, even temporarily while something better is developed, would allow league lock to at least be put into place. At that point perhaps the entire system can be reviewed, or the tournament discussion presently ongoing would have a better idea how to solve that issue. As it is now, I don't feel it has any value. There was a lot of resistance to league lock because of the fact that it lessened the tournaments one could enter, so I feel like removing those barriers altogether would allow us to take a fresh look at everything and see the leaderboards and participation rates again in a free and open environment to properly reevaluate. We may just have the same people continue to do what they've always done because I feel like if someone really wanted to play in "all the tournaments" right now, they could, regardless of the 1 up 1 down barrier. Thanks again for the reply, Torran!
I should've clarified better. We see them constantly dominating in tournaments that either don't impose an increased entry, the increased fee pales in comparison to the payouts, or they're inactive in the format (Modern/Wild) that they're entering.
There's also a loophole that's exploited quite frequently, or at least it used to be before the ban on bots in Modern and people started playing more on that side there instead of Wild. I've been a bit busy lately so I haven't paid much attention to it lately, but basically what was happening though, is we'd see players playing Wild, but not playing in Modern. This would give them an extremely low rating in Modern while their rating in Wild would put them in Diamond or Champ. Due to their low rating in Modern, and the increased fees being rating and format dependent, they weren't being hit with increased entry fees. This worked out well for them because it was giving them access to most of the tournaments in Modern and because the Wild tournaments rarely have an increased entry penalty, they were having almost full access to those as well. It did cut down on the number of people smurfing, but it's still pretty common.
I do agree that this is going to be the main argument against any type of league lock. It's a shame that the one person that really seemed to care about fixing all of this was let go. I also agree that there's likely ways to get around a one up, one down type format, but I do still think the extra work required to do so would deter some, if not most of the bad offenders. I've been wrong before though.
Thanks for the reply!
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