The new Ladder rewards are mostly disappointing!

TLDR: I am happy that the rewards were added, but they are really skewed in favor of the very few top elite players, and basically stay unobtainable for the majority of the community.

Let's review the rewards. I will often compare them with the Clan Wars, as an another example of official competition with rewards.

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1v1, 2v2, 3v3 Ladders

The good parts:
- Getting rewards weekly is good
- If you are in the top-50, you will get way lots of coins
- The league rewards are somewhat fair: they are good, but they are one time only and still need a fair amount of effort (to get 1 rare and 1 IM power you need net +6 wins without the ability to reset).

But...
Effectively, the decent rewards start only from TOP-50 or higher.

Top-51 or lower get 0 coins and buffs like:
- Reduced mortar load cost by 40% for one week
- Army camps boosted by 30% in challenge levels for one week
- Attacks against you in Idle battles reduced by 10% for one week
- Increased mortar hit rate by 40% for one week

Ask any idle player, are those buffs any good, and you will get a negative answer.

So to get any good reward, you need to be in Top-50. 50 players is just 1.25x of a good CW roster! Imagine if only two top CW clans were getting any decent rewards?

That issue is even worse for 2v2 and 3v3 ladders, because the ranks there individual! So it means that only top-17 3v3 teams get worthy rewards.

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Seasonal Ladder

No league rewards, only seasonals.

While the Top-51-100 rewards are not a full disaster (Get 1 common artifact (8 hour of dig time) and 1 TW power (literally 1 hour skip) for getting Top-100.), all the good stuff starts from Top-50 again.

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Totals and comparison
So if you get to Top-50 every week and season in multiple ladder, you may get quite cool rewards. But you need to get Top-50, which is just a fraction of the competing player community (~12.5% as of now in a single ladder).

Compare that to Clan Wars:
- You get coins with being in Top-9 clan. And in the last season, there were ~300 players in the coin zone out of 690 competing players (43% of total)
- You get decent idle rewards just for territories.
-- All the 1,2,4 territories rewards are obtainable by even small clans (in total 440+ players got those rewards in the Season 30, which makes 64% of totals)
-- If we count just 1-2 territories, that would be 630+ out of 690 (90% of totals).

While some people accuse CW of being skewed, the new Ladders are being skewed even more.

I hope that the reward system will get reworked, so that more middle skilled players would be able to get at least anything useful from it. For now, the Ladders are probably not for me.

Thanks



Edited 5/14/2023 21:54:31

great walrus pic! 😀

So to get any good reward, you need to be in Top-50. 50 players is just 1.25x of a good CW roster! Imagine if only two top CW clans were getting any decent rewards?

There's currently less than 500 players on the 1v1 ladder. So 10% of players on the 1v1 ladder get a good reward. I don't think that's terribly unreasonable. The 1v1 ladder was always supposed to be more competitive than CW. Top 10% on the 1v1 ladder isn't an unreasonable achievement. I'm fine with Fizzer rewarding players who take the time and effort to learn the skills needed to play competitively, especially given how long it has been since the ladders have received any attention.

These rewards are not locked behind a clan either, which also can be exclusionary in its own way.

While I do agree with you 5s, nothing has really changed

I didn't get any rewards before (there were none) and now b/c I'm ranked >100, I still won't get any (useful) rewards

Same as CW, don't really get anything useful from it, just play it for the fun of it

I think all CW and ladder rewards could be removed entirely and people will still just play for the kicks

Having crappy rewards sometimes puts people off b/c now there's something to complain about (something bad is often worse than nothing)

The fact that the skilled get some good rewards (ie: those who already have coins get more coins, the rich get richer) doesn't impact me

Don't take me wrong. I am really happy for those who can get to top-50!

I am not happy for the other 90% percent of players who are "invited" to join and compete in the ladder and get nothing out of it. I am sure that there are far more than 50 good players in Warzone, so some % of them will compete and get noting too.

When I first read about the rewards, I was so excited. But when the patch went live, I read the details and understood, that those are basically unobtainable for a regular/common/majority (pick a term yourself) player.

If leaving 90% percent of players with effectively no rewards was intended, then: "Well. Ok, I already left the ladder today. Wish luck to those who want to compete."

PS. And if viewed together with the 1d boot change, then I genuinely question: who is the target audience of the ladders (poor rewards alienate noobs, 1d boots alienate elites) and what are the KPIs for the ladder revamp.

Edited 5/14/2023 22:22:56

The ladders shouldn’t be for awarding participation, they’re for competitive play. I knew a while back that maintaining a certain place awards coins, now it actually says on the page. All awards are useless (except for coins) to people who don’t play or aren’t interested in idle. You’d have to be significantly better than average good players (like clan league div B+) to have a realistic chance to gain the rewards, but at the same time not boot.

Edited 5/14/2023 22:39:51

The rank rewards are, by design, skewed towards top players. The league rewards are more like the participation awards that should be achievable by most people who play long enough.

That being said, I agree the rank rewards should extend higher than 100, and I will revisit this in the future.

I was supposed to get a reward on 1vs1 ladder for entering in the Bronze League but I never got anything.Perhaps it is related to the fact I am using Firefox.It looks like sometimes even if you are a top player, you might not get any reward :P

This is what my girlfriend usually says after sex

:/

Edited 5/15/2023 14:29:35

@FiveSmith

So to get any good reward, you need to be in Top-50

▶ Yes! Your explanation as a whole was great.

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@Aura Guardian

10% of players on the 1v1 ladder get a good reward

▶ Yes, top 10% should always get better rewards than others but non-idle players literally get nothing and even idle players get undesirable stuff. This is not a tourney, its a ladder so I would also like to see other players, getting some useful stuff.

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@krinid

Having crappy rewards sometimes puts people off b/c now there's something to complain about

▶ I agree with your statement

I think all CW and ladder rewards could be removed entirely

▶ I don't agree with your solution. It looks like a lazy solution, not a healthy one. By introducing useful rewards, Fizzer can both increase the participation and reduce the complaint

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@DanWL

All awards are useless (except for coins) to people who don’t play or aren’t interested in idle

▶ Yes! For non-idle players (like me), those rewards literally mean nothing. Instead, we can get more interesting stuff like "1-week membership" or "Create games in any map you want for a day" or "Get 1 premium colour for a month"...

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@Fizzer

the rank rewards should extend higher than 100, and I will revisit this in the future.

▶ Thanks, that would be really appreciated.

> I am not happy for the other 90% percent of players who are "invited" to join and compete in the ladder and get nothing out of it. I am sure that there are far more than 50 good players in Warzone, so some % of them will compete and get noting too.

More than 50 good players? Sure. More than 50 good players actively joined on a ladder at once? No. Rank 50 is incredibly easy for someone who's dedicated to learning strat 1v1.

@Johnny Silverhand

Rank 50 is incredibly easy for someone who's dedicated to learning strat 1v1.

So you're saying that knaan (68th), sb (76th), Adreso (80th), Mathematician (99th), Grandpa Richard (103th) etc. are all trash? That's both wrong and rude

Ranks right now are largely based on the number of games played since the reset. Ratings will increase as you play more games till you reach your ceiling.

I could teach someone intelligent to play as well as a top 50 player in a very short period of time. It's not rude to say that, it's accurate.

knaan was top 50 before the reset, he peaked around rank 30.

sb was top 20 prior to the reset.

Adreso was rank 1.

Mathematician was nearly top 20.

Grandpa Richard is the only player you listed who was never top 50.

The only person you named though that I'd expect to give me a real run for my money on the template is Adreso.

I'd expect to beat knaan close to 90% of the time, sb around 80%, Adreso around 50%, Mathematician close to 80% and Grandpa Richard over 95% of the time.

I didn't use the word trash, you did, but trash is a subjective term, only one of them is what I'd consider a top player, despite all but one of them having been top 50, and IMO being capable of re-achieving top 50.

The expected winrates were calculated based on the players elo ratings.

Actual winrates vs them are:

knaan: 100% (1-0)
sb: 50% (1-1)
Adreso: 100% (2-0)
Mathematician: (0-0)
Grandpa Richard: (0-0)

Edited 5/29/2023 03:39:17

@Johnny Silverhand

Ratings will increase as you play more games till you reach your ceiling.

▶ Yes, ratings are not stable right now but this is the most relevant data we have right now

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It's not rude to say that, it's accurate.

▶ In the long run, as ratings get stabilized, I expect good players to get higher. While I don't know if all of them will manage to get to top 50, I know that its too early for you to make such a bold claim. At least its clearly not accurate for the time being

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I didn't use the word trash, you did

▶ Yes, but definition of trash is "being of very low social standing" (very low level player in gaming term). So a player not being able to do something "incredibly easy" and a player being "trash" is not a different thing. I didn't quoted you when I wrote that, its to emphasize how bold your claim is

Ranks right now are largely based on the number of games played since the reset. Ratings will increase as you play more games till you reach your ceiling.

I could teach someone intelligent to play as well as a top 50 player in a very short period of time. It's not rude to say that, it's accurate

It depends in part how active the ladders remain with the new rewards and boot times particularly among the strat community. Old 1v1 ladder participation rates would make getting top 50, not very difficult. But French Brawl seasonal rates and it's not that easy, even for serious players. My impression right now is that the 1v1 ladder has a lot more serious strat players on it than the old 1v1 ladder. Whether they remain there (probably not) we will have to wait to find out.

I would guess that it will be several months before the ladders settle.

The most recent update 5.24.1 brought some changes:

– Classic: Updated ladder rewards to encompass more players.

Effectively:
- The undeniably good rewards-zone was extended from top-50 to top-100


- The minimal noticeable good idle rewards, extended from top-50 to top 250


I think, those changes were for good. Thanks.

Edited 5/31/2023 21:00:02

@FiveSmith

I think, those changes were for good. Thanks.

▶ Agreed, I definitely prefer this reward distribution over the previous distribution