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(I was hoping to divide this into collapsible sections with spoilers but since I have no idea how to do that this once again going to be a mess, I tried to use text size difference instead, hope it helps and sorry about that.)
Rift matchmaking is having a big issue with the addition of resets, the issues are caused by the fact the point of resets makes gold 1 players a valid opponents for the top 3 players. I think we can all agree that rift reset has been a good idea to solve the issue of top players not being able to find matches, but it did not work out well.
The first one being there is too much on stake in the rift, the rewards are too good to pass on, and a loss sets you back a lot. The game stops being a game when you NEED to win, it gets frustrating and you stop appreciating the fun factor. The latter is our rewards system, top 10 players are unmatched because the game made them unmatched. Yes they are without a doubt some of the most skilled players around and they would still perform superb even without their overpowered collections. But they have both the skill and overpowered collections, because the game has been rewarding them for being on top for years. the gap is much harder to close if the player you try to catch up to gets better things than you do.
And with this we come to my second point of this post the % reward system not only isn’t fun it is the reason behind the power creep that made the game less enjoyable. I’ve been vocal about how much I despise the % reward system, and I’ve suggested some little adjustments that could be made to it over the year I’ve been playing, but this time around I’m going full out and will say : remove the % rewards altogether.
Instead create a normal reward tiers with the same rewards, maybe improve on the low tier rewards so the new players are no longer being spit on by the game while the older players get the good things. Even if the milestones are very high and still only x% of the players can reach them, it’s a clear goal for everyone interested to go for. No longer a player will spend 20 hours of their weekend only to get nothing because they were top11, no longer chat will be filled with questions of how much points do I need to get and then crying when they stopped too soon. Make it obvious and fair for everyone. Prevent players just leveling up their fighters from affecting what rewards newer players get, and stop the scores climbing higher and higher.
Another big point I want to address is the coming ever so closer guilds, and my concerns about this gameplay feature. So far all of the content has been fairly competitive and I am worried that the same will be true for the guilds. I believe that if anywhere, your guild should be one place where player should be able to relax and have fun, especially if everything else is one big competition. There is little worse than completing a guild quest, only to realize you get less rewards because your friend who was playing longer than you contributed more to a quest.
But what should even guilds be like? What features do we need or want? One obvious thing that probably comes to mind of most players is raids and while I agree that guild raids are fun, I do not think they are a necessary feature that needs to be from the very beginning.
The most important thing about a guild is working together to achieve some goal and build something together with your friends. So the necessary features are guild quests, which are daily (non expiring unless cleared) missions that all of the members contribute towards. A treasury, where players can donate their gold and theonite (it’s very important to set a limit on max daily contribution, this limit may be player level dependent) which can later be spent by the guild on guild upgrades.
What could the upgrades be? I’d like to be very clear about the fact I do not think players should be able to make their fighters fs any stronger. But the guild upgrades can still be very beneficial by improving the amount of items / variants they can hold in their collection, improve coins, theonite, skill points and exp gain for it’s members, or maybe even have things straight up rewards these. If we wanted to improve on the fighters in any way, I suggest temporary secondary stat buffs that a guild can purchase for a few days at a time. Without touching any main stats as not to make fighters stronger, let players enjoy resistances other filler stats and very minor buffs.
Of course guilds come with a risk of players gathering in the guild that gives them the most benefits, that’s only natural. To prevent it from happening the maximum member count should be made into an upgrade as well, combined with the daily donation limits it will force players to create multiple guilds so they do not have to wait for days or weeks to enjoy bonuses.
The guild does not have to be limited to just using guild contributions as it’s currency either, as guild only resources can be introduced and offer upgrades increasing the gains of these resources. I do think it would be a little too much for sgm but we could have one extra resource : reseach points. Research points are fairly common practice in mmo’s they basically present players with a bar that counts up on it’s own regardless of what players do or do not until it maxes out. Seeing how prominent the idea of labs is in Skullgirls universe I think it would be a lot of fun if every guild could work on it’s own lab improve upon it, and hire NPC’s (and level them up!) that affect research points and upgrades.
But with all that cooperative centered features mentioned, the guild does not have to be only cooperation, as there is one kind of competition that most people are okay with in a guild, guild wars. But I honestly think these are a topic for a different point in time. What I will say for now is that guild wars should be more about prestige than rewards ( as not to discourage lower ranked guilds ) and shouldn’t be too intrusive, either giving guild masters complete control over when and where or make them a seasonal event.
With all the big topics out of the way, I’d like to talk about something a lot happier and nicer, spending money
. SGM has always been highly regarded by it’s player base for the fact it's very free to play friendly, and we all hope that will never change.
That said we are also all hoping to get the new skullgirls character(s) playable, and we realize it takes a lot of money to create a skullgirls character, and that money has to come from us.
While I would personally love to see the new character crowdfunded I fully understand the logic behind it being completely funded with in game purchases, so I have talked with discord players (Fel, Riot, Ryouhi, Sheik) about their ideas of monetization and these are what we came up with :
We have agreed that pay to win is not okay, but there is one in game benefit we would be okay with which is increased exp gain tickets (they should come with an increased exp gain event every now and then too so free players can also enjoy it). That said only a few people did see this discussion on discord, so I’d much appreciate if forum users also commented on whether they are okay with this or not.
But since all the other in game benefits are not okay, the only logical solution to the players not spending enough would be cosmetics. I am honestly not sure how viable implementation of cosmetics in sgm even is, but a few ideas thrown around were voice packs, intro animations, alternate card pictures, alternate taunt animations, hats (and other accessories)
Of course another idea for in game purchases is the support fighters system I have proposed some time ago
And with that I think I think I am done for today, I will list a few more things that do need anywhere as much text to explain :
Rift match making :
- Discord player have since came up with multiple ideas to solve this issue, my personal favorite, and having the most following has been Fel’s idea of having reset tiers. Reset tiers would work in similar fashion to the new system, but would push back players to different values hopefully allowing the top players to once again separate from the average mortals, but would still allow players to climb up to the level where the top players can find matches. The ideas for the reset tiers so far were to have players reset to the last multiple of 50 or 100, or have the reset tiers scale up with rift ranking.
- My idea was to introduce dummy players, dummy players would be AI bases that the player would be matched against if they did not find an opponent. The dummy player should be based on player’s fs and increase in difficulty every time it’s faced until the player has lost. The obvious problem with this solution is - how does the AI player even attack the player? Do they just get a set score? Do they rng their performance?
- An idea suggested by Beldr was that the players should be matched against each other based on their fs rather than / or in addition to their rift ranking. This one aims to help against players dropping the rift ranking on purpose, but I believe it would tend to be inaccurate or too easy to cheat on, unless additional safety measures are take
- Another solution from DisplayName was to make rift give players a set of fighters to use, instead of using their own collections. This way it would all come down to skill and knowledge, but sadly it would also mean every investment players did in defense variants has been a waste of valuable in game resources. I’m very much against this idea for the rift, but I do believe it would work as a separate game mode, it does actually remind me of a “card game” game mode we came up with with Fel a long time ago, where player would get a deck of variant cards he has to use in the order of the draw to beat challenges or another players deck. Of course at the time of this suggestion rifts weren’t a thing yet.
The first one being there is too much on stake in the rift, the rewards are too good to pass on, and a loss sets you back a lot. The game stops being a game when you NEED to win, it gets frustrating and you stop appreciating the fun factor. The latter is our rewards system, top 10 players are unmatched because the game made them unmatched. Yes they are without a doubt some of the most skilled players around and they would still perform superb even without their overpowered collections. But they have both the skill and overpowered collections, because the game has been rewarding them for being on top for years. the gap is much harder to close if the player you try to catch up to gets better things than you do.
Why % reward systems are bad
Instead create a normal reward tiers with the same rewards, maybe improve on the low tier rewards so the new players are no longer being spit on by the game while the older players get the good things. Even if the milestones are very high and still only x% of the players can reach them, it’s a clear goal for everyone interested to go for. No longer a player will spend 20 hours of their weekend only to get nothing because they were top11, no longer chat will be filled with questions of how much points do I need to get and then crying when they stopped too soon. Make it obvious and fair for everyone. Prevent players just leveling up their fighters from affecting what rewards newer players get, and stop the scores climbing higher and higher.
Guilds
But what should even guilds be like? What features do we need or want? One obvious thing that probably comes to mind of most players is raids and while I agree that guild raids are fun, I do not think they are a necessary feature that needs to be from the very beginning.
The most important thing about a guild is working together to achieve some goal and build something together with your friends. So the necessary features are guild quests, which are daily (non expiring unless cleared) missions that all of the members contribute towards. A treasury, where players can donate their gold and theonite (it’s very important to set a limit on max daily contribution, this limit may be player level dependent) which can later be spent by the guild on guild upgrades.
What could the upgrades be? I’d like to be very clear about the fact I do not think players should be able to make their fighters fs any stronger. But the guild upgrades can still be very beneficial by improving the amount of items / variants they can hold in their collection, improve coins, theonite, skill points and exp gain for it’s members, or maybe even have things straight up rewards these. If we wanted to improve on the fighters in any way, I suggest temporary secondary stat buffs that a guild can purchase for a few days at a time. Without touching any main stats as not to make fighters stronger, let players enjoy resistances other filler stats and very minor buffs.
Of course guilds come with a risk of players gathering in the guild that gives them the most benefits, that’s only natural. To prevent it from happening the maximum member count should be made into an upgrade as well, combined with the daily donation limits it will force players to create multiple guilds so they do not have to wait for days or weeks to enjoy bonuses.
The guild does not have to be limited to just using guild contributions as it’s currency either, as guild only resources can be introduced and offer upgrades increasing the gains of these resources. I do think it would be a little too much for sgm but we could have one extra resource : reseach points. Research points are fairly common practice in mmo’s they basically present players with a bar that counts up on it’s own regardless of what players do or do not until it maxes out. Seeing how prominent the idea of labs is in Skullgirls universe I think it would be a lot of fun if every guild could work on it’s own lab improve upon it, and hire NPC’s (and level them up!) that affect research points and upgrades.
But with all that cooperative centered features mentioned, the guild does not have to be only cooperation, as there is one kind of competition that most people are okay with in a guild, guild wars. But I honestly think these are a topic for a different point in time. What I will say for now is that guild wars should be more about prestige than rewards ( as not to discourage lower ranked guilds ) and shouldn’t be too intrusive, either giving guild masters complete control over when and where or make them a seasonal event.
In game purchases
With all the big topics out of the way, I’d like to talk about something a lot happier and nicer, spending money
. SGM has always been highly regarded by it’s player base for the fact it's very free to play friendly, and we all hope that will never change.That said we are also all hoping to get the new skullgirls character(s) playable, and we realize it takes a lot of money to create a skullgirls character, and that money has to come from us.
While I would personally love to see the new character crowdfunded I fully understand the logic behind it being completely funded with in game purchases, so I have talked with discord players (Fel, Riot, Ryouhi, Sheik) about their ideas of monetization and these are what we came up with :
We have agreed that pay to win is not okay, but there is one in game benefit we would be okay with which is increased exp gain tickets (they should come with an increased exp gain event every now and then too so free players can also enjoy it). That said only a few people did see this discussion on discord, so I’d much appreciate if forum users also commented on whether they are okay with this or not.
But since all the other in game benefits are not okay, the only logical solution to the players not spending enough would be cosmetics. I am honestly not sure how viable implementation of cosmetics in sgm even is, but a few ideas thrown around were voice packs, intro animations, alternate card pictures, alternate taunt animations, hats (and other accessories)
Of course another idea for in game purchases is the support fighters system I have proposed some time ago
Misc
- Allow max level characters to earn mastery levels, the mastery levels would do nothing other than display a number and count up to infinity, so the player still does see an exp bar move after every fight and does not feel pressured to stop using their fighters when they hit the max level. Mastery levels could reward player with skill points.
- A very big deal I have no solution for at the moment is giving player some use for multiple nat diamonds of the same type, who are too expensive to invest in but can not be in any way removed. Suggested by Ryouhi is to allow player to reroll them / turn into shards. (but what when the player has all the nat diamonds?)
- Allow players to pay the recent move upgrade cost +5% again, to reroll the last stat distribution, allowing bad moves to be more useful, but remain hellish expensive to work the stats the way you want.
- Rift fights could use rewarding players with exp, so players see them as more valuable, and become more likely to use weak teams on attack (Maybe improve long shot bonus for the risk to be more attractive?)
- Allow players to sell a fighter that’s already been invested in, returning x% of skill points, keys and coins spent. Hopefully this will make players more eager to experiment with new variants seeing as they can just destroy it to return some of the resources spent if they do not like it. (I would not mind being able to grind characters into coins based on their total exp but I do understand it would be another beginner trap)
