Other Why Do Diamond PFs give Gold Fighters as Rewards in 2024?

[Goofball]

When Diamond PFs were initially revealed to give Gold Fighters, there was a small amount of outrage and questions surrounding it. It didn’t last too long as most people got over it and justified it by saying “ There’s too few Diamonds in the game to just give them out. ” (Around this time there were about 12-15 Diamond variants with some characters only having 1 Variant) It’s a few years later, and about 60+ Diamond Variants later, I think it’s worth reviving this conversation a bit, especially given the fact that some of the Diamond Fighters that were previously seen as OP/Broken back then (I.E. Freeze Frame, Jawbreaker, etc.) have been either powercrept out of the meta or powercrept into mediocrity (I.E. Dream Demon, Splitting Image, Star Shine, (arguably) Heavy Metal, etc.)


Arguments Against & Responses

1) “Won’t this change just beef up everybody’s collection and make everyone OP?”

No. For starters, there’s only a small % of the player-base that can even reach top 10%/top 10 consistently. Secondly, not everyone who reaches top 10%/top 10 in Diamond PFs can afford to invest in multiple Diamonds. Third, given how many powercrept Diamonds exist currently, if HVS/FC really was afraid that giving players diamonds was going to disrupt the way the game currently functions too much, they can give us the weakest diamonds available.

2) “Why bring this up now after all this time?”

Originally, the “too few diamonds” defense was a solid defense and made a great deal of sense at the time, given the current rate of Diamond Fighters releases, I think it’s a take that has isn’t nearly as solid. Also, given some of the difficulty of these PFs (Marie, Painwheel, Valentine, etc.) given a measly gold after having to deal with…that, can be a bit weird.

3) “This will take all of the fun out of receiving Diamonds/It’ll be too easy to get Diamonds if this is implemented.”

I’d disagree. Before Diamonds and the Diamond PFs, we had Gold PFs that gave Golds, despite it being the highest rarity in the game. And getting Golds was still decently difficult, but not too crazy. For most relics, getting a Diamond is about a .5%-1% chance. They’ll still be relatively difficult to get, but just not as much as before.

Let’s say you played for the long game, many of your Diamonds are maxed PA, you get Diamonds from the PFs and exclusively use them for convert fodder, that’s still about 40 Dia Shards and 1 Elemental Essence, which isn’t really much to write home about in terms of farming.

4) “Sure some Diamonds are powercrept, but there are multiple Characters with no bad variants (I.E. Filia, Eliza, Marie, Black Dahlia, etc.) , what to do about them?”

I’d answer this question with my own question: Is it necessarily a bad thing to give players an opportunity to gain good Variants? Let’s consider a few things.

1: When Golds and Gold PFs were the standard, multiple character PFs gave out the best Gold variants.

For Example:

Bella PF - Harlequinn
Fortune PF - Claw n’Order
Filia PF - Parasitic Weave
Big Band PF - Epic Sax
Beowulf PF - Wulfsbane
Parasoul PF - Primed

2: Diamond Investments are a timely grind alone for most players between SP sink, Diamond Keys, CC cost and Leveling.

3: It’s not as if these rewards rotate. If a variant is given today, a few months/year(s) down the line could become obsolete. Look at what happened to Parasitic Weave, Blue Screen, Untouchable, etc.

What do you think? Any arguments against that I missed?

 

[Lunix Vandal]

Firstly, you are vastly overstating how many more natural Diamonds are in the game compared to when Diamond PFs released. When Diamond PFs launched in v4.8, every single character had at least 2 natural Diamonds, with a handful having 3 -- putting the pool in the low 30's. Now, three-and-a-half years later, there are exactly 60 natural Diamonds in the game, 9 of which haven't hit the general Relic pool yet. (And Eliza still doesn't have a third Diamond, four years after she was the first to get a fifth Gold. Hell, in all that time her only new variant has been Noble Mogul.)

Second, making this change to Diamond PFs wouldn't particularly help ... well, anyone, really. As you yourself state, only a tiny sliver of SGM's playerbase are able to consistently grind out the top milestones in the Diamond PF -- the flat score milestone that awards a fighter is harder to reach than the threshold for "top 10%" in most monthly PFs, and you have 1/10th as much time to do it in. But these are exactly the super-invested players who least need additional natural Diamonds, especially if (as you suggest) HVS just assigns the "worst one" to each PF prize pool. Handing extra resources to these players in the form of Essences and Skill Points is a "rich get richer" proposition at best, and shredding Diamonds doesn't actually award any more Diamond shards than we already get just by earning the current Golds.

 

[Goofball]

Firstly, you are vastly overstating how many more natural Diamonds are in the game compared to when Diamond PFs released. When Diamond PFs launched in v4.8, every single character had at least 2 natural Diamonds, with a handful having 3 -- putting the pool in the low 30's.

After reading over the 4.8 Patch Notes, I definitely acknowledge that I messed up trying to guesstimate what the game looked like a few years ago since current SGM is so far removed from it and my laziness led to me misrepresenting what the game looked like back then. My bad.

Now, three-and-a-half years later, there are exactly 60 natural Diamonds in the game, 9 of which haven't hit the general Relic pool yet. (And Eliza still doesn't have a third Diamond, four years after she was the first to get a fifth Gold. Hell, in all that time her only new variant has been Noble Mogul.)

For 2 out of that 3 and a half year time period was a pre-BP SGM. In a post-BP SGM, we get at least 12 Diamonds a year + usually we get at least 1 character a year and they typically come out with 2 Diamond Variants out-the-gate. (Most Diamonds on release in post-BP SGM for most players is either RNG or locked out for about 6-9 Months which is… unfortunate.)

Second, making this change to Diamond PFs wouldn't particularly help ... well, anyone, really.

I disagree. I can acknowledge that this change isn’t necessarily gonna help everybody but I also don’t think it won’t help some groups of people. After giving it some thought, I’ve thought of two groups of people that can benefit from this change: Mid-Levels transitioning into Higher Levels (Levels as a Proxy for progress even if not all “Levels” are created equally) and Newer High Levels. It doesn’t help Noobs because their collection is too weak to compete and it doesn’t really benefit the years long Level 70 with pages long of Diamond Borders, Maxed MA & PA as most content is a breeze once you get to that point. I’d argue that the groups I’ve previously mentioned are some of the most important groups to focus on as they’re the biggest demographics of the player-base with a reasonable amount of investment. SGM does have an issue retaining High Level Players though. (More than half of my friends list has quit over the years, even when I replace them with more active players, THEY quit. Hopefully guilds + new content fixes that problem.) Very few people with real life commitments will not only reach the “end” of SGM, and even fewer play past that point.

Handing extra resources to these players in the form of Essences and Skill Points is a "rich get richer" proposition at best, and shredding Diamonds doesn't actually award any more Diamond shards than we already get just by earning the current Golds.

I’d argue the “rich get(ting) richer” types aren’t going to matter much. As previously stated, when you get to a certain point, you can breeze through certain content to the point that a few extra essences aren’t going to make much of a difference because you’re essentially hoarding due to not having anything to spend resources on. For the 2 groups from before: conversion can at the very least provide a somewhat consistent form of essences which can help beef up collections a bit.

 

[Lunix Vandal]

I’ve thought of two groups of people that can benefit from this change: Mid-Levels transitioning into Higher Levels (Levels as a Proxy for progress even if not all “Levels” are created equally) and Newer High Levels.

Here's the real point where we disagree: I don't believe either one of those groups should be playing Diamond Prize Fights at all. If your Collection is still at a point where the rewards from Prize Fights are in any way meaningful, your time is better spent playing a Gold Prize Fight to 13 million points and then using the time saved to play any other mode or PF that targets your account's needs more effectively. Diamond Prize Fights are supposed to be a bragging-rights contest for the most hyper-invested players; making the rewards more appealing to pre-endgame players will only encourage them to dive in before they're ready.