Introducing Regional United States Battlegroups
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- KayDee
- Awakened
ffg
Depends on the size of the regions. If we'd started out with this past week's BG's I wouldn't have bothered leveling past 5.
Ulysses
i agree with ffg's response above. one thing that i was afraid of when i started playing was that there would be too many hardcore pros and i wouldn't be able to develop in-game. the smaller bgs really assuaged my fear. as i leveled up and gained experience i was able to help those just starting. having a mega bg like the Northeast will be is incredibly intimidating. i liked being able to be important and keep a 9-5 job, an active real life and be able to interact with others who also didn't play 24/7.
This.
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- Khamos
- Staff
Ulysses
i agree with ffg's response above. one thing that i was afraid of when i started playing was that there would be too many hardcore pros and i wouldn't be able to develop in-game. the smaller bgs really assuaged my fear. as i leveled up and gained experience i was able to help those just starting. having a mega bg like the Northeast will be is incredibly intimidating. i liked being able to be important and keep a 9-5 job, an active real life and be able to interact with others who also didn't play 24/7.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! This is a good point though we do feel that putting caps and limiting battlegroup sizes isn't the best possible solution in the long run to encourage also the more casual players to improve their rankings on the leaderboard. Gives us food for thought
Edited by Khamos (Nov. 29, 2011 12:39:44)
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- Khamos
- Staff
Dangerdoom
LOL! So nothing is really changing. During the last campaign we had about 4-5 BGs and now, with this new and improved structure (based on all the feedback), we have...5 new BGs. And this time, they are not capped at 1,000 players, thereby exacerbating the previous complaints. Ugh!
Perhaps we would understand your motives better if you explained the real reason behind this reshuffling of BGs, such as 1. we are giving out too many mana pots in the US 2. our servers can't handle this many BGs in one area or 3. we have run out of new innovative ideas to change the game so we need to start throwing curve balls. We all know that the rationale was NOT to meet new people, that's BS. I have met people from all over the world via my friends' statuses.
I still believe that smaller BGs (250 or 500 mages) are better to nurture the new players and give them a chance to win every now and again. Currently, the BGs will be dominated by the grinders who put in a lot of work to win each time. It would be very encouraging to a new mage to have a chance to win a round. In the current setup, this will certainly never happen and people will start to lose interest quickly...
Few of the main reasons why we decided to implement the regional battlegroups for this week are to support players communicating with the local mages around them and to more easily form relationships and alliances with players who are playing in the same area. These were some of the biggest concerns presented by players during last week when the battlegroups were drawn randomly nationwide.
It's really interesting to read everyone's personal experiences from playing in different size bg's.
We also have experiences and good data to use from previous 6 months of both large and small battlegroups and what are the pros and cons for example for the new players, player community and the whole gameplay experience with these two.
Edited by Khamos (Nov. 29, 2011 12:38:23)
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- Shekkara
- Archmage
I'm still willing to give regional battlegroups a try, just not these regions as they are currently implemented.
I'm a member of the mega-large Midest-Mountain bg. I appreciate that my local players are all together with me. That's the one big plus. Otherwise, it feels little different than the national battlegroups. I feel swamped. Chat is hard to follow. I can play or I can chat, but I can't keep up with both. It's demotivational.
Overtime, as people who knew their local state players burn out and leave (and I'm close to doing that myself), the old state ties will soften. Maybe a new regional culture will develop. Or maybe it will just devolve into the anonymous feeling of the national battlegroups. I believe that's a risk with the Midwest-Mountain region as we are so wide-spread geographically that it will be harder to hold us together.
Please make them smaller. I know many in the Midwest-Mountain region would like to try regional battlegroups that respect how truly far away we are from each other.
Battlegroups don't need to be the same numbers of players cross the nation. They need to be large enough to avoid the problems that the smaller states with few players had, but they don't all have to be equally large. California is practically large enough player-wise to be two regions!
I'm a member of the mega-large Midest-Mountain bg. I appreciate that my local players are all together with me. That's the one big plus. Otherwise, it feels little different than the national battlegroups. I feel swamped. Chat is hard to follow. I can play or I can chat, but I can't keep up with both. It's demotivational.
Overtime, as people who knew their local state players burn out and leave (and I'm close to doing that myself), the old state ties will soften. Maybe a new regional culture will develop. Or maybe it will just devolve into the anonymous feeling of the national battlegroups. I believe that's a risk with the Midwest-Mountain region as we are so wide-spread geographically that it will be harder to hold us together.
Please make them smaller. I know many in the Midwest-Mountain region would like to try regional battlegroups that respect how truly far away we are from each other.
Battlegroups don't need to be the same numbers of players cross the nation. They need to be large enough to avoid the problems that the smaller states with few players had, but they don't all have to be equally large. California is practically large enough player-wise to be two regions!
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- Jormagund
- Enlightened
Dislike.
I'd much rather stick with the community in my tiny little state. Meeting other mages from other areas is easy. I have far more "friends" than even participate in my BG total.
Remove this. You've destroyed the sense of community we have built over the last half-year or so.
I'd much rather stick with the community in my tiny little state. Meeting other mages from other areas is easy. I have far more "friends" than even participate in my BG total.
Remove this. You've destroyed the sense of community we have built over the last half-year or so.
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- Cliope
- Awakened
Khamos
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! This is a good point though we do feel that putting caps and limiting battlegroup sizes isn't the best possible solution in the long run to encourage also the more casual players to improve their rankings on the leaderboard. Gives us food for thought
Casual players are encouraged to improve their standings when the scores at the top of the leaderboard aren't obnoxiously large. In the ultra-large battlegroups, the top of the leaderboard normally is an ultra-hard core player (drawing from a larger sample, the top players will be the ones that play more). That does not motivate a new/casual player to do more, it makes them wonder why they should bother.
With a smaller battlegroup size, there will still be someone more experienced/higher level than the new/casual players, but the gap won't be perceived as that large. If someone can get into the top 10 with casual play, they're more likely to be motivated to play that little bit more to get there than they are to play that little bit more to get from 700 to 200.
I'm in this situation now, and I'm not a new player. When, in the amount of time I can play, I can get from 700 to 300, I wonder why I should bother, especially since the friendly rivalries from the smaller state battlegroup are gone.
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- Seldon
- Archmage
With battlegroups this large, no individual feels like they can actually make a difference. And they're right: they can't.
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- Ulysses
- Archmage
Khamos
Few of the main reasons why we decided to implement the regional battlegroups for this week are to support players communicating with the local mages around them and to more easily form relationships and alliances with players who are playing in the same area. These were some of the biggest concerns presented by players during last week when the battlegroups were drawn randomly nationwide.
for the last week and half i've kept up on what players have been saying. the local issue was but one of many many concerns. you seemed to have ignored the concern of 1000 mage mega battlgroups or of a castrated beacon list or of a broken pm system or of a team chat that is impossible to follow because of the number of players.
Khamos
Thank you for sharing your thoughts! This is a good point though we do feel that putting caps and limiting battlegroup sizes isn't the best possible solution in the long run to encourage also the more casual players to improve their rankings on the leaderboard. Gives us food for thought
the crux of the matter is that you created a problem where none existed and so now you are trying to fix a system that was poorly thought through and are actually making it worse. admitting you made a mistake is fine, not admitting it and compounding that mistake is terrible. as mentioned by cliope and seldon above this "fix" of yours will actually make casual players less inclined to play. i'm not sure how those at GA can't see this. because i'm seeing it every day. when battlegroups were of manageable sizes you could feel like you were adding something but now you don't. there are many many many players who cannot spend 20 hours a day on this game but who still want to matter. please take off your blinders and try to envision this. try to see the game from our perspective. try to forget that you know whats best and just think of how we play and why we play and not why you want us to play. the game was enjoyable and could be again. thanks for the response though at least it was less formulaic than the email i received.
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- Kaazz
- Archmage
Ulysses
the crux of the matter is that you created a problem where none existed
Exactly. Just what did you think were were trying to do with this new grouping? Whatever your aims, they failed. And have made gameplay worse for the majority of players. And you have alienated your core group of players. Many of us are playing less, or not at all, due to what you've done to the game. JUST GO BACK TO THE STATE-BASED BATTLEGROUPS!!!
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- Cliope
- Awakened
Kaazz
JUST GO BACK TO THE STATE-BASED BATTLEGROUPS!!!
This, as a temporary measure.
Then, open a dialogue with your players (a core group if you like, or everyone, through the message boards). State what problem you were trying to solve by changing the battlegroups.
By including your players in the problem solving process, you'll end up with a solution that works better than trying random changes.