Weigh Match Making Prizes by Which Tier is Being Played the Most

[codylramey]

There is apparently an issue with UU and NU being barren when it comes to matchmaking. I don't actually know the extent of the loneliness of these tiers because I have never played them but I have been told you can only find people in UU during ranked and NU never sees any play period. I was trying to think of ways which could encourage people to play these tiers in matchmaking more often and this is what I came up with.

 

At any given time there are X amount of people playing in matchmaking. Let us say that number is 18. If we weigh the prizes for winning based on which tier is getting the highest and lowest percentage of these players then it may encourage people to play the other tiers more. Let me explain. A typical matchmaking prize is 500BP (or 550 if you are on a streak but to make things easier let's stick to 500) which means that for every group of three players that wins their match at any given time there will be 1500 BP handed out. The reason I used a group of 3 is that there are three tiers of matchmaking. If 100% of the people in matchmaking are playing OU I think that the potential earnings for BP per match should be scaled down and the potential earnings for the other two tiers scaled up based on the percentage of players playing in each tier.

 

There is no way of doing this perfectly evenly without using fractions but for example, if 100% of the players in matchmaking are in OU you can cut the potential prize by 50% and raise the potential prize of the other two tiers by 25%. Then if more people start playing the other two tiers the percentages start going the other way the BP prize adjusts itself accordingly. I haven't really thought about the specifics of how the math would work but i would assume you would want it to work out in such a way as to not have much more BP being pumped into the system than there is right now because that would have an inflationary effect on the BP economy but I hope the example I gave illustrates the point I am trying to make a little more clearly.

[Tyrone]

Wanting to promote the other tiers is a good idea, but I don't believe your solution in itself would work.

It needs to be combined with other changes to the pvp matchmaking system.

 

What is lacking with the UU and NU matchmaking, is simply clarity.

By having OU tab opened by default, players are instantly more inclined to queue up for that by definition of the 'default effect'.

Also the fact that there's a hidden minimum of players required to be queued up at the same time for a match to begin, yet there's no way for a player to tell if there are people queueing up for a certain tier, makes it a gamble (You either waste your time or get lucky).

 

Additional suggestion:

Improve the clarity!

Remove the OU-UU-NU tabs and put them all in one window. Create a seperate tab for your rankings if space is limited.

Show the amount of people currently in queue for every tier.

Show the amount of BP you will win if victorious. (This is what I mean by the combination of ideas with Cody's suggestion)

 

 

[razimove]

21 minutes ago, Tyrone said:

By having OU tab opened by default, players are instantly more inclined to queue up for that by definition of the 'default effect'.

Also the fact that there's a hidden minimum of players required to be queued up at the same time for a match to begin, yet there's no way for a player to tell if there are people queueing up for a certain tier, makes it a gamble (You either waste your time or get lucky).

Not only this, but there's not that many players that are interested in trying other tiers, when they can barely afford to play in one. There would have to be some economy changes, for people to take other tiers more seriously.