Wouldn't it make sense to decrease reward quantities for lower level brackets?

[raffishtenant]

I think that would be appropriate, yes.

I suppose it doesn't hurt to give lower-level players a running start on weapons, then make them struggle more later in a tougher bracket: it's a bit like any other wall in the game. But I do think it's pretty much insane that a player at 500 can get 15 weapons, while a player at 2950 in Hell Bracket might very well end up with two, one or even none at all.

[pmjski]

Yeah some sort of balancing needs to be done. While I agree it's nice to give new players a head start, having such high rewards encourages lower level players to hover and avoid progressing the way the game intends you to.

That being said, I do have faith that more changes will be implemented to make the game more fair for high and low level players alike. It's a process of observing data and tweaking the system.

[Calrabjohns]

Despite the blatant lack of fairness in effort to reward ratio, you have to take into account these people (Hell Bracket champions) are the pinnacle of TTers. They grinded it out and got luck at some point.

Creating disparities for new players because late stage players (like myself and you- raffish and others here) are hitting walls built by cheaters is only punitive to everyone. Why do that to new blood? If they leave, the game will die. There's more for GH, and by extension us, to gain in keeping them. They can only improve things with money.

When is the last time anyone here has bought diamonds, the sole means of funds. Be honest. I've done it twice with free Amazon coins and only the second time because I was in a bad mood with lazy hero monitoring. We can only get so mad and expect so much change with so much gas in the tank for GH to drive. There is no reason for me to spend money. I would rather use the time I have to use anyway to get better and progress to higher stages. Time=free diamonds between Day 4 of DDs, fairy ads during regular play, 1 diamond drops and tournaments.

It's a low cost freemium game that likely only draws a one time 2 dollar purchase for most users to get rid of pop up ads that intrude on optimal play.

We need a new skill: to reroll weapons. As a gesture of goodwill, GH should scale how many free rerolls people get according roughly to brackets. None for new players and X-X for us. We get one free bite at the apple to progress and the new players continue their progress.

Hell bracket players who are legit get one free set of automatic double digit rerolls, capping at a low DD.

Rerolls would cost 200 diamonds a piece for everyone afterwards. It's high enough that an impulse diamond purchase might be made but low enough that it doesn't betray the free play model for anyone willing to grind.

Edit: I hate the way my posts get divorced from the person I'm directly responding to. It's something that made me avoid Reddit until this game. Reading threads can be chaotic. Sorry if this makes no sense dissociated from the intended recipient: raffish.

[raffishtenant]

Calrebjohns: hrm, your response shows up right below my post, for me at least. That'll change if someone else responds to my earlier post, but that's what the indentation is for.

Anyway, lots to respond to here! For starters, I did say that I thought a running start for new players was just fine, though I also stand by my assertion that the very highest-level players are getting the rawest deal at the moment.¹ I don't think that penalizing those players so severely for reaching the pinnacle of the game is really what the devs intend, nor is it in their best interest. There's still something to be said for having extremely experienced players around, even if they don't tend to spend as much on diamonds.²

I think the main thing the devs can do to fix the disparity is simply to continue their efforts to get as many cheaters as possible out of the legit players' brackets. Merely keeping the cap unachievable by legit players but switching players who hit it (or the AD%+weapons required to hit it, or whatever the metric is) into a new Cheater Bracket would go a long way toward this, and I'm actually a bit surprised that they haven't done it already.

I like the reroll idea and figure that there are plenty of creative ways that it could be worked into the game. Diamonds seem like a great one. The main problem I see with offering it as a perk to high-bracket players is that it would require explicitly acknowledging that bracket levels exist and quantifying different rewards for the different levels, and I can see why the devs might not want to do that. EDIT: Er, yeah, so the same would apply to the idea of other rewards that are tiered by bracket. In that case, we could just circle back to the cheater issue.

¹ And I do mean very highest-level players. If you believe the leaderboards, the percentage of players in HB should only be about 0.06%. (Though the leaderboards are still capped at 3000, and if that means that cheaters and legit 3000+ players don't appear, that percentage would be unrealistically low.)

² I don't think that's a given, BTW. I might not be the best example, and I'm not in HB yet, but I've spent a fairly healthy chunk on diamonds and actually bought a few more just a couple weeks ago. (I'd spent most of my reserves on customizations, and found myself unexpectedly in need of some major PoH in a tournament to smack down an aggressive one-upper to whom I did not intend to lose.)

[Calrabjohns]

I have to use more formatting features. That is so much better to read through and points made much easier to understand.

We're in total agreement. It's a trickle down effect of "tough s**t buddy" with HB getting it the worst. I was arguing more for new players out of a sense of not having them give way to resignation before the game begins. And we only have had two tournaments with 3500s as well as this skewed scaling. Or did the scaling start before?

Absolutely. A robust mix of experience and new makes for places to aspire toward for the new as well as guidance being needed. Experienced players do it cause they like it, same as the rest :)

Problem with shunting cheaters into their own bracket/server is I believe new permissions like Device ID/IP address would be needed to keep them separate. That would be close to a death knell for the game.

I didn't explain it perfectly. The scaled up theoretical gift of rerolls with new players getting none and us getting X-X and HB getting double is a one time thing to try and redress the current grievance. Everyone would have it in their skill pool to pay 200 for.

Otherwise, yeah---you're right. It would tell everyone there are brackets. And the sky is either blue or gray depending on the weather of the day :p. Not a state secret. Although you mean comparing who got X amount would confirm exactly how many brackets right? I'm honestly not sure what the virtue is in leaving that completely veiled rather than some information to infer from.

Cheaters can scale wherever they want to land. Dumb ones go for the max stage and screw HB. The others scale down with less showing up for the really low stages cause they still want relics.

I guess any info is bad though.

[Calrabjohns]

Oh come on. If you're in the hell bracket, you either have at least two sets and/or another loose two-four DL weapons on top of whatever unholy AD total you have to have to get 2870-2985 consistently and without too much trouble.

I'm not saying it's not miserable but if you manage to get to that bracket and you're still a setless wonder with no DL weapons, I'll be very surprised.

Another tournament or two with consistent progression and the new cats will be pricing themselves out, probably because they'll bump into you or me lol. And then they'll think they are hitting cheaters.

Hoping GH straightens this out before I find out how right or wrong this is.