Improving Pro Ladder engagement
First of all, Pro Ladder is awesome, I enjoy playing it, necessity to play four factions is great and is really improving the quality of matches, at least in the mid season, when all players finished with the strongest faction but are yet to begin the final grind for a few points with it.
That said, it has one single problem, people don't play it that much. Reason for that is there is no point to play it unless you are expecting top 20 placement, because those are only worthy places, I would even argue for only the top 8 being viable, but I could be proved wrong if there is explosion of licensed tournaments with qualification systems.
There is painfully simple solution for this, give the participants rewards based only on their accomplishment.
Just transplant the ranking system for the regular ladder to the Pro Ladder, so 4500 gets you 20 kegs and powder and all that after every season. Small percentage of the elite players will have scores in upper 5k but those will be the people in the play for the top 8 and tournaments. I am almost certain large part of 4500 players would get crown points, at least 1 anyway so it how those 4500 will be graded with rewards. So inflation of the score and possible inflation of rewards is not a problem.
It is a win win, elite players get more varied competition and plain good players who are on the Pro Ladder but for various reasons not in the game for top 8 will get to grind end season rewards in the vastly more interesting conditions.
Added bonus is maybe someone discovers they are competitor material while just grinding for that rank 21 kegs.
This crossed my mind yesterday, after short break I decided to grind for the rank 20 and those sweet 300 powder, and I just kept getting matched with like the same Dagon deck, I teched up and got positive WR, but it is plain boring especially after last meta, so I decided not imaginary dust is not worth it. I got on the Pro after that to fill the dailies and it was awesome, variety of deck and great players, it would be far better to get may season rewards here when I already proved my worth by qualifying for it.
I think this is very reasonable and nice proposal, it won't be hard to implement, it doesn't require any changes to the Masters structure and regulations, it would benefit all players and with around 15k players (not likely to get much higher than 20k) in the Pro Ladder it certainly wouldn't lead to inflation of kegs and other goodies.
Please CDPR folks think about this, it is in the mutual interest of all of us for the Pro Ladder to be more engaging, more active and for all players getting something for competing, because even some truly great players won't see what the world looks like from those top 8 spots.
First of all, Pro Ladder is awesome, I enjoy playing it, necessity to play four factions is great and is really improving the quality of matches, at least in the mid season, when all players finished with the strongest faction but are yet to begin the final grind for a few points with it.
That said, it has one single problem, people don't play it that much. Reason for that is there is no point to play it unless you are expecting top 20 placement, because those are only worthy places, I would even argue for only the top 8 being viable, but I could be proved wrong if there is explosion of licensed tournaments with qualification systems.
There is painfully simple solution for this, give the participants rewards based only on their accomplishment.
Just transplant the ranking system for the regular ladder to the Pro Ladder, so 4500 gets you 20 kegs and powder and all that after every season. Small percentage of the elite players will have scores in upper 5k but those will be the people in the play for the top 8 and tournaments. I am almost certain large part of 4500 players would get crown points, at least 1 anyway so it how those 4500 will be graded with rewards. So inflation of the score and possible inflation of rewards is not a problem.
It is a win win, elite players get more varied competition and plain good players who are on the Pro Ladder but for various reasons not in the game for top 8 will get to grind end season rewards in the vastly more interesting conditions.
Added bonus is maybe someone discovers they are competitor material while just grinding for that rank 21 kegs.
This crossed my mind yesterday, after short break I decided to grind for the rank 20 and those sweet 300 powder, and I just kept getting matched with like the same Dagon deck, I teched up and got positive WR, but it is plain boring especially after last meta, so I decided not imaginary dust is not worth it. I got on the Pro after that to fill the dailies and it was awesome, variety of deck and great players, it would be far better to get may season rewards here when I already proved my worth by qualifying for it.
I think this is very reasonable and nice proposal, it won't be hard to implement, it doesn't require any changes to the Masters structure and regulations, it would benefit all players and with around 15k players (not likely to get much higher than 20k) in the Pro Ladder it certainly wouldn't lead to inflation of kegs and other goodies.
Please CDPR folks think about this, it is in the mutual interest of all of us for the Pro Ladder to be more engaging, more active and for all players getting something for competing, because even some truly great players won't see what the world looks like from those top 8 spots.