Why players don't stay.

The leveling system is clearly broken. The game is great fun once your playing balanced games, but balanced games are the exception, unbalanced games are everyday commonplace. Why is this? What could be changed to fix this?

The why… It seems, to me, that the leveling system works like that of a rating system. Very much like ladder/chess ratings or TAO ratings. The algorithm for deciding how many points are awarded or taken away mirrors very much the algorithm of ratings in other games like elements. I love ratings, they are the bragging rights of any competitive multiplayer PvP game. But this ‘mirroring’ isn’t working for Zening since there is no competition in the sense of a balanced game with skill vs skill.

The fact that it only takes a couple of levels difference between players to make the game unbalanced is what makes the whole idea of using a rating system to level a terrible Idea. You may wonder why it’s not working for zening when it works for a game like elements or Kongai. The truth is that it doesn’t work for them either. You can farm all the cards in elements and kongai without stepping into a player vs player game. In addition, there is no reward of power from having a high ‘rating’.

Consider this analogy, if you’ve ever played an MMORPG, imagine that MMORPG with one difference: “the only way to gain XP is to steal it from other players by defeating them in combat”. Now each level is still as powerful as it was, but would the game be half as popular? No. And if you understand why, then you can understand why Zening will never work unless this is changed.

What can be changed to fix this? It’s clear to me that the culprit is the ‘rating’-style leveling system. It’s incompatible with Zening. So we have to find a new system. Whatever it is it should meet some requirements. (1) It takes a long long time to get to 50. (2) it encourages balanced games.

Making it so that it takes a long time to reach max level is easy. But how can we encourage balanced games? We can discourage unbalanced games and we can remove the fear of losing XP from balanced games.

For starters I suggest no more losing XP. But then this would make leveling easier which we don’t want. So then increase the amount of XP needed for each level. Something like this.

Amount of XP Gained for a win = G = (N)[100 + 2(Y – X) + P], where
X is the average level of your team,
Y is the average level your opponet[s],
N = the number of teams that were eliminated while at least one member of your team was still alive, and
P = the total number of payers in the game.

that is a good idea, but the equation is not good. lets say you have a 2v2v2v2. so n=3(if you win) now lets say that hossy and brandon are all on the same team. this happens frequently due to their clan ship now just for arguments sake lets say that they are against all lvl 1s and they are both on lvl 30. so we have (3)[100+2(1-30)8]; (3)[1002(-29)8] (3)[100-588] 50 times 3 is 150. do you really want people to get 150 points in a battle like that? we should not have a set equation for all games. for big games we should have one for 1v1s a different one and yet different again for army. i do not have time to offer a solution right now so will latter.

I agree that the margin between a couple levels is a huge difference in capability. Somewhere around level 15-18 players seem to get fury and tele. If you are level 14 and set up a game around your own level, it just isnt fun when your opponents repeatedly can fury, tele, and kill you within 2 moves. It seems that in addition to limiting those games to within a few levels of your own, that there should be hard stops that players with fury and tele and heal2 can’t play those without (as long as they’ve picked the level limit selection).

My guess is that Zening loses most players around level 5 and level 13. the matches around those points are seem very one sided.

I suggest canceling the clan system.Everyone wants to have a high level member in their clan,and when it comes to team battles,well…lets just say it’s unbalanced.

true i hate it when i m vs a lv 23 and my partner is lv1

I think phyrexian has a pretty good idea here. Also, the issue with getting too much exp vs multi low levels isn’t that big of an issue in my mind. I would normally be the most nervous in multiplayer more than two team games if I was the highest level because the others, at least after a couple games, will start to recognize you as a threat. I don’t care how much better you are or how much better your spells are, if it starts out as 6v2 you don’t have a good chance.
On a similar note and an idea from casual collective(makers of minions) with this much larger slower leveling system, it could be that you almost always gain points(except for quitting). so number of games logged would still mean something even if you lost them because you were always outmatched. Hopefully this would give you both experience and strategy to use the hard gained new spells.
sKills could still only be from winning and I would love there to be an option to restrict transportation spell from hero matches. I believe it would open up a lot more set ups that could be used for hero matches. imagine a hero match where wall could actually be a good move… CRAZY!!! or having to pick a good time to use fury and softening up opponents with ranged spells before you have two people move(yes I said move and not teleport) for a coordinated kill. people could actually use characters with different/normal movement than miris because advancing straight to a target was better for a spell than just moving diagonally. If you liked having a slower character get to the enemy or having an out from a tight spot I say take the risk and use one of the maelstroms, you could get lucky or you could get killed.
I just like the strategy this game provided with army, there you only have one unit with transportation, and I didn’t like as much how at higher levels the fastest typers that went first would win(because almost everyone would use telefury to kill at least one person fast with little repercussion).
Now I am not saying that transportation should not be used in hero matches, but I heavily advocate an option in create games that could make hero games without transportation. Similar to level limits if you have a hero with transportation you wouldn’t be able to see the restricted game.

While I’m waiting for my boyfriend to come back I’ll just rant into here and see if I can help out.

The equation phyrexian provided can’t be taken seriously; it was just an example. What does a good equation consist of…? Let’s see..

First of all, the balance in this game is broken. This needs to be sorted out long before fine-tuning equations. In fact, the game needs a total rehaul. It seems like, for the sake of getting it out early and testing it, Zening did a quick scan through everything he had and dumped it all out in a clutter. It was definitely rushed. I mean, there are so many game-breaking spells so early on (Teleportation, Rage 1, Fury +10), a few early-game spells stronger than their late-game counterparts (Fireball, Drain), not to mention the lack of variety of types spells (and characters) over those 50 levels.

Um, yeah, guys, it’s obvious that this game needs some drastic change. It shouldn’t even be out in its current state! At least, it shouldn’t be taken as seriously as it is now. But it IS in Beta, and we don’t know what kind of plans the developer has in reserve. My personal opinion? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say he’s too busy to make those changes right away.

Umm… I don’t know if I want to help with this! It’s a lot of work, and I’m busy, too. I’ll post this here for now with hopes that it might stop this senseless babbling and… maybe post some more later. If you guys actually want to help out, you need to approach matters from the bottom, up.

The first formula wasn’t quite what I wanted. A lot of great Ideas, points, and counterpoints in this topic. I played around with formulas for the past few days (yes, that’s why I haven’t been farming skill points lately) and this is the best I could come up with. I agree that to be ‘perfect’ there should be different rules/formulas for xp awards, but I wanted to go for a quick fix and not work on this for several weeks. Although I did seperate army and hero formulas.

The best (or perhaps more accurately simplest) solution I could find for a quick fix is to exploit the fact that in games with more than 2 teams, it doesn’t matter what level you are, you still have ‘some’ chance. I abused this as best I could in my formula and then set some rules to adjust everything to that.

Rule #1, you never lose XP points ever.

Rule #2, The amount of XP awarded to different players on the same team is always the same.

Rule #3, The amount of XP awarded to a player is decided/calculated based on the state of the game when the last member of that player’s team is killed or when that players team is ‘victorious’.

Keeping those rules in mind, I came up with this formula for all hero games. It’s a bit hard, maybe impossible, to visualize but there are charts below!

Amount of XP awarded for a hero game = 20 + Y – X + 5P + 20(N)^2 + 0.4(Y – X)(N)^2.
Y= Average level of all opponents.
X= Average level of all your team mates (or your level).
P= Total number of players @ the start of the game.
N= Number of teams eliminated while your team was still alive, Number of teams eliminated before your team was eliminated, number of teams eliminated before your team was victorious (same meaning and function, different ways to code it..)

So In a 3v3v3v3 where you come in 2nd place and all payers are the same level, Y – X = 0, P = 12, N = 2 and thus each member of your team receives 20 + 5(12) + 20(2)^2 = 80 + 80 = 160 XP points. See chart below to see when levels are different.

Or in a 4v4 where your team wins and all players are the same level, Y – X = 0, P = 8, N = 1 and thus each member of your team receives 20 + 5(8) + 20(1)^2 = 80 XP points. See chart below to see when levels differ.

If you look that over a while, compare scenarios that are similar in many ways then you should have a decent visualization of the XP awarded using that formula for several games. It’s a little larger than we’re used to but that’s not Important. Don’t forget that you can no longer lose XP. Keeping that in mind, I’d suggest a leveling ladder something like this.

To Reach Level Z you need a total of 250(Z)(Z+1)/2 XP points. Which would look like this.

For Army games, Keep the same leveling ladder and simply increase the amount of XP awarded for army games by 300% (because they take longer). Or in other words, multiply the entire formula for hero XP by 4.

You may feel the leveling ladder seems a little steep even considering we never lose XP. But if you look at the equation or the charts closely you’ll see there’s a way to maximize XP gain for yourself (and even your opponents). That would be the N factor. Playing 4v4 is so worth it that most games would be 4v4 to maximize XP / game. This alone evens out games and makes them more interesting. There would be much larger value on heals and much less value on fast kills in 4 team games.

Comments please. = )

Yes it is very clear to everyone that has played or is playing that the leveling and xp system is really unbalanced. there are so many different things i would like to suggest like an easier way to sort out teams in hero matches, or have matches that limit what spells are used like what oneyedog said. right now its hard for other types of classes to have a chance in a battle with teleport in the match. usually in every match there are a few miri running around, it would be cool to see some players use camie and not get tele killed on first phase.

This is a strategy game right? but how strategic can it actually get with all these “flaws” going on. hopefully later on in the future the developer will recognize these or if he already did, give the game more options, and fix the leveling system so its more easy for new players to get in the game rather than try it out once and quit due to the games limitness.

cheers guys =)

The only way to lose EXP needs to be surrendering. Otherwise people would leave too much.

Originally posted by Dual_Smoke:

The only way to lose EXP needs to be surrendering. Otherwise people would leave too much.

I don’t like it but you might have a point. I don’t like it either way. People unable to surrender, and people able to surrender without penalty. What to do? In a way, surrendering means you don’t get points you might otherwise have got. It’s also better for your team mates if you surrender than if you go AFK to avoid the penalty.

There’s a reason why you lose points for losing. How would the rankings work if you wouldn’t ever lose points? Whoever plays the most, will always have the 1st spot and it does not necessarily make him the best at the game. And since it’s a multiplayer game, it is essential to have a decent highscore indicating the best.
Currently if a weak player encounters a good player; weak player won’t lose much for losing and would gain a lot for winning. Analogically, better one does not gain much for winning, but loses a lot if he gets beaten. And this is the way it should work. It works perfectly in the army mode (around which the game is balanced btw). They reason it does not work in hero mode is that there are many more variables – not everything depends on you, somebody else may screw up the game for you and all team members are penalized. The problem is more difficult, since making smaller punishments also means making winning less rewarding (otherwise, the system is not balanced).
The average level idea seems good (I have no idea whether the code uses anything of that sort right now, but it seems to me that it does not).

I said in my first post, that I’m all for a ranking system and number because, your’re right, rankings are the bragging rights of any pvp game. I’d just suggest we add a ranking as another layer in addition to one’s level. As it is now, people generally get to level 50 and then they don’t have fun fighting with all the units. they just stop playing army. Also, zakid, when you say whoever plays the most will be the highest level, that’s true for the average-good player. But the same is currently true of skill points no?

Keeping ranking seperate from level would allow level 50’s (or other high level players) to fight with a clear head and no fear and really see who’s the best over time. But again, secondary compared to not letting the game die. As soon as xp is changed, I’ll bring this up to zening.

Agreed. The point of ranking is to brag rights my 2nd all time record on Argue about Everything is my brag right but at the same time, to make it so you havae to be a top dog in order to get pieces that give an edge make it impossible for low levels. When game first came out and soem motnsh after, it was still extremely active which made Low Levels able to play each other more easily. Now with it being less popular, those who try it are screwed as stated in an earlier post. I do agree that a ranking system is needed for bragging rights, but at the same time, a system needs to be put in to save the little man. Otherwise this game will continue losing many prospective players