Gear-score brackets kill the fun. Get rid of them.

[Surf]

What are the brackets even supposed to be?

0-24 is supposed to be for new players? Frickin joke.

25-124 is supposed to be for new players with good gear and good players who died recently or are warming up?... "I curse you: never ever will you get better gear than what you had at the beginning!"

125+ is supposed to be only for vet players? Well this is where everyone should play. Simple as.

If you haven't seen the issue with these brackets yet, let me explain it to you.

The average player doesn't play in the 0-24 bracket.

In the 0-24 lobbies, you will find a majority of total noobs, and a fraction of players ranging from somewhat good/experienced players to god tier level veteran players.

"And what the frick are these good players doing in the 0-24 lobbies ?" you might ask.

Killing noobs. They kill noobs for ego, because they are easy kills. You can be sure you are gonna be able to tea-bag them less than 10 seconds after the fight started. It's good for the moral. For yours at least.

I know that, because I do it. And I don't think it's fun for these guys.

There is not any extraction game that is doing well and that uses a gear-based or skill-based matchmaking.


This feature is actually really bad because:

1- Unless you run 125+ most of the time, it soft-locks you into a specific gearscore if you rely on pvp to get gear (it is a PVPve game, just in case you forgot) because you can't find any gear on other players that's not allowed by the lobby's gear-score bracket.

2- So, obviously the only way to upgrade your gear in lobbies under 125 gear score, is by pve and looting (sad for a pvp game)

3- The lowest bracket is turning total new players into punching balls, possibly lowering the retainability of the game for these new players (bad move especially since steam release)

4- The core of a pvp or pvpve extraction game is the fact that you're gambling with your gear. You suppose that, if you do well, you can extract with a gear that's better than the 124 scored gear you went in with, but there's literally not a single player at all in your lobby with any gear scored above yours, because bracket.

5- Lowest bracket balance is broken due to a fraction of vets who are literal noob killers since it's very fun.

6- The only bracket which doesn't have these problems is the top 125+ bracket. (or high-rollers) BUT, new players can't afford to go into HR or 125+ every raid, so it could solve (4) but actually you fall back into (5)(artificial unbalancing) and then (1)(progression artificialy prevented) again, unless you can farm bosses for a ton of gold, which most players can't do / don't want to do, let away noobs.

Solutions? Remove the gear-score bracket system entirely.

Because why the hell not?

You could even add a special matchmaking for people who's highest leveled character is less than 10 for example. Then if an account has a character which is above level 10 as an example, it is forced to go into the standard matchmaking with everyone else.

[Aldain]

The GS brackets are up there with the removal of the circle for "Best ideas Ironmace has had" imo.

Gear discrepancy in the old playtests just meant that whoever was the bigger stat blob often won, not having to account for a full purple kill squad when you're in a base kit is a good thing.

[Surf]

Originally posted by Aldain:

The GS brackets are up there with the removal of the circle for "Best ideas Ironmace has had" imo.

Gear discrepancy in the old playtests just meant that whoever was the bigger stat blob often won, not having to account for a full purple kill squad when you're in a base kit is a good thing.

Did you read what i wrote? There is a ton of new issues due to the gear-score system especially for new players.

The old problem was about gear balancing which is another topic. The issue with the gear-score bracket is the fact that it soft-locks players, artificialy preventing them from progressing through pvp until they eventualy drop that one fricking piece of gear through looting or pve.

Preventing progression through pvp in a pvpve game is simply soft-locking. It is BAD. It doesn't have to be here, it's totally artificial, it should be removed. Simple.

Also, what is the point of winning a fight against a team that's wearing the same gear as you?

You don't get anything good from that.

The real W in an extraction pvp game is when you kill a purple with blue, or a blue with green.

That's >progression<

This is the core of a game with wipes. You, progressing.

You will not find anything more then green and blue on other players if you went in with green and blue.

Which means you are simply soft locked, unless you actually get to loot better gear, which, I get it, should be rewarding on it's own obviously.

But pvp should also be rewarding in a PVPve game. But here it's not. Only pve is rewarding in all brackets.

PVP is ONLY rewarding in 125+ and HR. And it is an issue.

Just get rid of all the brackets. Best possible move.

[MikiLumi]

On one hand, I keep seeing people purposely gearing as best as they can to get 24 gearscore and just murdering all of us noobs in the <25 lobbies. Doesn't really matter what system they put in, people who want to dominate will find the way.

On the other hand, getting put in lobbies with people in all purple+ gear when I am in grays would be even less fun.

[Surf]

Originally posted by Tagi:

On one hand, I keep seeing people purposely gearing as best as they can to get 24 gearscore and just murdering all of us noobs in the <25 lobbies. Doesn't really matter what system they put in, people who want to dominate will find the way.

On the other hand, getting put in lobbies with people in all purple+ gear when I am in grays would be even less fun.

I understand. But if you go in with blues and greens, and kill a guy, you will never find any purple even if you deserve it.

Also, full purple guys, if there is no bracket, will have something else to do than run after gray geared newbies, since there will be blues and even greens trying to outfight them for their gear.

And even if it's running after you, if you manage to kill it through skill, you actually get a reward.

Because, here is my point: Being rewarded for a great fight with grays and whites, you can't progress that way, at least gear-wise.

But what's the point of progressing skill-wise? There's no point, since your skills won't ever pay back by giving you a chance to turn a blue into a purple. You see what I mean by soft-locking?

[Wow]

i recently started playing again and i dont know if this is a problem. 24gs lobbys feel really tame, you get tons of loot and you can extract in a save manner. as soon as you extracted once you have +25 gs and can enter higher gs lobbys.

"Also, what is the point of winning a fight against a team that's wearing the same gear as you?"

if you enter 125 gs lobbys at 124 gs and think "damn i cant improve my gear through pvp" you are making a mistake anyway? you can still loot the gear for another gear set/ trade.

Most of the stuff you loot you wont be able to use anyway so might as well trade it. Not to mention that you run a much higher risk going in with a +100gs set then a 26gs

[VoiD]

No multiplayer game should ever, ever, try to divide it's playerbase.

Premium dungeons shouldn't exist, neither should brackets, what's going to happen is the same thing that happens in every multiplayer game ever made: One game type will become the most popular, and the rest are going to be deserted.

[Wow]

Originally posted by VoiD:

No multiplayer game should ever, ever, try to divide it's playerbase.

chess, starcraft, Dota, any competitive game...

how are low gs loobys going to be deserted in a game where players lose their gear?

[Surf]

Originally posted by Wow:

Originally posted by VoiD:

No multiplayer game should ever, ever, try to divide it's playerbase.

chess, starcraft, Dota, any competitive game...

how are low gs loobys going to be deserted in a game where players lose their gear?

These games only differenciates players by their respective skill, you unsmart. There is no progression soft-locking in these games, because there is no frickin gear progression in it, frickin dota and chess........ dude really

[VoiD]

Originally posted by Wow:

Originally posted by VoiD:

No multiplayer game should ever, ever, try to divide it's playerbase.

chess, starcraft, Dota, any competitive game...

how are low gs loobys going to be deserted in a game where players lose their gear?

Yes, the top3 most popular RTS, MOBA and board games in the world might be able to get away with it, even if all the game modes are "deserted", having less than 1% of the playerbase of the main mode it's still going to be enough to find some matches after long-ish queue times.

This isn't it.

PS: I hope you're not pretending ranked isn't a single game mode because elo exists.

[OverkillX7]

With every patch , developers nerf classes to make them more gear depending . So that means Gear gives you the biggest Dps .

[Wow]

Originally posted by Surf:

These games only differenciates players by their respective skill, you unsmart. There is no progression soft-locking in these games, because there is no frickin gear progression in it, frickin dota and chess........ dude really

allready told you, you have gear progression even in restrickted brackets. you cant go zero to hero, but its also better for naked people.

@void what do you mean by premium dungeons? your concern seems to be que time not really matchmaking

[THEUZIN Fé em Deus é os Z1KA]

Gear score is necessary, the game takes 0 skill with gear, they need to stop balancing the game around numbers

[=[*PoS*]= The Predator of Death]

timmies complain about gs now they want to remove gs which can have full kitted people stomping them make it make sense

[Ice Jester]

I am 100% fine with the bracket. Before that we saw players with their 300+ GS mixing with players 25 and over. It was totally stupid and no fun to play! Now at least we're facing players at the same level as us!

[kafersaft]

Originally posted by Surf:

Killing noobs. They kill noobs for ego, because they are easy kills. You can be sure you are gonna be able to tea-bag them less than 10 seconds after the fight started. It's good for the moral. For yours at least.

I know that, because I do it. And I don't think it's fun for these guys.

This part literally just makes me think that you are struggling to kill so called noobs when you're wearing ♥♥♥♥ gear like them, so you want all lobbies to be like high roller where you can wear your 400GS set and kill people with their 11GS squire gear