Cambios a la vista: Weekend Ranked y Play and Earn diario

Step by step the Gods Unchained team continues to move towards the launch of the daily Play and Earn , a moment that players are looking forward to. The million-dollar question is What can we expect?

I'm JFA, from GU Masters, and I'd like to share with you some thoughts on this. Will you join me?

What's New in Weekend Ranked in June 2022

If you're part of the "old guard," you already know that Weekend Ranked was intended as a temporary solution to the need for a competitive format. The truth is that, as is often the case, a provisional solution became definitive and it does not seem that the Immutable team has in mind to do without it, but to integrate it into the model Play and Earn of the game. Approximately we will still have Weekend Ranked for a while .

A confirmed novelty is that The way the $GODS is calculated is going to be altered available for distribution among players, increasing it. If you want to learn more about this modification you can do so in the official announcement: "Weekend Ranked Updates are here" .

Another novelty is that The maximum number of games to be computed will be reduced, going from 25 to 18. I think this makes perfect sense, since playing 25 games in a 3-day period requires considerable effort (even more so if you're playing Control decks). There is no doubt that one of the team's objectives must be to find a point of balance in which the players are active, but without "burning out".

Why 18 games? We don't have an answer yet, but considering that 18 is a multiple of 6, the number of gods available could be somewhat related. Replicating a format like the Gauntlet of the Gods in Weekend Ranked, which requires you to play with all the gods, could perhaps be too demanding since not all players have the possibility to build 6 competitive decks every weekend, depending on the changes in the meta, but perhaps requiring the use of 3 gods could be reasonable. As a result, the meta would gain in diversity, and players with more skill and a larger collection of cards should perform better. It remains to be seen whether the reduction of items will mean any change of this type or not.

Expectations for Gods Unchained's Play and Earn Model

This section is going to be a little more speculative, since the Immutable team has not revealed details about the model Play and Earn that they are developing. With the Forge of Shinies active, $GODS staking on the verge of becoming a reality, with significant advances in optimizing the game client and fighting bots, It seems reasonable to be confident that the launch of the daily rewards system , which will include the Weekend Ranked, It doesn't take too long to happen .

The simplest option would be to repeat a scheme like the one applied in Blessing of the $GODS , so that players must play a minimum number of games with a minimum of different players until they achieve a certain number of wins. However, I believe that this approach can be improved.

Naturally, the team must consider what their objectives are and, taking this as a starting point, design the incentives to achieve them. Among these objectives I understand that there are both the underpinning of a healthy and sustainable economic model in the long term and the dynamization of the community of players. Rewards will play an important role in achieving the latter, you wouldn't expect anything else from a game Play and Earn , but they should not become the only motivation of the players; in fact, it shouldn't even be their primary motivation. As I have repeated on other occasions, and I will not tire of doing so, Gods Unchained is a game and its success will ultimately depend on whether it is fun, stimulating and addictive in the right measure .

Well, if the idea is to design an entertaining game that is challenging and manages to "engage" in a benign way, incentives should be designed with this in mind. I don't know about you, but what I would like is for a Seasonal system , where there is a points leaderboard that allows access to additional rewards in addition to the weekly ones. For example, 4 seasons a year that would have, logically, a quarterly duration. Of course, for this to be viable I sensed that the current MMR calculation system would have to be modified (which, remember, resets to a base value of 1350 points every time a new edition of the Weekend Ranked begins).

As for the Play and Earn daily , it is essential to take into account that the Weekend Ranked consumes 3 days, so there would be 4 days available. As Jams explained in the live session of "Ask Me Anything" with Kelsey Gamble that took place on June 3, 2022, the idea is that a 3 wins are enough to get the most significant part of the incentives. This sounds reasonable, since a good player (let's say a win rate of 60%) would need an average of 5 games to reach objectives.

There is something I always emphasize, because it is crucial: inadequate incentives cause undesired effects. Let's take Blessing of the $GODS as an example .

From my point of view, there were Three perverse effects :

1. Since the only goal was to achieve as many victories as possible, The meta was altered by encouraging the use of aggro decks. The reason is obvious: they are the most efficient decks to achieve this goal, since they allow you to play more games in less time, without the chances of success being penalized.
2. As there was a minimum of 5 turns for the games to count, you could find players who limited themselves to letting turns pass until they could quit. And this is a deterioration in user experience .
3. The requirement to play a minimum of 20 games in a sustained manner over time was likely to cause fatigue in players with less time available, causing exhaustion ( Burn out ).

It is reasonable to establish a number of wins to be achieved (i.e. the requirement that a player reach a minimum volume of activity), but I am convinced that complement quantitative objectives with qualitative objectives would be useful to increase the player's enjoyment. Why? Because it is a "surprise factor" that would introduce variety on an individual scale and diversity on a collective scale. A simple way to do it? Implement daily goals ( Daily Quests ) that are random and individual for each player.

What would those daily missions translate into? In the obligatory nature of Win a certain number of games by meeting a predetermined condition . Here are some examples of conditioning factors:

• In the Deck Building .- A deck with a minimum of 7 creatures, 7 spells and 4 relics? A minimum of 8 creatures from a given tribe? Or a minimum of 8 neutral creatures? A deck without relics or spells? I think you get the idea.
• Related to the Favor and the Sanctum .- Buy at least 3 Sanctum cards? Finish with a minimum of 40 Favor?
• Linked to the Void .- A minimum of 10 cards of a certain type in your Void? Revive or remove 2 cards from the Void?
• Statistical .- Inflicting more than 20 points of damage to your opponent's god in a single turn? That your god does not lose more than 8 health points or ends the game with more than 25 health points?
• Etc.

I want to clarify that the above examples are the first ones that have occurred to me, I am not claiming that all of them are ideal. However, I believe that they are Illustrative and they can serve as a foundation on which to start working.

What would you like the daily Play and Earn system for Gods Unchained to look like?

I don't know what the Immutable team has in mind, but I'd love to hear how you see it. Would you like to see daily quests implemented? Do you have suggestions? This time the comments are open, so I invite you to share your personal vision on this matter. Comments are moderated (don't be surprised if your comment is not immediately visible, comments that are not related to this topic will not be published), I will read them all and respond when appropriate.

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