[Races] Data-driven analysis of season 2, projections, problems, and solution.

Data is based on the first 40 events of season 2, which is supposed to have about 260 events in total.

40/260*100% = 15.38% events completed

Data based on performance bracket:
5029 race participants (counting only players with 2 or more points).

Rank (performance bracket) || Average points || Projected point average by season end:

Top 10 (10/5029 = top ~0.2%) || 329.80 || 2143.70
Next 10, ranks 11-20 (top 0.2% to 0.4%) || 165.80 || 1077.70
Next 10, ranks 21-30 (top 0.4% to 0.6%) || 110.50 || 718.25
Next 20, ranks 31-50 (top 0.6% to 1.0%) || 97.60 || 634.40
Next 50, ranks 51-100 (top 1% to 2%) || 76.40 || 496.60
Next 150, ranks 101-250 (top 2% to 5%) || 53.73 || 349.27
Next 250, ranks 251-500 (top 5% to 10%) || 35.80 || 232.67
Next 500, ranks 501-1000 (top 10% to 20%) || 23.38 || 151.94
Next 1000 (ranks 1001-2000 top 20% to 40%) || 13.43 || 87.26

Summary:
The top 0.2% average over double the season point cap.
A portion of the top 0.6%, i.e. people who perform better in point total than 99.4% of players, don't even achieve the top season reward.
Remaining 60% are projected to acquire under 60 points, i.e. the majority of season racers will not acquire the onyx amulet.

Data based on exact ranks:
1. 0.1193% (ranks 6+) are projected to get over 2000 points
2. ~99.66% (ranks 18 and lower) are projected to get under 1000 points
3. ~99.15% (ranks 44 and lower) are projected to get under 600 points
4. ~97% (ranks 157 and lower) are projected to get under 360 points
5. ~90.24% (ranks 492 and lower) are projected to get under 200 points
6. ~80% (ranks 1008 and lower) are projected to get under 120 points

Summary:
Astramentis and Andvarius go to under 1% of current season participants.
Tabula Rasa goes to under 3% of current season participants.
Over 90% of current season participants will fail to achieve anything above a death's harp.

Problem:
At present, points for level based, first clear, first quest, and top 20 all synergize to tremendously bias point rewards toward a tiny fraction (less than 0.05%) of racers, significantly more so than anyone else.

Using a 90 minute solo race as an example (event 41 for instance), the reward structure looks like this:

Level 28: 10 Reward Points
Level 25-27: 7 Reward Points
Level 24: 6 Reward Points
Level 22-23: 5 Reward Points
Level 21: 4 Reward Points
Level 15-20: 3 Reward Points
Level 9-14: 1 Reward Point

If this is graphed with a trend line, it is evident that the slope increases (meaning, the reward increases at increasing rates):



Recommendation:
Adjust the reward structure to resemble a logarithmic function (meaning, the reward increases at decreasing rates).

Using a 90 minute solo race as an example, the reward structure would look like this:

Level 25+: 7 Reward Points
Level 20-24: 6 Reward Points
Level 16-19: 5 Reward Points
Level 12-15: 4 Reward Points
Level 8-11: 3 Reward Points
Level 4-7: 1 Reward Point

Note: In event 41, only 3 players reached level 25. Therefore the top 1% would still receive the same number of points, but it wouldn't be so heavily biased toward them.

Here is the graph of the recommended reward structure with a trend line (higher rewards for lower tiers, and rewards increase at a decreasing rate):



Implications:
It is important to keep in mind that this recommendation is directed toward level-based rewards.

The top performers still have:
1. Top 20 rewards, which are currently structured to increase at increasing rates more so than the level-based rewards, i.e. the slope at higher ranks is even steeper.
2. Quest prizes
3. Full-clear prizes
4. Demigod's Triumph

Therefore, restructuring level-based rewards to have reward bias toward a larger portion of participants should not have a negative effect on the top 3%. Rather, it is intended to encourage and better motivate the remaining 97% of players to participate in more races.

This should be beneficial in the long-term because:
(1) Races are content: if more players feel that experiencing this content is a worthwhile time investment, the lifespan of the game will increase for them.
(2) It will increase competition: if more players decide to participate in more races, the body of experienced racers will increase. This will increase competition over time.

Reiteration of facts:
If current trends and reward structures persist (based on 40/260 events):
99.66% of season 2 racers are projected to get under 1000 points
97% of season 2 racers are projected to get under 360 points
Some players who are in the top 10% of season 2 racers are projected to fail to acquire enough points to get a carnage heart.
The majority of season 2 racers are not projected to acquire the onyx amulet or above.

Discussion:
A. If you don't believe that there is a problem with the current reward distribution, I'm open to learning your point of view and the reasons for it.
B. If you see a problem with the alternative reward distribution that I recommend to try out, I'm open to learning your point of view and the reasons for it.
C. If you like my solution or have an idea of your own, feel free to discuss.
D. If you want to call me a noob, socialist, expletive deleted, or make inferences from Olympic sports and national competition..... I am open to learning your point of view and the reasons for it.

:)

I like your post.

I feel that it is not just the reward scaling that matters, but the simple fact of the challenge just being a level.

The 'first to clear' rewards should be changed to 'cleared' and maybe have a small bonus if first instead.

But in general I agree with what you have said, racing is a waste of time cause if your not at the top, you are at the bottom. And when you consider how MANY races you need to do, with limited time due to jobs/other commitments, you think "why even bother, I won't reach any item I want"

Vhald, you are now my favorite member of these forums. Please keep posts like this one coming; regardless of what I say about your conclusions, your mathematical and analytical style are invaluable additions to this community.

One thing your post doesn't include is how point systems work in other competitive games. My favorite example of a game with a thriving competitive tournament structure is Magic the Gathering. Magic has three main forms of competitive events:

• Grand Prixs: These are open-entry tournaments with moderate prize support that draw professional players as well as large amounts of the public. They are the best analog to PoE races.
• Pro Tour: This invite-only tournament series has very heavy prize support. Major events such as national and world championships fall under this umbrella. There is no current PoE equivalent, although I'd like to see it happen in a limited context -- such as end-of-season playoffs -- with some well-produced, GGG-official streaming coverage.
• Pro Tour Qualifiers: These are small, frequently-held events with prizes that guarantee invites (and partially reimbursed travel) to the Pro Tour; the prize support is very minimal, with the invites being the main draw -- and since pros are pre-invited due to past PT/GP performance, they have no draw to these at all. I think PoE can do without these, relying on "Grand Prixs" instead.

The point is that, in the MtG structure, we can look to Grand Prixs for inspiration. Specifically, I want to look at MtG's "sealed deck" format, which prohibits the players from using cards they brought in the event and forces them to build with random cards from unopened packs (in other words, a test of skill, not of collection size). Keep in mind that Grand Prixs have a top 8 playoff after Swiss rounds, so the 1st-8th structure is based off single-elimination that PoE wouldn't have. Here's what the prize structure looks like for one of those:

• 1st: 8 Pro Points & $3500 ($437.50 per point)
• 2nd: 6 Pro Points & $2300 ($383.33 per point)
• 3rd-4th: 5 Pro Points & $1500 ($300 per point)
• 5th-8th: 4 Pro Points & $1000 ($250 per point)
• 9th-16th: 3 Pro Points & $500 ($166.67 per point)
• 17th-32nd: 2 Pro Points & $400 ($200 per point)
• 33rd-64th: 1 Pro Point & $200 ($200 per point)
• 65th and lower get nothing.

The past 10 (non-team) Sealed Deck Grand Prix events had attendances of 1627, 261, 304, 1967, 684, 891, 818, 1340, 727, and 1983. That means an average participation of 1060, which means: only the top 6% or so of each event received any prize support whatsoever.

So if you think PoE events are elitist, they have nothing on Magic the Gathering tournaments, which have been a thriving economy for nearly two decades despite actually expecting players to shell out substantial entry fees (often $25 or more) for participation.

Why do players keep coming back to MtG's prize structure?

• It rewards pure competitiveness, not benchmark results; the only way you can get points is by actually defeating other players, and doing so consistently. Magic tournaments are very hardcore-gaming affairs, and the participants appreciate the cutthroat reward structure.
• Getting any prize at all is actually a major accomplishment, often indicating that you're in the top 5% of the hardcore community. The elitism makes it a more potent status symbol.
• Rewards are immediate. You win, you get cash. There's also a player-of-the-year race, but there's far more emphasis on individual event performance.

In short, the draw isn't that it's more populist or "communist" -- on the contrary, it's that it's more elitist. For people that are into competition, this is what the players want. People who join races tend to be racers.

Making point allocation more populist would elevate one particular problem from minor to pervasive: players dominating the Season Ladder through mass participation rather than skill. After Krippers' win last season, he was infamously accused of winning the ladder due to his professional-gamer open schedule, allowing him to play in every event. Although the accusation was not justified, as Krippers points-per-event was very high with numerous first-place finishes, the accusers were not quite so insane as to be describing a phenomenon that doesn't exist -- Season One racers like linkdv2 and p0t ended up fairly high in the standings due to participating in an insane amount of events, despite never placing particularly in any of them. This led to players generally considered to be of less skill being ranked above players generally considered to be of greater skill, purely because those higher-skilled players weren't no-life enough... which isn't something a good ranking system should do.

If anything, my suggestions would be the opposite of yours:

• Completely eliminate the flat point reward for reaching a certain level in a race.
• Completely eliminate rewards for clearing a particular area or killing a particular unique first.
• Have the overall point reward system match the class-specific reward system; in other words, 1st place overall gets 10 points, 2nd place 6 points, etc. Thus the maximum amount of points per event would still be 20: 10+10, instead of 10+3+7.
• Instead of having special items as rewards for the end of the ladder season, reward them immediately after each event. For example, getting at least 1 point (top 20 in class) would get you the alternate-art Karui Ward immediately.
• This might be controversial, but: Provide cash rewards based on final standings at the end of each season. Nothing like a check in the mail to give currently disinterested players a reason to beat Krippers at his own game. Also, news of an actual reward structure would draw all sorts of fresh blood to the game.

Would it be harder for the average player to get points? Yes, it would be harder! But points would mean something... you'd (almost) never see accusations that players have a high Season point score due to mass participation, because everyone would know that you have to pull off a truly elite show of skill to earn points in the first place.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

Vhald, you are now my favorite member of these forums. Please keep posts like this one coming; regardless of what I say about your conclusions, your mathematical and analytical style are invaluable additions to this community.

One thing your post doesn't include is how point systems work in other competitive games. My favorite example of a game with a thriving competitive tournament structure is Magic the Gathering. Magic has three main forms of competitive events:

• Grand Prixs: These are open-entry tournaments with moderate prize support that draw professional players as well as large amounts of the public. They are the best analog to PoE races.
• Pro Tour: This invite-only tournament series has very heavy prize support. Major events such as national and world championships fall under this umbrella. There is no current PoE equivalent, although I'd like to see it happen in a limited context -- such as end-of-season playoffs -- with some well-produced, GGG-official streaming coverage.
• Pro Tour Qualifiers: These are small, frequently-held events with prizes that guarantee invites (and partially reimbursed travel) to the Pro Tour; the prize support is very minimal, with the invites being the main draw -- and since pros are pre-invited due to past PT/GP performance, they have no draw to these at all. I think PoE can do without these, relying on "Grand Prixs" instead.

The point is that, in the MtG structure, we can look to Grand Prixs for inspiration. Specifically, I want to look at MtG's "sealed deck" format, which prohibits the players from using cards they brought in the event and forces them to build with random cards from unopened packs (in other words, a test of skill, not of collection size). Keep in mind that Grand Prixs have a top 8 playoff after Swiss rounds, so the 1st-8th structure is based off single-elimination that PoE wouldn't have. Here's what the prize structure looks like for one of those:

• 1st: 8 Pro Points & $3500 ($437.50 per point)
• 2nd: 6 Pro Points & $2300 ($383.33 per point)
• 3rd-4th: 5 Pro Points & $1500 ($300 per point)
• 5th-8th: 4 Pro Points & $1000 ($250 per point)
• 9th-16th: 3 Pro Points & $500 ($166.67 per point)
• 17th-32nd: 2 Pro Points & $400 ($200 per point)
• 33rd-64th: 1 Pro Point & $200 ($200 per point)
• 65th and lower get nothing.

The past 10 (non-team) Sealed Deck Grand Prix events had attendances of 1627, 261, 304, 1967, 684, 891, 818, 1340, 727, and 1983. That means an average participation of 1060, which means: only the top 6% or so of each event received any prize support whatsoever.

So if you think PoE events are elitist, they have nothing on Magic the Gathering tournaments, which have been a thriving economy for nearly two decades despite actually expecting players to shell out substantial entry fees (often $25 or more) for participation.

Why do players keep coming back to MtG's prize structure?

• It rewards pure competitiveness, not benchmark results; the only way you can get points is by actually defeating other players, and doing so consistently. Magic tournaments are very hardcore-gaming affairs, and the participants appreciate the cutthroat reward structure.
• Getting any prize at all is actually a major accomplishment, often indicating that you're in the top 5% of the hardcore community. The elitism makes it a more potent status symbol.
• Rewards are immediate. You win, you get cash. There's also a player-of-the-year race, but there's far more emphasis on individual event performance.

In short, the draw isn't that it's more populist or "communist" -- on the contrary, it's that it's more elitist. For people that are into competition, this is what the players want. People who join races tend to be racers.

Making point allocation more populist would elevate one particular problem from minor to pervasive: players dominating the Season Ladder through mass participation rather than skill. After Krippers' win last season, he was infamously accused of winning the ladder due to his professional-gamer open schedule, allowing him to play in every event. Although the accusation was not justified, as Krippers points-per-event was very high with numerous first-place finishes, the accusers were not quite so insane as to be describing a phenomenon that doesn't exist -- Season One racers like linkdv2 and p0t ended up fairly high in the standings due to participating in an insane amount of events, despite never placing particularly in any of them. This led to players generally considered to be of less skill being ranked above players generally considered to be of greater skill, purely because those higher-skilled players weren't no-life enough... which isn't something a good ranking system should do.

If anything, my suggestions would be the opposite of yours:

• Completely eliminate the flat point reward for reaching a certain level in a race.
• Completely eliminate rewards for clearing a particular area or killing a particular unique first.
• Have the overall point reward system match the class-specific reward system; in other words, 1st place overall gets 10 points, 2nd place 6 points, etc. Thus the maximum amount of points per event would still be 20: 10+10, instead of 10+3+7.
• Instead of having special items as rewards for the end of the ladder season, reward them immediately after each event. For example, getting at least 1 point (top 20 in class) would get you the alternate-art Karui Ward immediately.
• This might be controversial, but: Provide cash rewards based on final standings at the end of each season. Nothing like a check in the mail to give currently disinterested players a reason to beat Krippers at his own game. Also, news of an actual reward structure would draw all sorts of fresh blood to the game.

Would it be harder for the average player to get points? Yes, it would be harder! But points would mean something... you'd (almost) never see accusations that players have a high Season point score due to mass participation, because everyone would know that you have to pull off a truly elite show of skill to earn points in the first place.

WHile it is true this method would reward people doing well, the problem is for the 'average joe' they wouldn't even bother competing.

I know I am not in that top 5%. So ALREADY I can't be bothered with races because I know I am not going to gain anything from it compared with farming in a normal league, which will be jmuch better.

If I was to be doing races, I would be doing them for myself. Sure there are the top tiers, but the main thing I would be competing with is my own personal setup.

My analogy is going to be the League of Legends game. It has an ELO system. So while the top players in the ELO are really focused on winning tournaments, and keeping that ELO up, as it is valuable to them and they get far better things, I am just competing against myself at a much lower level, and trying to raise my own ELO, knowing I won't be in the same league as the tournament players ever (well, not for standard LoL, was there in top tier dominion for ages).

So currently there is nothing for me to do. I could compete against myself to reach a certain level. But why. I can do that without a race, get items I can use, and build a character I want to CONTINUE using afterwards. The rewards at the end of a race are not worthwhile to me as I won't be gaining anything

"

Real_Wolf wrote:

WHile it is true this method would reward people doing well, the problem is for the 'average joe' they wouldn't even bother competing.

I know I am not in that top 5%.

I doubt that the full 95% of players who participate in Magic tournaments think they are in the top 5%. On the other hand, MtG is PvP, so there's a lot more interaction going on.

I think the most fair thing to do is: x% more item quantity in races. This would be adjusted with two objectives in mind: to reduce RNG in races slightly, and to make it so currency farming in races is at least on par, and arguably superior to, high-level IIQ-enabled currency farming in Default. That way, after league transfer, players who participate in races aren't behind in terms of currency acquisition.

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

"

Real_Wolf wrote:

WHile it is true this method would reward people doing well, the problem is for the 'average joe' they wouldn't even bother competing.

I know I am not in that top 5%.

I doubt that the full 95% of players who participate in Magic tournaments think they are in the top 5%. On the other hand, MtG is PvP, so there's a lot more interaction going on.

I think the most fair thing to do is: x% more item quantity in races. This would be adjusted with two objectives in mind: to reduce RNG in races slightly, and to make it so currency farming in races is at least on par, and arguably superior to, high-level IIQ-enabled currency farming in Default. That way, after league transfer, players who participate in races aren't behind in terms of currency acquisition.

I understand your reference, but at the same time there is a good gain for doing well in the tournament so people want to try.

In these races it is not something I have time to improve or get better at, and I feel its not worth my time. The the main point is that something should be done to make it more valuable for me to RACE in terms of either achievement or result, as at the moment there is no incentive to try to line up my schedule just to get into a race that I am not interested in.

No incentive for a reasonably interested in the game person --> Probably less for someone less interested in mechanics and less understanding of how the game works

"

ScrotieMcB wrote:

Spoiler

Vhald, you are now my favorite member of these forums. Please keep posts like this one coming; regardless of what I say about your conclusions, your mathematical and analytical style are invaluable additions to this community.

One thing your post doesn't include is how point systems work in other competitive games. My favorite example of a game with a thriving competitive tournament structure is Magic the Gathering. Magic has three main forms of competitive events:

• Grand Prixs: These are open-entry tournaments with moderate prize support that draw professional players as well as large amounts of the public. They are the best analog to PoE races.
• Pro Tour: This invite-only tournament series has very heavy prize support. Major events such as national and world championships fall under this umbrella. There is no current PoE equivalent, although I'd like to see it happen in a limited context -- such as end-of-season playoffs -- with some well-produced, GGG-official streaming coverage.
• Pro Tour Qualifiers: These are small, frequently-held events with prizes that guarantee invites (and partially reimbursed travel) to the Pro Tour; the prize support is very minimal, with the invites being the main draw -- and since pros are pre-invited due to past PT/GP performance, they have no draw to these at all. I think PoE can do without these, relying on "Grand Prixs" instead.

The point is that, in the MtG structure, we can look to Grand Prixs for inspiration. Specifically, I want to look at MtG's "sealed deck" format, which prohibits the players from using cards they brought in the event and forces them to build with random cards from unopened packs (in other words, a test of skill, not of collection size). Keep in mind that Grand Prixs have a top 8 playoff after Swiss rounds, so the 1st-8th structure is based off single-elimination that PoE wouldn't have. Here's what the prize structure looks like for one of those:

• 1st: 8 Pro Points & $3500 ($437.50 per point)
• 2nd: 6 Pro Points & $2300 ($383.33 per point)
• 3rd-4th: 5 Pro Points & $1500 ($300 per point)
• 5th-8th: 4 Pro Points & $1000 ($250 per point)
• 9th-16th: 3 Pro Points & $500 ($166.67 per point)
• 17th-32nd: 2 Pro Points & $400 ($200 per point)
• 33rd-64th: 1 Pro Point & $200 ($200 per point)
• 65th and lower get nothing.

The past 10 (non-team) Sealed Deck Grand Prix events had attendances of 1627, 261, 304, 1967, 684, 891, 818, 1340, 727, and 1983. That means an average participation of 1060, which means: only the top 6% or so of each event received any prize support whatsoever.

So if you think PoE events are elitist, they have nothing on Magic the Gathering tournaments, which have been a thriving economy for nearly two decades despite actually expecting players to shell out substantial entry fees (often $25 or more) for participation.

Why do players keep coming back to MtG's prize structure?

• It rewards pure competitiveness, not benchmark results; the only way you can get points is by actually defeating other players, and doing so consistently. Magic tournaments are very hardcore-gaming affairs, and the participants appreciate the cutthroat reward structure.
• Getting any prize at all is actually a major accomplishment, often indicating that you're in the top 5% of the hardcore community. The elitism makes it a more potent status symbol.
• Rewards are immediate. You win, you get cash. There's also a player-of-the-year race, but there's far more emphasis on individual event performance.

In short, the draw isn't that it's more populist or "communist" -- on the contrary, it's that it's more elitist. For people that are into competition, this is what the players want. People who join races tend to be racers.

Making point allocation more populist would elevate one particular problem from minor to pervasive: players dominating the Season Ladder through mass participation rather than skill. After Krippers' win last season, he was infamously accused of winning the ladder due to his professional-gamer open schedule, allowing him to play in every event. Although the accusation was not justified, as Krippers points-per-event was very high with numerous first-place finishes, the accusers were not quite so insane as to be describing a phenomenon that doesn't exist -- Season One racers like linkdv2 and p0t ended up fairly high in the standings due to participating in an insane amount of events, despite never placing particularly in any of them. This led to players generally considered to be of less skill being ranked above players generally considered to be of greater skill, purely because those higher-skilled players weren't no-life enough... which isn't something a good ranking system should do.

If anything, my suggestions would be the opposite of yours:

• Completely eliminate the flat point reward for reaching a certain level in a race.
• Completely eliminate rewards for clearing a particular area or killing a particular unique first.
• Have the overall point reward system match the class-specific reward system; in other words, 1st place overall gets 10 points, 2nd place 6 points, etc. Thus the maximum amount of points per event would still be 20: 10+10, instead of 10+3+7.
• Instead of having special items as rewards for the end of the ladder season, reward them immediately after each event. For example, getting at least 1 point (top 20 in class) would get you the alternate-art Karui Ward immediately.
• This might be controversial, but: Provide cash rewards based on final standings at the end of each season. Nothing like a check in the mail to give currently disinterested players a reason to beat Krippers at his own game. Also, news of an actual reward structure would draw all sorts of fresh blood to the game.

Would it be harder for the average player to get points? Yes, it would be harder! But points would mean something... you'd (almost) never see accusations that players have a high Season point score due to mass participation, because everyone would know that you have to pull off a truly elite show of skill to earn points in the first place.

The MtG structure comparison:
Competing with random cards from unopened packs is similar to the RNG dependence in PoE. It's a very interesting comparison.

I played a lot of MtG back in the day, up until the end of the Urza block (I built many combo decks that I loved - until they banned most of my key cards). But I never participated in grand prix or pro tours/qualifiers. I played small weekly tournaments during the designated game night at a local store, and I played larger monthly tournaments at a local Microplay. These tournaments were very small (10-25 participants), with prizes for 1st to 4th place (i.e. 16% to 40% of participants would receive a reward, and 4% to 10% would receive the highest reward).

I think the smaller events represent the main form of competition, based purely on # of participating players (since there are, or were, so many small events in so many locations). If the only form of competition in MtG gave the top reward to just 0.4% of participants, I doubt the game would have reached the audience it did.

The growth argument:
It will be hard for PoE to reach competitive appeal similar to MtG if there isn't a focus on growing player participation in races.

Similar to the small-scale local stuff in MtG that grew my interest, in sports all the feed tournaments, mini leagues, local events, school teams, etc. get people interested in competing in the activity. I don't see why we should be trying to go directly to super elite competitions without any supporting infrastructure. My focus, at present, would be on building the base, by better rewarding race participation for a much larger portion of players (i.e. top 20% instead of top 3% or less).

A problem with the MtG vs PoE comparison:
You can't play MtG by yourself to win prizes, and if you could... How many of the 1060 average participants would continue to compete in the Grand Prix if they were almost certain to win $500 if they devoted an equivalent amount of time to playing MtG in a room alone? In PoE, you can play by yourself and "win". There is an opportunity cost associated with race participation, because that is time that you forgo farming or experience progression on your main.

Let's look at event 39:
559 players participated and survived to level 2 or above.
503/559 (90%) received 3 or fewer points.

If you are well above average, but just below the top 10% of players, your expected outcome is 3 points per 90 minute solo. If you compete in 15 of these (22.5 hours), you'll have a karui ward, shiversting, and quill rain. Can you get more than that in 22.5 hours of farming? Since the answer to that is yes, what, then, is your motivation to race? If you're a streamer you may be inclined to race to increase viewer count, but the average player (as current data shows) does not appear to have enough incentive to devote their play time toward racing.

In a game like PoE, the problem with having minimal rewards for 97% of season race participants is the simple fact that you can "win" equal or better rewards (in functionality and/or currency value) by farming or progressing on your main. If, for so many players, the reward from race participation is so clearly inferior to the expected outcome from farming, more and more people will continue to forgo racing.

I suppose it's ultimately a question of goals:
I view races primarily as one form of content, where the longevity of the game increases for players who are motivated to participate in each season (and hence, participation should be more strongly rewarded for the average player).

Races as a form of competition comes secondary IMO. But I do believe that better rewards for more players will increase competition over time, since more players will be motivated to race (and hence more players will become experienced racers).

PoE as an e-sport?
If GGG wants the PoE race seasons to head in the direction of e-sport, I still believe that making the race outcomes less elitist (at least at first) is the best path forward. One alternative would be to provide greater rewards for racing (cash prizes, or higher currency drop rates in race leagues), but I'm not sure if that's a direction I'd want to go in.

If the goal is e-sport, GGG has two issues to address:
1. Hardware dependence. Loading time is a huge performance factor. In longer races the effects of slow loading time aggregate. In shorter races, loading time may account for a greater portion of play time relative to other actions. Players with the best hardware (especially a good SSD or RAM drive) have a clear advantage.
2. Location dependence. Latency is a huge performance factor, influencing how aggressive you can play. This can have a tremendous effect on leveling efficiency.

"

Real_Wolf wrote:

The 'first to clear' rewards should be changed to 'cleared' and maybe have a small bonus if first instead.

I like this suggestion. From a player satisfaction standpoint, it's fun to achieve milestones (like clearing a zone). At present, if someone does it before you, you skip it. A point (or lotto ticket) for doing it (or being one of the first 50 (or 200, or 500) to do it) and 2 for being first would be more fun for me.

"

Vhlad wrote:

Spoiler

The MtG structure comparison:
Competing with random cards from unopened packs is similar to the RNG dependence in PoE. It's a very interesting comparison.

I played a lot of MtG back in the day, up until the end of the Urza block (I built many combo decks that I loved - until they banned most of my key cards). But I never participated in grand prix or pro tours/qualifiers. I played small weekly tournaments during the designated game night at a local store, and I played larger monthly tournaments at a local Microplay. These tournaments were very small (10-25 participants), with prizes for 1st to 4th place (i.e. 16% to 40% of participants would receive a reward, and 4% to 10% would receive the highest reward).

I think the smaller events represent the main form of competition, based purely on # of participating players (since there are, or were, so many small events in so many locations). If the only form of competition in MtG gave the top reward to just 0.4% of participants, I doubt the game would have reached the audience it did.

The growth argument:
It will be hard for PoE to reach competitive appeal similar to MtG if there isn't a focus on growing player participation in races.

Similar to the small-scale local stuff in MtG that grew my interest, in sports all the feed tournaments, mini leagues, local events, school teams, etc. get people interested in competing in the activity. I don't see why we should be trying to go directly to super elite competitions without any supporting infrastructure. My focus, at present, would be on building the base, by better rewarding race participation for a much larger portion of players (i.e. top 20% instead of top 3% or less).

A problem with the MtG vs PoE comparison:
You can't play MtG by yourself to win prizes, and if you could... How many of the 1060 average participants would continue to compete in the Grand Prix if they were almost certain to win $500 if they devoted an equivalent amount of time to playing MtG in a room alone? In PoE, you can play by yourself and "win". There is an opportunity cost associated with race participation, because that is time that you forgo farming or experience progression on your main.

Let's look at event 39:
559 players participated and survived to level 2 or above.
503/559 (90%) received 3 or fewer points.

If you are well above average, but just below the top 10% of players, your expected outcome is 3 points per 90 minute solo. If you compete in 15 of these (22.5 hours), you'll have a karui ward, shiversting, and quill rain. Can you get more than that in 22.5 hours of farming? Since the answer to that is yes, what, then, is your motivation to race? If you're a streamer you may be inclined to race to increase viewer count, but the average player (as current data shows) does not appear to have enough incentive to devote their play time toward racing.

In a game like PoE, the problem with having minimal rewards for 97% of season race participants is the simple fact that you can "win" equal or better rewards (in functionality and/or currency value) by farming or progressing on your main. If, for so many players, the reward from race participation is so clearly inferior to the expected outcome from farming, more and more people will continue to forgo racing.

I suppose it's ultimately a question of goals:
I view races primarily as one form of content, where the longevity of the game increases for players who are motivated to participate in each season (and hence, participation should be more strongly rewarded for the average player).

Races as a form of competition comes secondary IMO. But I do believe that better rewards for more players will increase competition over time, since more players will be motivated to race (and hence more players will become experienced racers).

I think you have a point here. Now that I think about it, the alternate-art uniques are more analogous to MtG's Player Rewards Program, which gave out alternate-art version of often-played cards and was based off of attendance in sanctioned tournaments -- the majority of which were actually very small, weekly, casual affairs like the ones you describe.

I think the problem here is that GGG is trying to use the same point system both as a measure of attendance (player rewards) and of competitive skill (season ladder). These are different systems with very different purposes, and in trying to make one point system encompass both, the result is that neither is done particularly well.

So let me modify my suggestions as follows:

• Two totally different point systems: Participation Points and Ladder Points.
• Participation points are easy: 1 point per level of each account's highest-level character, per race; no other means of acquisition. That means 1 point per race is guaranteed (level 1 character)! The rewards for this are alternate-art items, similar to the current reward point system.
• Ladder Points work per my previous post in this thread. Each race would award microtransaction points to top finishers.
• At the end of the season, the top players in Ladder Points would participate in an invite-only Season Championship. Format would be 6-hour solo softcore cutthroat. Extensive official online coverage. Winner would be declared season champion. Cash prizes to top finishers.

I actually like that idea Scrotie.

Somtehing so that if I am competing in the races I feel like I am getting something, and its something I wouldn't get otherwise, because I can easily get myself to act 2 and do some of the sidequests along the way. And if I feltl ike I gained something (Closed Beta orb rewards are a good example) then this would be worthwhile.

And then you can still have a sort of 'top of the ladder'.


Just something so you have a competing against yourself to improve and a competing against everyone to be the best. If those are both options for racing it is much more fun.


I look at racing similar to actual racing, say a simple game such as trials. Now in that game you can compete against yourself to get faster and faster. You could just aim at completing it for the fun of completing (say like the fun of killing merv), or you can aim to be the best of the best if that interests you.

All those options are viable parts of the 'race', and the rewards for each (though different in the way its rewarding for just the 'fun' factor rather than a prize) are equally applied