INTRODUCTION
When Brawls V2 were introduced, most guilds were in Tier 1 or Tier 2. As a result, only those two Frays were updated. Now SPS Brawl rewards are here. In the meantime, the old-established guilds are on their way to conquer Tier 3 / Tier 4, however the Fray layout has not yet been adjusted and still dates back to the early days of V2.
A lot has changed since then. The more reason the community is asking for an updated Fray layout.
Some of our very active members of the Legendary Dragons community, the largest German speaking Splinterlands community, got together and came up with a design that we believe will result in a highly competitive atmosphere for new and old players alike.
Edit: We were not able to reach consensus either. Removing alpha only frays and reducing the number of GF frays is not supported by everyone.
Edit 2: @uwelang for instance would love to keep all alpha frays and does not mind the amount of GF Frays as they are right now. @therealwolf does not support this article bc he def. does not want to see any reduction in GF or Alpha Frays. Other members were part of the conversation and support this post. Such as whysoserious @schneegecko @louis88 @jeanpi1908 @simsahas @wrrrri @vasupi. Obviously, not every member of the legendary Dragons community has commented on this article and not every member of the main guild Legendary Dragons has participated in writing this article, nor expressed that they fully agree. However, we decided to post it and start a conversation. 100% consensus will never be reaches, also not within our community.
Link to our German speaking community: https://discord.gg/xRcpDZTqUY
Link to our international community: https://discord.gg/b4vwGeagua
OBSTACLES FOR NEWER PLAYERS
When Brawls were introduced, it was merely a nice spare time activity for guilds. Times have changed and we are at the brink of giving this game a true e-sports vibe. More and more guilds are focused on competitive Brawls. The current Brawl layout is mostly focused on pleasing OGs rather than engaging newer players.
Most guilds have to overcome the following obstacles
- There are more members than Fray spots
- Members competing for the same Fray spot
- GF Frays can’t be filled
BRAWL STATS AND FILL RATE OF FRAYS
@m0r0s analyzed Brawl 116 for Tier 1 and found the following. All GF Frays, as well as A/B Frays have an average fill rate of below 30%. Chaos Legion only Frays are the least popular Frays in the respective league.
My guess is that it is due to the restrictions in card selection. Adding the current mini edition and the associated reward and promo cards is urgently needed. For Tier 2, we can paint a similar picture. The fill rate of the GF Frays is just about 60%. Only the GF bronze Fray was able to reach 72% fill rate.
LIST OF FRAY ADJUSTMENTS
We focused primarily on creating a system that could be applied universally to all future game updates. It was most important to us that new players can be involved from the beginning and also be motivated to continue and invest in the game. Being able to truly enjoy brawls was the main objective. At the same time, we wanted to make sure that there is still a use case for older editions.
The Alpha only Frays stood out the most. We get why the Frays were there in the first place, especially because we do have guild members who would happily fill each and every alpha only Fray.
But is it sustainable? Alpha card owners are already being rewarded generously through alpha only tournaments. But, everyone who has already participated in one of those tournament can probably agree that it is not really fun to play. Card selection is so limited that in most cases RNGesus decides who wins. The tournaments are a wonderful way to actively increase ROI of alpha cards. For Brawls, however, we would like the focus on a fun gameplay and strengthening the guild community.
We made the following adjustments
- Increased the total number of Frays per Tier.
- Reduced the total number of GF Frays.
- Each tier focuses on a very specific league
- More balanced Fray layout per Tier
- The current main edition is represented
The chart below summarizes the changes and compares them to the previous layout.
The table shows the number of Frays in a given league, regardless of whether it is a GF or RF Fray.
For Tier 1, this means that there has been a total of 13 Frays. Of those 13 Frays, 4 were Novice, 5 were Bronze, 4 were Silver, 0 were Gold, 0 were Diamond.
We increased the number of Frays to 14. Of these 14 Frays, there are now 6 Novice, 5 Bronze, 3 Silver, 0 Gold, 0 Diamond.
Thanks to @schneegecko there is a more pleasant way to look at this. The graphic shows the current and future distribution of Frays across each league.
LIST OF FRAYS FOR EACH TIER
Currently there are still technical restriction in regards to promo and reward cards. However, the layout shows how we would like to see it in the future.
Link to the spreadsheet:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KZzyV279ine6aKc6psmLriLShNEnhkdhgRk3qOajBaM/edit?usp=sharing
Modern would allow all cards that are currently playable in the modern format. For the time being, however, this would probably have to be limited to one of these two options
- Untamed, Dice, Chaos Legion, Riftwachers
- Untamed, Dice, Chaos Legion, Riftwachers, all Reward and Promo cards
Both from an economic point of view, as well as enjoyment of actually playing the game, I would personally prefer the second option.
The format C/RW/P/R refers to the current main and mini-edition, as well as the associated Promo and Reward cards. For technical reasons, this probably also has to be limited to the following 2 options
- Chaos Legion, Riftwachers
- Chaos Legion, Riftwachers, all Reward and Promo cards
As before, I would also prefer option 2. As soon as the next main edition comes out, the frays would be adjusted to R/P/R. This is primarily to allow onboarding of new players.
Tier 1 should be accessible for everyone. It should provide a competitive atmosphere for new players and new guilds who just started with the game. Each guild member should get the opportunity to participate and to start earning Merits.
For Tier 2 the focus is on Bronze League plus 1 additional Silver Fray.
For Tier 3 the focus is on Silver League plus one additional Diamond Fray.
For Tier 4 the focus is on Gold League plus one additional Diamond Fray.
For Tier 5 the focus is on Diamond League plus 3 additional Gold Frays.
First of all: I really appreciate the time and effort you guys have put into this! So thank you!
It's hard, if not impossible to get a common sense, but your suggestions are going the right directions in my opinion.
My suggestion for Tier 3 would be to add 2 more GF frays and remove 1 RF Silver, modern + 1 RF Gold C/RW/P/R
I really hope there will be participation from other Guilds and players here, too!
I agree with this and would follow-up on T4 (instead of bronze) + T5 (instead of silver). The amount of GF Frays is a bit too low.
I like how well-developed this post is, you can look at it and tell that this was not thrown together in a couple of hours but thought through over the course of weeks. Much discussion was made on how to even write a post, as this was @dajoker first post. I look forward to a real introduction post from him soon as well.
I don't personally have much to say on the brawl frays themselves, other than they seem quite disconnected from the community. the research and thought behind this post should help improve that.
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great post/analysis! some of these ideas are absolutely needed. we have more people in our guild who want to brawl than we have spots for (and that's before SPS rewards). so agreed, we need more frays. on the other hand, don't agree with reducing the number of GF frays for the higher level tiers. at the higher level tiers, we also have a problem of more people wanting to battle in GF frays. but for example, you're suggesting removing half (50%) of all the gold foil frays from tier 4? that seems very extreme. if anything, tier 4 needs two GF bronze frays instead of one.
Yeah that was difficult to balance. In the end we chose the easy approach. One additional GF Fray per tier. Can you draw a picture for us? How many GF Frays should each tier have and which league should they be in?
yes, 2 more GF frays in t3, t4, t5 instead of respective novice, bronze, silver in the proposal and I'm in. Also think it's not enough GF.
Glad you pick up that topic @dajoker hower I might feel a bit different on some topics.
Not agree on the point Alpha card holders were rewarded, GF Alpha tournament are a different topic but not RF ones, as some know I enjoy my Alpha cards a lot and do not wanna lose Frays with them - they are even Alpha / Beta anyway. And a lower fill rate is even good so people need to rent or it makes some guilds more unique or better in the fights?
What do the others think? @therealwolf
TBH I was also conflicted about this. I do enjoy the alpha tournaments. I normally take the A/B fray for the same reason. Recently I switched to A/B/P/R and I must admit that it is way more fun to have a couple more options.
Otherwise, it'll be just the same song & dance every brawl. Would be fun if there was a fray rotation. This season Fray 10 is going to be alpha only, next season it'll be ABPR, the season after that is is going to be A/B.
The way I see it... tournaments are for extra income, brawls are fun and bring a more competitive element to human players... well for now at least.
I like to mix frays per brawl or even come up with total strange combination, not only per edition only or "modern/ wild", mxi up Alpha with RW or Beta with Promo only or whatever, anything new might be a bit more exciting
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Thank you for taking the time to work on improving the Brawl system, I think these are all great suggestions and are very much needed. Great post!
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Pretty interesting you finally decided to post this article after Cryptomancer literally came out to the community and stated in the brawl channel on Friday that the internal Splinterlands team has now come to a consensus for the updates to the brawl system. So while this is good for generating discussion, it is fairly apparent that the changes are already made and agreed to. Now we are just waiting for the Splinterlands team to officially share what those changes are.
I hear you and I wanted to post it earlier but life got in the way :). From what cryptomancer has hinted it seems like changes are
It is a starting point but not really addressing the issues, especially not in higher tiers.
At least that is how interpret the following 2 messages from @cryptomancer
I think the most controversial point is whether Brawls should be something different than tournaments. Very often it sounds like brawls are just seen as another way to farm rewards, pretty much the same as tournaments.
To me it is different and it should be different. Our guild often does Brawls together. It is way more of a social and competitive event than tournaments. While I do get why people want more GF Frays and Alpha Frays, I personally think Brawls should allow as many guild members as possible to join and offer a competitive environment across all leagues. Focus on PLAY and actually offer a fun opportunity to enjoy the game.
The latest changes already created a big shift towards a strong focus of ownership. Unfortunately none of the new editions allow you to be truly competitive in higher leagues, or tournaments. With Brawls we do have to chance to fix this and actually make sure that we do not lose more of the newer generation of players.
Would love to hear how @aggroed or @yabapmatt see this point.
Brawls are by far my favorite competition in Splinterlands and I would agree this is a good first step.
Perfect Idea's to bring more fun into Brawls.
That is well thought out, though not my cup of tea. While on one aspect we found a decent way to deal with
We have an internal guild-score that is calculated from contributions to the guild buildings, making a higher score an incentive to contribute more. It's just that I do this table manually and I wished for some automation. With a higher score comes the privilege to claim a favorite fray.
While indeed it would be great to have more regular foil frays in Tier 2.
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I am strongly against increasing gold foil and alpha card brawls, actually in favor of decreasing them.
I guess that means that you like my proposal?
No I don't, I would reduce Gold Foil even further :)
OK, how? :)
In my proposal there is 1 GF Fray per Tier added. So 1 in Tier2, 2 in Tier3,...
Would you want any GF Frays at all?
The diamond GF goes out
not enough people can field them
Exactly. Glory to those who can. This game isn't just about "playing", bots can do that. It's also about collecting cards.
Sure, let me know the exact number of GF Frays per Tier and I can draw something up.