Hey mortals,
InFinitySquid here, your resident Product Manager of Monetization. Weekend Ranked is getting its first big shake up in a while, a change that comes in two parts: pack rewards and the introduction of $GODS rewards as a temporary bonus.
Weekend Ranked has been our Play & Earn frontrunner in Gods Unchained for a while now, offering players the chance to earn packs through play, but we’re also going to experiment with adding $GODS rewards to the mix while we build out our future daily Play and Earn systems.
TLDR;
- Card pack rewards: Weekend Ranked card pack rewards are being updated to discourage deranking and encourage climbing to the top. After community feedback, we’ve tweaked our initial proposal to keep competition in Mythic rank fierce. We have also ensured everyone gets more access to Core Packs at lower ranks so they can build more competitive decks.
- $GODS rewards: With Blessing of the $GODS coming to an end, we want to ensure players can still earn $GODS through play. Blessing of the $GODS won’t be extended as it was too exploitable by bots and bad actors. We’re currently building out a new system for daily $GODS rewards, but in the interim we will integrate $GODS rewards into Weekend Ranked to ensure you have a way to earn $GODS before the next iteration lands.
- Matchmaking updates: In order to make Weekend Ranked matches more competitive, we’ve updated our matchmaking system to prioritize matching players of the same rank. If no match is found within 60 seconds, players will be matched one rank above or below. This will apply to all matches going forward, not just Weekend Ranked.
These changes will be going live this weekend, beginning when the Weekend Ranked event kicks off Friday @ 4am Feb 4 PST.
Let’s dive into what these look like:
Card pack rewards
Recently we posted about changes to Weekend Ranked’s reward system in order to discourage a behavior we’ve been seeing known as “deranking”. The idea is to tweak the rewards system so we stop seeing players intentionally losing matches ahead of Weekend Ranked, in order to have a better chance of winning once the event begins.
We’ve read through the feedback from all of you across our community channels and have made some updates to the proposal. With these changes, a bunch of ranks see an increase in core packs to the rewards systems and, as per the previous designs, Gold rank and above have seen an increase in expansion packs.
Mythic reward updates:
Mythic rewards were tied to the top tier of play, when in reality, Mythic is quite a big bucket of elite players who have fought tooth and nail to the top. We wanted to make sure Mythic feels special, and you want to fight to stay in it, instead of opting to fall out of it. Here are a few tweaks:
- We have decided to offer more access to Legendary Core Packs at lower win rates in Mythic so that more players in this rank have an opportunity to access valuable Core cards. The goal of creating a meteorite card through The Forge is a strong motivator for players to engage more actively in all areas of the Gods Unchained economy, so by being more generous with these core packs we hope to give players more reasons to invest their $GODS and Flux in The Forge.
- We have added more expansion packs in the middle Mythic win rates to give a more tangible increase in value as players achieve higher win rates. There was little difference in value between wins in this area of the Mythic rewards. Since getting even one extra win at Mythic Rank can be difficult, we wanted to make sure that each win at this level earned players some additional value.
- We have offered more players within Mythic opportunities to earn expansion packs even if they get low win rates to further incentivise players to remain in Mythic and not reduce their rank. Since Mythic rank contains our most dedicated and skilled players, we want to ensure that everyone is eligible for some expansion packs even if they are facing difficult competition.
New player to Diamond rewards:
One piece of feedback that we received multiple times was that we try to find a way to offer rewards to newer players that they would find useful at their stage of the game. As a result of this, we have done a large increase of the number of core packs we give out at lower ranks. These cards can give new players a significant boost in the power of their decks and allow them to come up with new strategies. Core packs also present a limited risk to the game economy as players need both Flux and $GODS to mint them as NFTs and trade them on the marketplace.
We've updated the prize tables on the 'Play & Earn with Weekend Ranked' page. Check 'em out!
A massive thank you to each and every mortal who shared their feedback on this proposal. We appreciate your passion when it comes to making Gods Unchained a better game for all!
$GODS rewards
With Blessing of the $GODS coming to a close, $GODS earnings have disappeared from the game. We have been building up a better version of this system, but it’s not ready just yet. Our goal is to make $GODS rewards available 24/7 to players, but building this system takes time. As a temporary solution, we’re integrating $GODS into Weekend Ranked as it’s a less exploitable format than Blessing of the $GODS.
A focus on skilful play
Previously players could earn an allocation of $GODS that was distributed pretty evenly between everyone. If a player put the effort in across a week to participate in and win the required number of matches then they would earn a portion of that week’s allocation of $GODS. This system had the unfortunate side effect of being exploitable by automated bots that could achieve the required number of wins just by playing a lot of matches, even if those matches had low win rates.
In order to ensure we focus on distributing $GODS rewards to users who are engaged with the game but who are also playing skillfully, integrating $GODS into the Weekend Ranked event allows us to reward players for more skilful execution and achieving higher win rates over a set number of matches. This is a solution that will be monitored and tweaked over time.
Integrating our $GODS rewards with the Weekend Ranked system also has the added benefit of us being able to take advantage of our system to catch bots and other bad actors and prevent them from earning any allocation of $GODS rewards, which ensures tokens rewards are being distributed to the mortals who deserve them.
$GODS through the ranks
The main goal behind integrating the $GODS rewards with Weekend Ranked is to require those that are seeking to earn the token to play effectively. By tying the rewards to the first 18 Weekend Ranked matches, we can ensure that it’s tougher for accounts to earn rewards if they aren’t playing strategically.
This will manifest in two forms:
- Players at higher ranks will earn more $GODS.
- Players who win more matches during the Weekend Ranked event will earn more $GODS. Given that the competitive difficulty increases as you rise the ranks, lower ranks will have access to fewer $GODS and will need to win more matches in order to earn rewards. This ensures it is desirable to continue to climb the ranks, instead of encouraging you to deliberately drop rank.
Reducing access to our token for lower ranks has two benefits. Firstly it encourages players to improve their skills in Gods Unchained so that they can be competitive at higher ranks. Better Weekend Ranked rewards and access to more $GODS is a strong incentive for players to be as competitive as possible. The other advantage of removing access to $GODS at lower ranks is that it significantly reduces the ability for bots to generate reliable revenue. Since automated bots don’t have the ability to think strategically like a player does, they generally have lower win rates compared to our active players. If the players who run these bots lose access to the $GODS token then there will be a much lower incentive for them to engage with the game.
$GODS pool allocation
The total pool of $GODS available during Weekend Ranked will function differently to Blessing of the $GODS. Rather than basing the pool size off of an absolute number of eligible players, we will instead adjust the size of the pool depending on how many eligible players there are compared to the previous Weekend Ranked event. This means that each week the size of the pool will change.
This is based off the following:
Starting $GODS Reward Pool: 100,000
Maximum $GODS Reward Pool: 210,000
$GODS Reward Pool Automatic Adjustment Algorithm
This approach allows more consistency when it comes to the number of $GODS being awarded to players each week. If the pool was static, the number of $GODS per player would decrease if more players participated and increase if less players participated. This new system will allow us to adjust the amount of $GODS in the pool each week so even if our player base increases, there will be more $GODS available for distribution.
Keep in mind, this is our first attempt at changes of this nature and they are not set in stone! We will continue monitoring player behaviour and our own internal metrics to ensure we keep tweaking our system to create the best experience for our players.
For a full list of how many points will be available across different ranks and win rates, please visit this spreadsheet.
As with the Blessing of the $GODS event, whatever percentage of the total points earned by all players that the player has earned over the Weekend Ranked event will represent their cut of the total $GODS reward pool available that weekend.
$GODS reward for Weekend Ranked = (Your points / Total points of all participating players) * $GODS Reward Pool
Claiming
As for the claiming of whatever allocation of $GODS tokens you receive, the process will be quite similar. Once the allocation has been completed on our end, any $GODS can be claimed from the Claims Page on the Gods Unchained website. A new section will be created for Weekend Ranked and all available $GODS will be claimable from this section. This section will be visible when the first $GODS rewards have been distributed.
While we iron out this process, Weekend Ranked $GODS rewards will become claimable within 7 days after each event concludes.
Wen?
Since Play and Earn is a fundamental part of Gods Unchained, we want to ensure that players can earn $GODS tokens again as soon as possible. As a result, we are targeting our next Weekend Ranked event to include this first iteration of our new $GODS reward system (kicking off Friday @ 4am PST Feb 4, 2022). We will be keeping a close eye on community feedback and internal metrics to ensure that the system is doing what we intend but is also benefiting our players.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post!
~InFinitySquid, Product Manager of Monetization
