Gods Unchained - Community Contest, why it is flawed

I thought I would use this post to take a look at the revamped or reworked Community Quest. This time slightly reworked and dubbed Community Contest. In it, I will go over my reasons for why I think it is flawed and probably never should have left the idea stage.

What has changed

First, we need to take a look at what is changed from the first iteration that basically got the entire GU community all riled up. To this current iteration. The biggest thing that has changed, and probably the main reason why most people were upset with the first version is the number of "winners".

The change was made from only rewarding the top 20 players in Mythic rank to now include the top 20 players of the top 7 ranks. That is Astral Meteorite, at rank 6 and above. The total amount of $GODS tokens allocated to each week, and the number of winners in each rank do shift from week to week. But these numbers and shifts are the same as in the original event. So the only difference is that 6 more ranks now have winners as well.

Adding these other ranks will have a pretty noticeable effect on the winnings. The way the rewards now get distributed is by allocating half to Mything, then half of what is left to Ethereal Diamond, and so on. As an example, this is the breakdown of the first week, the week where the winning is distributed amongst the fewest players as well as the highest amount. 

The rest of the weeks the math comes to the same numbers for all three weeks. And the numbers are 1/4 of these. This breaks down as follows the top spot gets 125 $GODS while the lowes get a whopping 2 $GODS. The total number of players who can win goes up from 140 to 560 players.

My thoughts and why I think this event is flawed

If we look at the event as it originally was designed. It looked to be an event solely designed for and to engage the whales in the game. And while I am fully aware of the fact that the very majority of games that are "free to play" need whales in order to survive. I am fully aware of that. But I have to say there has to be a better way to appease the whales and make them feel like they are getting value for their money.

This sort of becomes clear when you look at the type of decks you need in order to participate. Week two, "the Golden Age: Your deck must include cards from Genesis, Trial of the Gods, and Divine order sets ONLY". And week four, "Stuff of Legends: Your deck must contain AT LEAST 10 Legendary Cards". Being able to craft a deck from older cards, let alone a viable one is most likely requiring you to open your wallet. Unless you're one of the OG players from the launch. The same goes for constructing a deck with 10 legendaries in it, let alone a viable deck.

There it blows, the $GODS whale

Not to mention the first week's event, War of Aggression; cards no more expensive than 5 mana. The aggro player's dream. But then we take a look and see that agro decks compared to control deck is typically way more expensive. 

From the designed standpoint these events seem designed to either appeal to players who have a lot of cards, or players who can open their wallets and get a lot of cards. I do feel that there has to be a better way to give the whales their due. 

The name

A second point I would like to make that is also very important. That is the name. The well-known line from Romeo and Juliet "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" I would argue applies here as well. The rule of it does anyway because crap by any name still smells like crap. Let me explain.

If we take the first name the event had "Community Quest". If we look at these two words separately. If we look up the word community definition we find this; a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. And if we do the same for quest: search for something. But probably more accurately reflected in RPGs as a set task the player needs to perform.

Let's go on a quest together and see if we can find the treasure. You want to fight me for it, but why?

We as a community need to search for something or do something. And the criteria for each week would fit with the quest part. No arguments there. But the fact that the community should fight amongst themselves and only a handful get rewarded. That is where it goes off the rails. A community quest, for me, is an event where the community as a whole can participate and help with the given task. And in the process making people care more for the game, the community grows stronger by working together.

Instead, we got something more akin to The Hunger Games, or the original 2000 movie Battle Royale. A true master piece of cinema and one I can highly recommend you try and find and watch. Where the poor need to fight amongst themselves in order to entertain the masters. Maybe this got fixed with the rework tho. Let's have a look. Community Quest was renamed to Community Competition. They decided to change the part that actually made sense and double down on the part that did not.

I get that for the game it is good to build the community. What this is actually doing is causing a rift between the community and the Gods Unchained team. Even if it in some cases is only a small rift in the unconsciousness of the player. That small rift is all you need to plant a seed that later will crack the very foundation of trust. This is either by many more similar small cracks, joining up. Or by a large wedge driven into the small crack by force.

The Community

And to give a little perspective on the community and its size of it. There are currently 14-15,000 players distributed across the different ranks in the game. And in Mythic, there are around 580 players. This will mean that the absolute majority of players will be left out of the rewards, probably not even bothering to try.

140 players of a total of 14,000, that is 1%. So at best 1% of the player base can expect to get rewarded by participating in this "community" event. To me that sounds like the very opposite of a community event. And at best 4% for the last event.

And just to make it clear. I am not saying that I think the GU team should give $GODS to every player. But changing the name and removing the "community" part of it would help solve a lot of things. As it all comes down to perception. And while a rose still smells the same no matter what you call it. A name matter. And an unfortunate name can lead to a lot of bad things and unnecessary headaches. A good example of this is "Global Warming". That is an extremely bad name for something that is causing the weather to become more extreme by raising the temperature.

Who would have ever thought that a mere snowball would disprove all of science and once and for all prove that Global Warming does not exist... I found no picture of an a*s hat, sorry.

Had they instead gone with what most people now use, Climate Change, things would have gone a lot smoother. You would not have had a a*s hat bringing snowballs into the US senate. Claiming it does not exist because it is cold outside. And yes that really did happen. There are other examples of this as well. 

In short in my opinion, if you only plan to reward 4% of the community for participating in a community event. That is a no-fly for me.

Financial incentive

There is also a new issue who have come along with the new reworked event. That is the issue of de-ranking. This was not an issue with the original design, as they only paid out to the top 20 players in Mythic, a completely different can of worms. But now with rewards being spread out among the top 7 tires. Suddenly de-ranking becomes an issue. 

If I was one of the middle or bottom-ranked players in mythic. My chances of beating the other 580 players are probably slim to none. But if I de-rank, then suddenly I would have a greater advantage, because I know I can beat the players there. Or maybe I should de-rank one more rank, just to be sure I can get a top 20 spot.

But de-ranking is not allowed. Of course, it isn't. But how will you be able to tell if a player is doing it intentionally or not? As long as they just don't enter a game and resigned? It becomes pretty blurry very fast, and it would probably cost way more than the entire event to monitor plays during the event. And I have not tested the standard, re-ranking look-out features that are in the game, and not planning to. So I can not speak to whether they are adequate or not.

Words matter, again

The last problem I would like to point out might be considered unimportant by many, or even petty by some. But as a hobby board game designer myself. Having spent many hours both reading rules for games and writing them myself. I would kind of have to say that rules matter. They are important. And especially if there is a flaw in them that potentially can break the game. Piqued your interest yet as to what this potentially game-breaking thing is? Let's see if you can find it.

Let's play a game, can you spot the game braking part?

Did you find it? I will not teas you any longer, the problem is the second sentence: "You will receive points based on the rank of your opponent". If we apply this to the event this means that all players, who participate, will get the same amount of points. Well as long as you did not de-rank or rank up during the event. And it will all come down abe be decided by the tiebreaker rule.

Nowhere in the criteria does it say you need to win to get points. Indirectly you still need to win tho in order for you to beat out people in the tiebreak. So maybe they thought that was enough. 

The general rule for writing rules, in case you are interested, is this. Everyone who reads the rules is an idiot, so make sure you write them so an idiot understands them. That means implying thing is a big no no. And one could argue that it is implied that you need to win because you have to participate in the Daily Play & Earn. But the reality is that you only need to play 1 ranked game to participate.

When it comes to things that involve money, like this event. I would therefore advise that it is much better to err on the side of caution. Use both belt and suspenders. Why risk it? People can become very "changed" lets call it as soon as money is involved.

And in case you wonder, I have of course brought this issue to the attention of GU. But it has fallen on deaf ears.

What could they have done instead?

The easiest thing they could have done would have been to never use the word "community" to begin with. And at the very least they should have changed that part of the name when they reworked the event. But in all honesty, the majority of the damage was done with the first event. For them to be able to "redeem" themselves the reworked event needed to be a proper community event.

But maybe it is very hard to design a community event? Sure, that may be. But then I would argue they probably need to hire a proper game designer ASAP. Because if they can't figure out a simple thing as a community event. Then they have much larger problems. Or the persons in charge of this event need to have someone sign off on the event, who has the proper knowledge to be able to see things like this before they go public. And sorry if I am stepping on any toes here. But that is the truth of the matter. The way I see it at least.

There are a few things they could have done that would have been pretty simple, but yet effective. one such thing could have been to have the criteria they already have. But have all of the community-ranked games count. Have a criteria for "you need to contribute x in order to get the reward". And then have brackets. Brackets where if the community as a whole can cross them the reward you get is increased. And the reward can even be based on your rank Meaning higher ranks get bigger and better rewards.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. I fixed the event. I would however most likely lump the gods together in one big pile, and save that for the first or last event. And for the remaining three have the rewards be either special event cards or just card packs. 

This way also players would have an incentive to actually try and increase their ranks, instead of decreasing it. Because a higher rank would mean you're part of a better reward bracket. 

And that is just a very simple and basic way to do it. You can design more complex community events.

Please let me know if you disagree with me or agree with my analyses of the event. I would love to hear your opinion on it. And also if you have any ideas of how you would have designed a community event please share them as well. The comment section is open to you. If you would like to support me and the content I make, please consider following me, reading my other posts, or why not do both instead.

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Picture provided by: Gods Unchained Media, https://unsplash.com/, https://pixabay.com/, Thumbnail is screenshot taken from the 1968 movie Oliver