The next Voting Gauntlet

[a bear]

- The multiplier needs a change in either timing or personal scoring. One's hourly schedule shouldn't be the defining factor in performance. Comebacks as a general mechanic are fine however.

- Each team should have 3 or 4 bonus units instead of just the leader. Encouraging the use of different characters is fine, penalizing people for not getting a single specific unit less so.

- There needs to be more incentive for a team to win -- not the individual's prize for being on a winning team. Have the winners and maybe runners-up become available on a banner, as prizes from quests or TT or what have you, or usable as bonus units in other modes.

There's more I'm sure, this is just off the top of my head. This mode has a lot of problems, but it's fixable. 

Edited August 7, 2017 by a bear
hit post by accident

[NekoKnight]

1 hour ago, salinea said:

The main problem with the Gauntlet is that the whole concept is super boring. The first one was okay as a novelty, but every subsequent Gauntlet has felt like a wearisome chore that I nonetheless have to go through in order to win feathers

I agree with this. People talk about that 'golden' period when the Gauntlet was exciting and memes flowed like water but it was just everyone trying out a new toy. There are two kinds of outcomes, a landslide match that we have to wait for to end despite already knowing the winner, and an artificially even, back-and-forth that we similarly wait for to end. The concept was getting stale from Gauntlet #2

[Anacybele]

9 hours ago, Sunwoo said:

My solution to a better voting gauntlet would be to just make it a battle gauntlet. Take out this whole "voting for heroes" thing. Divide the player base as evenly as you can into eight equal teams. Make a bonus hero exclusive to each team, alongside four other bonus heroes for everyone to use, and now suddenly player numbers is all that matters, not whether your team is overly popular or bandwagoning for easy feathers. Plus, this system wouldn't even require a multiplier. Players on the losing teams could be reshuffled to teams still in the game so that people can still play.

I like this idea. Sangyul here has a lot of good ideas, and this one is no exception.

It's never really been a voting gauntlet at all since you never voted to begin with, even pre-multiplier. You battled to raise a score. You didn't actually vote. Calling it a voting gauntlet was a big mistake.

I like the multiplier because it allows for more varied matchups since less popular characters would have a chance against more popular ones. Without the multiplier, you can't have, say, Ike vs Frederick. Ike would win by a big landslide. But with a multiplier, you can have this matchup and make it interesting.

However, if the whole point is popularity alone, a multiplier just kills that. And yet, curbstomping matches are no fun either. Ike just steamrolling Frederick is no fun (I sure would have trouble deciding who to side with in this one though. lol).

[Frenzify]

The gauntlet CAN'T continue to be a popularity contest if it wants to improve in any meaningful way, and be in any way fair. It's flawed on a fundamental level; most people would inevitably flock to the most popular character, and because the score is heavily based on how many people there are on a team, it's as if the most popular character has won before it's even begun.

To improve it I think the score needs to be similar to how the Arena is. You join a team, but instead of only dumping flags to get points, you get points every battle based on how many units on your team survive at the end of the battle. The overall score of the team should be the average of the everyone's score. That way it doesn't matter how many people are on a team, because it's not based on the sum of everyone's score on the team, but rather the average. That way, it's more skill based and less just mindless popularity. No arbitrary multipliers would be needed to counteract the popularity, there wouldn't be a disadvantage for male units against female units, bandwagoning would be useless, as the scores would be about the average skill of the team, rather than the sheer numbers of the team. If a person's favourite unit isn't too popular, they could still support them without the worry of them being overwhelmingly slaughtered by the overwhelmingly popular character, and they would actually have a real chance of winning.

I feel like if it remains as a popularity contest in any way, it's always going to be a battle for the devs to try to counteract the domination by the obvious favourite. But if it's a popularity contest, trying to balance against that very concept just makes things more complicated than it needs to be. See Gaius in this last gauntlet; there were quite a few people who were legitimately salty that he managed to beat two more popular characters due to the system that was in place to give less popular characters a chance against more popular opponents. If it's based on the size of the army, the more popular character should win, which is why I think the score shouldn't be based on the size of the army.

[Liliesgrace]

4 hours ago, salinea said:

The main problem with the Gauntlet is that the whole concept is super boring. The first one was okay as a novelty, but every subsequent Gauntlet has felt like a wearisome chore that I nonetheless have to go through in order to win feathers, turning me against Heroes as a whole (and i love the game otherwise!). Just... scrap the whole concept and replace it with something else that's actually fun and interesting.

That's an interesting viewpoint I hadn't considered. I personally love the Gauntlets structure for a variety of reasons: short length, doesn't cost SP so I can train at the same time, fights only every 30 minutes so on busy days I don't feel like a lose out, and getting to pick my favorite character to try and win for but have a backup liked character to pick if mine loses early on. I've never felt bored with one ever due to how fun it is to see which units you're going to fight with and how they interact together. I love that part the most.

[salinea]

6 minutes ago, Liliesgrace said:

That's an interesting viewpoint I hadn't considered. I personally love the Gauntlets structure for a variety of reasons: short length, doesn't cost SP so I can train at the same time, fights only every 30 minutes so on busy days I don't feel like a lose out, and getting to pick my favorite character to try and win for but have a backup liked character to pick if mine loses early on. I've never felt bored with one ever due to how fun it is to see which units you're going to fight with and how they interact together. I love that part the most.

I find borrowing a friend's unit pretty fun, but it's also very random; and that's about it.

I just... the whole popularity contest thing i dislike; and the every 30 minutes actually feels very burdensome since you can't really schedule this how you want in your own time.

More power to the people who do like it! (but i wish there were fewer of them; or that the rewards didn't matter so much)

Edited August 7, 2017 by salinea

[Liliesgrace]

1 minute ago, salinea said:

I find borrowing a friend's unit pretty fun, but it's also very random; and that's about it.

I just... the whole popularity contest thing i dislike; and the every 30 minutes actually feels very burdensome since you can't really schedule this how you want in your own time.

More power to the people who do like it! (but i wish there were fewer of them; or that the rewards didn't matter so much)

I guess that would be frustrating if you wanted to go back into a fight immediately or before the thirty minutes were up. Kinda like trying to immediately do another run in the training tower only to be out of SP. I hate when that happens.

[salinea]

3 minutes ago, Liliesgrace said:

I guess that would be frustrating if you wanted to go back into a fight immediately or before the thirty minutes were up. Kinda like trying to immediately do another run in the training tower only to be out of SP. I hate when that happens.

Well it's less the having to wait instead of trying again than the fact I need to be available every 30 minutes in order to play to make the most of it (and not miss a good multiplier in some cases). I can't just put the game down and do my own stuff, i need to be ready to play again in 30 minutes (and especially since my internet connection has to come from the wifi and i'm playing on a tablet, this is very limiting and would be even more if i didn't have a lot of free time)

It's kind of hell on my sleeping time too.

[Sire]

A part of me still wants to see Splatoon's Splatfest system in place for the Voting Gauntlets (where popularity and win percentage are calculated separately and then added together), but Splatoon has pure PvP while this is just "PvE against other player's units." So, I'm not sure how well that will transition into FE: Heroes, especially with the current Flag system.

Otherwise, I think I'll be more happy with a static multiplier instead of the "growing multiplier," but I'm mostly indifferent to the Voting Gauntlet save for the feathers. F!Corrin vs F!Robin was all right for the short time it lasted and the Leo memes on Reddit are mildly interesting, but I think I rather have the improved Tempest Trials than the Voting Gauntlet these days.

[Interdimensional Observer]

7 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

I agree with this. People talk about that 'golden' period when the Gauntlet was exciting and memes flowed like water but it was just everyone trying out a new toy. There are two kinds of outcomes, a landslide match that we have to wait for to end despite already knowing the winner, and an artificially even, back-and-forth that we similarly wait for to end. The concept was getting stale from Gauntlet #2

People are getting nostalgic about a phone game that has been out for just six months? What is humanity coming to!?!

[NekoKnight]

7 hours ago, Frenzify said:

To improve it I think the score needs to be similar to how the Arena is. You join a team, but instead of only dumping flags to get points, you get points every battle based on how many units on your team survive at the end of the battle. The overall score of the team should be the average of the everyone's score. That way it doesn't matter how many people are on a team, because it's not based on the sum of everyone's score on the team, but rather the average. That way, it's more skill based and less just mindless popularity. No arbitrary multipliers would be needed to counteract the popularity, there wouldn't be a disadvantage for male units against female units, bandwagoning would be useless, as the scores would be about the average skill of the team, rather than the sheer numbers of the team. If a person's favourite unit isn't too popular, they could still support them without the worry of them being overwhelmingly slaughtered by the overwhelmingly popular character, and they would actually have a real chance of winning.

I think the score shouldn't be based on the size of the army.

I like this solution. The flags could be like dueling swords where you have a limited about of trys to get the best score for your team.

The matter of team sizes is always going to leave some people salty so we should just ditch it entirely.

[kcirrot]

Just retire this game mode and replace it with something else. The multipliers are incredibly unfair in my opinion.  So much so that they sour the whole contest.  

I actually liked Camilla's curbstomp.  People stayed engaged to rank highly on their team and we got to see how much of a beating Camilla's team could dish out.

The issue that people have claimed justifies the multiplier, the predictable winner, is not repaired by the multiplier.  The multiplier can only tip the scales in favor of a team that isn't completely outclassed.  Corrin had maybe 1-2 early bonuses at the beginning but afterward got 27 Billion points through straight play.  The predicted winner won, so what purpose does the multiplier serve?

The lack of a multiplier didn't depress engagement and having it doesn't add much unpredictability.  If they can't figure out another way to make the game fun, then try something else.

[Beddlam]

My problems with the current gauntlet are as follows:

- It is usually clear within the first few hours (if not before the match-up begins) who will win, and there is basically nothing the loser can do about it.

- Punishes players for having a life: The fact that this event encourages players not to sleep or take prolonged breaks from the game is a real problem in my eyes.

- Cumulative score is heavily influenced by who you support, punishing those that support popular heroes (and again punishing those who sleep through multipliers)

I've been thinking about a solution that gets at the same basic principal as the current gauntlet, but solves what I consider to be its most pressing problems, and here is what I came up with:

-Battles and their scoring remains the same.

-Battles get their own energy system: you can fight 10 times a day, retain the 30 minute cooldown between battles.

-At the end of each hour, teams get points equal to the average points scored by team-members in battle that hour (Total score / # of players on the team). Battles count from their end time rather than their beginning time.

-The team that scores the most raw points in each hour gets a 10% bonus to their points for that hour. This bonus is for team score only, not individual score.

-Individual score reward tiers change from ranking to score benchmarks, as there would likely be a very large number of players scoring the maximum possible points.

The idea is that, while there are still advantages for the larger team, a smaller team could win with better participation and performance in their battles. The raw score bonus calculated hourly also means that a smaller team would have a chance to grab a multiplier with coordinated use of battles/flags. The hourly bonus is also a much more easily manipulated lever than the bonus multipliers to adjust how much of an advantage they want to give the bigger team. 10% is my guess as to what might feel fair, but it would be easy enough to adjust once SI had some data on this format.

Edited August 8, 2017 by Beddlam
improve formatting

[Ice Dragon]

15 hours ago, Beddlam said:

coordinated

Tell me how a team of tens of thousands is going to do that.

 

15 hours ago, kcirrot said:

The issue that people have claimed justifies the multiplier, the predictable winner

No, no, no. The multiplier's primary purpose is to prevent bandwagoning. The multiplier's secondary purpose is to increase the chance of an upset.

[kcirrot]

1 hour ago, Ice Dragon said:

Tell me how a team of tens of thousands is going to do that.

 

No, no, no. The multiplier's primary purpose is to prevent bandwagoning. The multiplier's secondary purpose is to increase the chance of an upset.

It doesn't prevent bandwagoning either, as Corrin showed.  Gaius had the multiplier almost half the round and it made no difference.  Corrin had it maybe 1-2 at the beginning.  That is only possible if everyone jumped on the bandwagon after Leo's loss.

As I said, if the best they got is the multiplier, then come up with a new game mode.  

[Ice Dragon]

33 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

It doesn't prevent bandwagoning either, as Corrin showed.  Gaius had the multiplier almost half the round and it made no difference.  Corrin had it maybe 1-2 at the beginning.  That is only possible if everyone jumped on the bandwagon after Leo's loss.

As I said, if the best they got is the multiplier, then come up with a new game mode.  

That's not bandwagoning. Bandwagoning is doing what everyone else is doing for the purpose of being on the winning side. Being a complete blow-out isn't evidence of bandwagoning.

Bandwagoning in the context of the Voting Gauntlet is joining the winning team for the sole purpose of getting the victory feathers. Before the multiplier was implemented, you were basically guaranteed more feathers for joining the winning team because the victory feathers made up for the loss of ranking feathers.

I figure most of the players that joined Team Corrin who were previously on Team Leo joined for revenge (i.e. didn't want to see Gaius win) or because they preferred Corrin over Gaius, both of which are perfectly reasonable reasons to join a team that don't count as bandwagoning.

Edited August 8, 2017 by Ice Dragon

[Hilda]

What they should add is a Point deduction or bonus depending on how you perform with your Team.

Got a deathless win? 10x Point bonus
1 Unit dies? x5 Point bonus
2 Unit die? x1 Point bonus (no Point bonus)
You loose the match? -----> the Voted Unit gets a Deduction of 1% based on their total Value accumulated so far.

[kcirrot]

22 hours ago, Ice Dragon said:

That's not bandwagoning. Bandwagoning is doing what everyone else is doing for the purpose of being on the winning side. Being a complete blow-out isn't evidence of bandwagoning.

Bandwagoning in the context of the Voting Gauntlet is joining the winning team for the sole purpose of getting the victory feathers. Before the multiplier was implemented, you were basically guaranteed more feathers for joining the winning team because the victory feathers made up for the loss of ranking feathers.

I figure most of the players that joined Team Corrin who were previously on Team Leo joined for revenge (i.e. didn't want to see Gaius win) or because they preferred Corrin over Gaius, both of which are perfectly reasonable reasons to join a team that don't count as bandwagoning.

You really think that didn't happen here?

Of course, not everyone who joined up with Corrin did so to jump on the bandwagon.  But there's little doubt that after a favorite goes down, people tend to join up with the expected winner.  We've seen this in every gauntlet to date.  If you don't intend to play a lot, it's still a better deal than joining with the expected loser.  

But again, the multiplier is simply unfair.  It's unfair to the team that gets it and the team that has to fight against it.  It hasn't changed the expected final outcome of a gauntlet yet.  It hasn't added anything other than the false impression of a contest.  If anyone from IS sees this thread, I hope they will take the opportunity to rid the game of this pernicious mechanic or just start over with a new type of game mode.

EDIT:  By the way, this mechanic has never made a character whose team I support lose.  I just fundamentally think that it's unfair to put your thumb on the scales for the team that is losing.  (Tipping the scale is OK though. )

Edited August 9, 2017 by kcirrot

[Ice Dragon]

34 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

You really think that didn't happen here?

Yes, I think that didn't happen.

Team Corrin was guaranteed to outnumber Team Gaius so badly (Team Corrin outnumbered Team Elise 4:1, and Team Elise was larger than the largest male team) that there was no doubt that joining Team Gaius was the best strategy for obtaining feathers.

Furthermore, players that join for victory feathers and don't intend to play at all don't matter because they aren't contributing to either team.

The players that matter for preventing bandwagoning are the ones that join the winning team for the victory feathers and intend to fully contribute to the Voting Gauntlet to bolster their team and cumulative rankings. The point is that players who are actively contributing to the Voting Gauntlet's results and do not care about who wins should not be incentivized to join the larger team, and that's exactly what the multipliers do.

[kcirrot]

4 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

The players that matter for preventing bandwagoning are the ones that join the winning team for the victory feathers and intend to fully contribute to the Voting Gauntlet to bolster their team and cumulative rankings. The point is that players who are actively contributing to the Voting Gauntlet's results and do not care about who wins should not be incentivized to join the larger team, and that's exactly what the multipliers do.

Well, I disagree, but you haven't addressed my fundamental objection.  The multipliers are unfair.  

Again, do something else if you don't want the popularity contest to be a popularity contest.    And that is the intention.  You can go on the official page of the Voting Gauntlet right now, where the Voting Gauntlet is described as:

Quote

The Voting Gauntlet is a special event where eight Heroes put their pride on the line and battle it out in a tournament to determine who will come out on top!

The most popular Hero will be decided over three rounds, each lasting 45 hours.

https://support.fire-emblem-heroes.com/voting_gauntlet/howtoplay

I didn't make that up, that's what the game is supposed to be.  For reasons that are unclear to me, people have a problem with popular characters winning a popularity contest.  OK, that's fine, I sort of agree that there's little point to it other than seeing who people like at the earlier rounds.  But then do something else, come up with a different game mode that doesn't have the popularity element.  What you don't do is say, "Well let's just give the team that's losing extra points so they can look like they are catching up."  The contest is literally rigged at that point.

 

[Ice Dragon]

14 minutes ago, kcirrot said:

Well, I disagree, but you haven't addressed my fundamental objection.  The multipliers are unfair.  

Again, do something else if you don't want the popularity contest to be a popularity contest.    And that is the intention.  You can go on the official page of the Voting Gauntlet right now, where the Voting Gauntlet is described as:

I didn't make that up, that's what the game is supposed to be.  For reasons that are unclear to me, people have a problem with popular characters winning a popularity contest.  OK, that's fine, I sort of agree that there's little point to it other than seeing who people like at the earlier rounds.  But then do something else, come up with a different game mode that doesn't have the popularity element.  What you don't do is say, "Well let's just give the team that's losing extra points so they can look like they are catching up."  The contest is literally rigged at that point.

A popularity contest fails to be a popularity contest when a portion of the voters don't care who wins, but are told that voters on the winning team get bigger prizes, especially when said voters are allowed to wait to see who is winning before choosing a side.

I don't see a problem with the more popular character winning. I see a problem with indifferent players bandwagoning on the predicted winner and resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy because it gives more feathers for the same amount of effort.

I personally don't find upsets particularly interesting because all it results in is frustrated players, which is why I still prefer the static 3× multiplier.

[tumut]

Should be more of a battle gauntlet, based on the skill of one teams players rather than how many players the team has as a whole. But then the bonus character who lost the matchup would be at a major disadvantage, but it could work. No easy fix.

Id love archers, Takumi vs. Klein, Jeorge vs. Virion, Setsuna vs. Rebecca, Leon vs. Niles.

Mages 2.0 is another one I want. I was mad salty after Linde lost to that Thotticus Tharja.

Lilina vs. Mae, Nino vs. Delthea, Katarina vs. Soren, Boey vs. Odin

And cavalry guantlet

Frederick vs. Eldigan, Cecilia vs. Reinhardt,  Mathilda vs. Titania , Cain vs. Abel

 

 

Edited August 10, 2017 by tumut

[NekoKnight]

I still don't know why people are stuck on "It's a popularity contest! Multipliers are unfair!" The devs have been adjusting each Gauntlet to be a more fair competition, but people still flip out because the word "Voting" is in the title. If they wanted a straight popularity contest, everyone would have one vote, there would be no battles or bonus units and there would be no reward for winning to prevent bandwagoning. But look! It appears they want to have gameplay and a way to keep even the losers enaged. It's not and never was a straight popularity contest.

[TheTuckingFypo]

I know it's taken me a while to respond here, but I've been busy and haven't really been able to fully flesh out my thoughts until now.

1. The Voting Gauntlet needs a different name - because it's not a popularity contest, or politics. It's really a Worldwide Team battle Gauntlet. I guess Voting Gauntlet sounded better? I say we call it Fight Club.
2. It will never be fair, unless we remove the multipliers and the ability to see the accumulative scores of each bracket/team all together. If people can't decide what Team to join, they'll look up the score and either bandwagon with who they think will win, or pick a team they know will lose for feathers. By removing this, people will be more inclined to pick their favorite character of the bunch. Sure, people may still bandwagon, but I don't think it would be as bad as, say, Team Camilla/Lucina.
3. To make it even more fair, I would have the score based on the sum of every team member's individual performance. This might even stop the band wagoner's from band wagoning, if they jump on a team for victory feathers.. Maybe do what they do to calculate a player's score like they do in the Arena, with the total BST, and mabye have a survivability multiplier like in Tempest Trial. 
4. For ease of use, I would remove the 30min cooldown, in favor of 90 total plays per round. You see, it's inconvenient if you have a life. For me, I have a hard time with the gauntlet in it's current form (and I bet most of America does too), since for me, Rounds start at midnight, so I completely miss every effective multiplier in the beginning. 

That's what I think.