Increase leaderboard rewards by reducing lottery rewards.

[queen rose]

Increase leaderboard rewards by reducing lottery rewards.

Every two weeks, a huge amount of ILV tokens is distributed through the lottery. Winning the lottery (even without taking 1st place) is far more profitable than grinding Gauntlet 24/7.
I see how people put effort into this mode and live by it. My free time doesn’t allow me to grind that much, but I admire their dedication.
However, it seems to me that the rewards for their hard work are absurdly low right now.

The team previously acknowledged that the Airdrop strategy was flawed, and now the game is designed to reward those who truly put in effort.
But it feels like these lotteries prevent grinders from earning decent rewards.

I suggest cutting lottery rewards several times and reallocating those funds to increase leaderboard rewards.

Again, I don’t grind 24/7, but I see others doing it. I understand that it’s a tough mental and physical effort for very little return.

[kindred roost]

Your lottery tickets scale with the amount of grind you do, so your chance at winning goes up the more you play, lottery IS the grind reward. Leaderboard IS the skill reward (at a base level of grind)

[queen rose]

The thing is, playing a huge number of matches just for the sake of quantity, while sipping beer – that's easy. It doesn't take any real effort.

But being in the TOP 1-5 – that's hard work. And it’s not rewarded enough.

Playing Illuvium just to rack up games isn't nearly as hard as playing Illuvium while giving your absolute best in every single match.

[muted haven]

I completely agree with Winnie: the amount of ILV given out by the "wheel of fortune" game is hugely disproportionate to the effort required to earn rewards in competitive events.

This "just play and if you're lucky, we'll reward you" philosophy clashes directly with the competitive landscape. It seems to prioritize "Just Press Play" much more than it does "Get Good and Be Rewarded."

A solution I suggested some time ago was to reward raffles with Fuel instead of ILV, or at least to significantly rebalance the proportion between the luck-based wheel and the players who strive to improve and seek out competition.

[kindred roost]

One could argue grinding 16 hours per day but only making it to top x while farming lottery tickets is hard work as well
But if your point is "The amount of rewards in the lottery is disproportionate to the amount of rewards for leaderboards" then that's a fine point, I just don't agree lotteries are not for grinders

[queen rose]

I don’t know who’s right here. Everyone has their own perspective on the situation. Let’s wait for the community’s opinions.

[muted haven]

Lotteries are good for grinders, reward lotteries winners 5x the true competitive players is not.
/my 2 cents.

[kindred roost]

200 ILV per week for leaderboard and 200 ILV every 2 weeks for lottery 🧐

Or did this change?

[muted haven]

1st lottery ticket wins 100 ILV, 1st Leaderboard winner wins 20 ILV weekly so even if we count two weeks is like more than double the amount the top player of the LB get, correct?

not considering community events..there we have 60 ILV for the whole tournament so it s doesn even need to be considered

It's concerning that a competitive game like Gauntlet currently rewards luck-based ticket winners more generously than its skilled players, from the top ranks down to those who consistently perform well.

[kindred roost]

You are measuring by reward per rank, I am measuring by total rewards

Another measure to solve this is to make the reward distribution more top heavy

But tournaments are already top heavy by definition and a lot harder to game with multi-accounting, so why not increase tournament rewards and decrease leaderboard rewards?

[grave basalt]

this isn't really true, if you want top 3 you have to basically play minimum 12 hours a day with a >2 average for at least the 1st 2 weeks before the reset system

when levi rewards were supposed to be "coming in 4-5 weeks" like 2 months ago why not just put those rewards in normal gauntlet and double the pool?

[ivory grail]

Lotteries reward grinding
Tournaments reward skill
Leaderboards reward grinding + skill

Rewarding grinding and skill is good for the game and the lottery is a great idea
However you don't need to give 200 $ILV to incentivize grinding, 100 every 2 weeks was enough with 50, 30 and 20 $ILV to win

Now if you remove 100 $ILV from the lottery rewards it will just feel bad so it's better to put them somewhere else like on the leaderboard or in a new tournament

I know someone who could be interested in organizing tournaments if you want @kindred roost

[grave basalt]

why is the lottery a lot for very few people instead of significant enough (10 ILV) for 20 people?

[muted haven]

fair point, good luck multi-accounting a live event lol

[grave basalt]

it's easy to do it, you just have multiple accounts qualify and then choose to play on the one that u think has easier lobby in theory, but i'd assume if the team can't catch that it's doomed anyways

[muted haven]

The core issue is that over 90% of these 'events' lack any qualification window; it's simply a matter of 'register and play casual gauntlet'
This makes it even easier to exploit: players can register multiple accounts and target only the easier lobbies. At the very least, implementing qualifiers would genuinely incentivize people to engage in ranked play and strive for improvement.

[kindred roost]

Because "actually significant" for few is more emotional and marketable than "just significant enough" for slightly more, look at real world lotteries

[kindred roost]

We have work to do on tournament structure yes but different topic

[kindred roost]

Very personally not a fan of incentivizing weekly leaderboards themselves, I don't think they help in our main goal of increasing playerbase unless we vastly increase it but that sounds unsustainable to me, would rather put that in tournaments or other economic mechanisms, leverage it as an entry somehow for much more lucrative tournaments, but tournament structure is not my forte by any stretch

[kindred roost]

Or alternatively more top heavy

[queen rose]

Just an idea: there's no need to pump up rewards only for the top players. The funds should be distributed proportionally across all TOP 100 categories.
Of course, with slight adjustments to round the numbers.

[slender sorrel]

If we treat arena as a standalone product it would simplify the decision making a bit.. imo.

if there is no way for money to go in - no money should go out.

Imo - remove all rewards untill there is real structure and revenue generating products available, like a battlepass and cosmetics and what not.

I think rewards have already sort of proven it rly doesnt do much for us at this moment in time.

[muted haven]

Battlepass ❤️

the moment you remove the rewards the game will have 4 players (the ones who play coz they like it)

But bleeding ILV for this playerbase isn t worth the money too

[grave basalt]

i do agree with that tho, paying right now is completely useless unless you consider it worth it to keep 100-200 unique players involved

[muted haven]

the drama of web3 games.

And..memories go wen we played several hours per day..in survival..no rewards, no airdrop..only the leaderboard braggin right..ahh...good old times

[kindred roost]

4 😅

[main rune]

If the lottery rewards were meant for grinders to increase the number of games played, there would be much better ways to approach this. For example, you could set thresholds for the number of games played, and if you reach those, you get a multiplier for your tickets. That would reward effort and grind more than luck.

Atm, out of the five people who have played the most, only one has won something. This is really discouraging for the others and probably makes them less likely to keep playing as much, which in turn causes the 200 ILV we give out to have a negative impact on player sentiment.

An example if we really want the lottery could be.

15 games 1.2 x multiplier
25 games 1.5x multiplier
50 games 2.5x multiplier
75 games 6x multiplier
100 games 10x multiplier

This would give players short term goals and a sense of progress while playing for rewards and also increase the chance for them to play more. But overall, I think the lottery, as it’s structured now with the rewards in proportion to ranked rewards, brings more negatives than positives but with this system it would at least be better.

[kindred roost]

But overall, I think the lottery, as it’s structured now with the rewards in proportion to ranked rewards

Why? Why the lottery inherently? Why dependent on the proportion going up or down

I like your piecewise linear function over our current quadratic function better as well even though I think the numbers are whack but that's details but it requires good UI and UX and integrating those, takes effort away from other things, especially given something similar to it is planned for the Battle Pass, just simpler

Atm, out of the five people who have played the most, only one has won something

Definition of a lottery, how often do those with the most purchased tickets win in a national lottery? Still people keeping buying if the end result is substantial

[tall ore]

just my take, but I doubt anyone plays more games because of the raffles since the outcome is so random. So once again we're just throwing away money for nothing.

[ivory grail]

I think that some players below top 20 who were the biggest grinders did play hundreds of games mainly for the raffle
I'm thinking about STE, Carablu and others that I forgot

Now I see them less often so maybe they gave up because they never got picked or due to the soft reset

[main rune]

Because if the proportion goes up, it rewards grinding more and makes it less likely for someone with only 10 games to win. In turn, this increases the chances that players will play more, which means we actually get more value from the money we're putting into it.

Why do you even compare it to a normal lottery when they don't even have the same purpuse or function?

[tall ore]

yeah doesn't surprise me exactly because of what I said. It's too random.

We would put this money into much better use if we did something like Splinterlands where for each victory or in our case top 4 you gain points and accumulate loot boxes. Then these loot boxes can have high or low rewards in it and it wouldn't have to be just ILV. It's a much more fun and engaging system than this raffle system.

[grave basalt]

Why don't we do axie / parallel type earning again? combine winning with higher rank = higher earn and then straight up no one is gatekept? 1 game a day guy can do it and not feel he's losing anything, same for 5 games a day guy, same for 12 hours a day guy.

[kindred roost]

I wouldn't advise upping the proportion on the lottery, and frankly I haven't seen many "marketable events" from it so we're not really getting from it what we want, we're adjusting the lottery for the Battle Pass but proportions TBD, probably needs to be much more substantial but less frequent to make it marketable

I think upping tournament rewards is the main win if we're shifting

I compare it to a normal lottery for psychology on perception of monetary reward, the "function" is vastly different ofc

[main rune]

Oh, maybe we misunderstood each other. I was referring to how many tickets you get, not ILV. I already think the ILV part is way too high in comparison to the leaderboard. Yeah, I agree that upgrading tournament rewards is the way to go, but we still need to get people into the habit of playing the game and keep them engaged, and that happens through leaderboard rewards, even though they’re not as effective as a marketing tool.

[dusk fossil]

I´ve been reading both threads, this one about lottery and the one about leaderboard weekly soft reset / etc.

I guess , a mix of implementing better both mechanics are needed if we want to keep actual player base engaged. We need to reduce lottery rewards and find a way to make resets with sense.

I guess the best things to do, and almost 80% player base will agree are:

• Hard reset the leaderboard every 4 weeks, no weekly resets.
• Reduce biweekly lottery price to 100 ILV (10 winners with 10 ILV each, that will give more reasons to many players to commit and grind, because there will be more chances)
• Reduce leaderboard prices in ILV spots from top 100 to top 50. Pay 51place to 100place in fuel. Now we have 200ILV we took from raffles that we can add to leaderboards , so ,250ILV weekly into 50 spots on leaderboard should be definitely the way to go.

This will solve most of the actual issues and even make players to commit much more . Top players can get better rewards, middle players will be rewarded better, and lottery hunters will have more chances.

PD: These are my personal numbers, not 100% should go this way, but is a good start.