User blog:ShinnyShin/The Problems with the Multiplayer League

My fellow players.

It's been over a month since the World Series got replaced by the new MP League. Now I'm going to talk about this massive change to one of the most fundamental aspects of the game. I'm not going to totally rip this feature to shreds, because there are some good and welcome changes it has brought along. So let's start with the bad news first.

THE BAD NEWS

SEASON TICKETS : Why?? With the introduction of the Season Tickets, gameplay is essentially limited to 5 or 6 profitable races a day. Your Player Rating can't advance any further if you play for free and you don't get any substantial rewards in Free Play mode. You now have to choose wisely on variables such as these: - the type of car you will use (it will have to be one of your best cars) - if you're going to need boosters (read: YES YOU WILL) - who's in the lobby (if opponents are in OP cars, then be very careful as that could cost you a win) - what time of day you're going to use up those Season Tickets (since the best players only show up at certain times of day)

You see, with Season tickets, your game time is drastically reduced compared to the older format where you could race at any time you liked and earn a fair amount of Credits if you had a decent car. Your Player Rating would increase/decrease depending on whether you won/lost a race and your skills were always put to the test with more or less balanced opponents.

Now, unless you use these Season Tickets all the time, your Player Rating (and your position on the Leaderboard) will not move up and it really slows the pace at which you can win the better rewards. And even when you win a race, your Rating won't really increase by much unless you're up against racers who are ranked above you. But then if you lose, your Rating will go down massively. It's as though this is skewed in favor of big losses and small gains. Even if you come at least 2nd place, you can still lose Rating!

And guess what? On top of that, Season Tickets are super-hard to come by, even more so than Tokens! You only have a slot for 2 on a given day (though you can have more) but once you use them all up, you have to wait 6 HOURS to receive more. Not good news for hard-core players.

But wait! You don't have to wait that long for more Tickets, it will only cost you TOKENS to refill them! Tokens that you're trying to win in the first place! Yep, you heard me right, racing to win and gain from those wins with the shortest wait times will now cost you Tokens. Never thought I'd see the day when simply racing Multiplayer would now ask players for Tokens. But at least it's not too aggressive about it.

Long story short, Season Tickets suck.

POINTS : To Save, or Not to save? Secondly, the saving points system. It's a straight rip from the widely criticized Enduro Double Down format and it's another luck-based gambling feature that came with this Update. Now, to all the gamblers out there, exercise caution wit this one. Risking your points for better rewards does pay off, but it's very buggy and unreliable. If you Risk your points and lose your connection, or the game crashes, or if the game thinks you've lost even when you haven't, you lose everything gained so far.

There's more, though! If you do lose points, there's an option to save those points ... for ONLY 200 Tokens. Which unless you already have a significant amount, will cost you money. Or you could just skip ahead and save only 5 points, so be careful, all you risk-takers out there!

'Pay to Win just became Pay to Play. Wonderful.'

MATCH-MAKING : It's more broken than before! Third, this other problem only existed in the S-class Tier before the Autumn Update. I don't know how many other players have come across it but it's gotten a mention in the Trivia Section of the Wikia Page for the MP League. The problem is to do with the match-making algorithm.

It's gotten worse, even for lower Tier races. Before the Update, as long as you raced A-Class or below, or if your car was ranked below 1585, you were at least safe in the chance that cars were not ranked more than 50 points apart. Nowadays, no matter what Class your car is, you will often run into opponents who outrank you by at least 100+ points! And God forbid it's a Season Ticket race, you will lose ... BADLY.

It gets worse if your competition is boosted. One was hoping that the balancing would be addressed with the huge overhaul in the MP format, but not only does the problem with the S-Class Tier still exist, the rest of the lower Tiers are now suffering from this problem.

It's discouraging.

OP CARS : Even more of a threat now! Next point, introducing more and more OP cars to each update. Now, I'm all for new cars as it keeps the game fresh and interesting, and it's awesome to see old favorites and new cars we've never even heard of. The only issue here is how insanely OP these new additions are, and how losses are pretty much guaranteed whenever they appear in a race.

As mentioned above with the balancing problem, these cars have performance that doesn't warrant their Tier placement, i.e. a C-Class car that can rival lower-ranking S-Class opponents. This means that unless you are racing in one of these OP cars (here's looking at you Shelby Cobra, Holden Coupe 60, 2016 Camaro SS .. and NOW, the TVR Sagaris) it's a pretty safe bet that you will lose.

It's fast becoming a situation where you can't really afford to use your favorite cars unless they match up to these MP beasts. So your time will go towards buying and upgrading one of these for you to get anywhere in MP. Whichever is your best car right now, probably won't matter in a few weeks. It's especially painful if you invest a lot of time, effort (and sometimes, money) towards a particularly expensive car and your efforts count for nothing in a short space of time.

And I'm not even talking about Class Kings, that's a given, but when even basic cars are pushed out of the competition in favor of a small OP handful, the fair balance is gone.

HACKERS & CHEATERS : Still thriving, unfortunately These noobs are still rampant in the new MP Leagues and it doesn't really seem that they've disappeared with this new roll-out. They're still claiming the Top 10, Top 25, Top 100 or so of most cups and even in normal races they are using those dreaded teleport/kamikaze wrecking/time hack tactics to get ahead.

They even get their hands on the newer OP cars faster than anyone else and win almost all the time. And now with even less chance to win and get ahead fairly, guess what we'll be seeing more of?

That's pretty much what I've noticed about what is wrong with this new format. But to give the developers some credit, they were at least good enough to ask players what they thought about losing Rating in Free Play mode and they acted on it in the 2nd month of the release, so now your Rating is protected when you're not using Season Tickets. But you still won't get much from it anyway.

Like I said, I'm not just complaining about where this Update has gone wrong, but I'm mentioning the good aspects of it as well.

THE GOOD NEWS VARIED REWARDS : Nice touch there We said goodbye to the much-loved Win Streaks in the old World Series format, along with free D and C-Class upgrades that were often switched with a useful Nitro Starter. Now we have more variety in the types of prizes we can get, a huge improvement being the chance to win ... Tokens!! Not only that, but also Nitro Starters, Double Credits, Tuning Kits, Decals and Boxes to name a few more.

The only drawback is the steepness with which these rewards can be earned, with the number of saved points becoming higher and further apart with each iteration. But, while that adds to the challenge, it would be a lot better if the pace of winning these prizes wasn't so glacial.

 Less Ads: More game time (well, slightly)  No-one's pointed this one out, but I've seen a whole lot less adverts in-between races. Maybe because the developers are focusing on other ways to monetize the game (like, the overall new MP League format/the VIP System update) we are getting more breathing space between races. That's probably one thing they've listened to players about and tried to address (but they're still adamant about milking this game dry). Guess some things don't change ....

'WELL ... THAT'S A WRAP'

This is just my humble opinion on the state of the Multiplayer League. Thanks for reading it this far!

What do you think, fellow racers? Share your experiences !!

- ShinnyShin