Improve Low End Season Reward Thresholds (At No Expense)

Cliffs Notes:
1) Return to 10 seasonal race rewards, adding 4 non-alternate art rewards at the bottom end.
2) Include 1 point and 5 point rewards to potentially double the size of the active racing community.



Currently and historically, more than 50% of players gaining seasonal race points never reach the first reward threshold of 10 (or 7) points. Racing has an extremely high barrier to entry, which could be improved significantly by simply adding lower point thresholds. More motivation, more retention, more self-improvement. Larger, more active, and more competitive racing community.

As an illustration, in Season 11 (the most recent season with full data available to me), 12301 players gained 1 or more season points.
* 57% (7031) gained 1-9 season points: literally zero reward for effort, not even the possibility of raffle prizes.
* 28% (3439) gained 10-39 points, with one alternate art unique to show for it.
* 15% (1831) gained 40+ points, for two or more rewards.

7000 players! And that was a slow season! The most popular season (#5) had 5.3x the participation, meaning over 30,000 players gave racing a shot and went home 100% empty handed. Both these examples don't even take into account that another 10-20%(?) or more players raced but gave up before gaining a single point.

In all, you are failing to hook at least 10,000-15,000 potential racers each and every season. Estimating that half the players who gain a point but no reward, never return to gain a point in another season, the sum total could easily be 50,000-100,000 PoE players who would race if simply given lower point thresholds.

10 season points seems insignificant to the average racer and GGG. But to someone trying races out for the first time, every single point is extremely hard fought. It takes many races and many hours to put together those first 10 points. Far too many hours to get your very first reward for so much effort and punishment. Even getting your first point is a momentous occasion for a significant portion of the playerbase, it should be rewarded in some small way.


Now, i realize that you cut back the number of alternate art and 3D art pieces to save money, and that's fine, the realities of conducting business. In that spirit, my suggestion involves no additional art expenditure:

Make the earliest rewards regular art Uniques.

This would let you improve the thresholds significantly, closer to earlier seasons but with more frontloaded reward thresholds. Instead of being forced to have just 6 rewards that simply can't cover the number of necessary thresholds to keep all player demographics interested, you could have something like 1 / 5 / 15 / 30 / 60 / 110 / 200 / 350 / 600 / 1000. [The multiples fit a pretty nice curve: 5/3/2/2/1.83/1.82/1.75/1.71/1.67.]

* Make rewards #1-4 (1-30 points) fairly common, lower level Uniques, without alternate art.
* Make reward #5 (60 points) the itemlevel 100 Normal item.
* Make rewards #6-10 (110-1000 points) alternate art Uniques.


A side benefit: you improve the black hole of rewards between 500-1000, a window that's currently too wide.

Season 1 rewards____________ 15 30 60____ 120 240____ 480
Season 2 rewards__________ 7 15 30 60____ 120 200 360 600 1000
Season 3-8 rewards________ 7 14 26 50_ 80 135 220 360 600 1000
Season 9-14 rewards______ 10_____ 40 100____ 250____ 500 1000
Suggested_____________ 1_ 5 15 30 60 110____ 200 350 600 1000

To improve on your example, using https://www.pathofexile.com/seasons/ladder you can see up to the top 15000 players by race points for this and past seasons (if there are that many players who got at least 1 point). I assume that if the ladder reached 15000 then there were more people than that who got at least 1 point. Also keep in mind that in all prior seasons, you lost your points on death in non-Descent races, so there might have been a decent number of racers who played but lost their points and gave up after that. That is no longer a concern.

For this past season (Soulthirst):

At least 8177 people (55%) got 1-9 points, meaning they got no rewards.
6823 people (45%) got at least 10 points.
2688 people (18%) got at least 40 points.
1337 people (9%) got at least 100 points (the cutoff for the elite racers I guess?).
518 people (3%) got at least 250 points.
290 people (2%) got at least 500 points.
45 people (<1%) got at least 1000 points.

The number of people who made it to what I personally consider the "desirable" reward at 500 points is up from previous seasons (as well as the top reward at 1000), as it was easier to get points this season, but still the number of people who play one race and quit is just sad.

I agree with your points about making rewards come sooner and more often, although I don't agree with offering normal art Uniques. One turn-on to racing (to me) is the idea that the rewards are exclusive. You cannot obtain these alternate art versions of these items anywhere else in the game and trading for them is usually expensive. If normal art Uniques were used, especially common ones, people might think, "Why would I want to play a race for that? I already have that." or "I can just buy one for 1 chaos." Even if the alternate art ones come later on, the people who only think they can get 50-100 points or even less won't have any incentive to race.

My suggestion is to increase the number of rewards again, at the new point thresholds you suggested, but not use normal art Uniques. About those point thresholds, for me, once I hit 500, I generally stop racing (only coming back for fun races) cause I know I can't hit 1000 and there's not much of an incentive to keep gaining points after that. I also know others who stop at either 100 or 250 even with plenty of season left sometimes because real life gets in the way too often for them but most times cause they don't feel like reaching the next reward threshold. Having gaps this huge between the reward thresholds really separates the racing community and can discourage people from competing once they reach a certain number of points.

Just checking in as a casual racer.

I race mainly for the rewards. Racing is quite an efficient use of your playtime if you like playing the economy; 100 point rewards are very easy to get (12 x 8 points) = around 6-8 hours if you just focus on free points races like Brutus Kill. I stop after 100 points as hitting 250 requires a bit more dedication and doing a few more harder or RNG-influenced races that I dislike, or don't have time for.

If there were rewards that were evenly spaced out, say at 10 point intervals, I would probably keep on racing as the gap doesn't seem too far.

Not sure what I'd do with 20 alt art Blood Thorns, though. I did hear from a racing friend that they sell for 1-2ex on standard so that would be quite nice?

It might also help if the grace period that restricts the rewards to be used in the standard leagues only is removed: By the time the rewards are available in the temp leagues one usually has a high leveled char and doesn't need (most) of those rewards anymore. I play temp leagues and all those race rewards end up unused in some standard stash tab.

It would be enough if GGG just prevents old reward tabs from spawning in new leagues if the race season has ended before the beginning of the new league, but be available immediately in every league that runs parallel to the race season. The current system completly devaluates every low race price for people in temp leagues.



To prevent the sharp declines after different race reward thresholds one could maybe offer a white map (tier 5 - 10) every 30 or 40 points. Of course for the maps to be of any use the above point concerning the grace period also applies.

Excellent idea man, to add more rewards, and more low tier rewards.

But lower level rewards should be alternate art, but GGG could just recycle older white alt arts from previous seasons, like white two stone rings, white rustic sash belts, etc, any white alt art used before, just mix them there.

Inflation of white alt arts can't damage the game in any way.

Right? :)

It has already become more than easy enough, in my opinion. If you compare the setup of the current race leagues (no point loss on death, easy point formats such as Descent Champions, Endless Ledge and Boss Kills, more points in general) with those from open beta. Of course the seasons are shorter though.

I think GGG wants to lure new players by organising these raffles every race giving them a chance to win lotteries.

And if you truly want to crank up the race rewards, why don't you implement divination cards or orbs instead of fairly common low level uniques (a dime a dozen in standard)? In closed beta, every race point you gained, gave you a random orb. Maybe every race point you earn, can give you a random div card? That won't cost any money since no 3D art involved.

But in the end, what is the point? IF you dont like racing at all, it feels way too forced to dangle a dozen carrots in front of the rabbit hole. You are tackling it entirely wrong. The focus should be on more and different race formats. When Descent was introduced, people loved it, because it was something totally different than the main game. Same with Descent Champions. These are fun and short playmodes with their own set of rules. I think GGG is on the right track with the introduction of unique seasonal modifiers during races.

In conclusion you need to lure people because of the racing itself, not because of the rewards. That is a very shallow approach. No offense meant.

"

bluegray wrote:

Not sure what I'd do with 20 alt art Blood Thorns, though. I did hear from a racing friend that they sell for 1-2ex on standard so that would be quite nice?

I know what I would do with 20 Blood Thorns. Upping my chance for getting a triple white socket one. Do these actually sell for 1 exalt? Cuz I am buying them up for 150 alts each. Price listed and price paid is always different.


EDIT: Wow, did we already have 14 seasons? Damn, I am losing count.