Please reduce the time taken for prestige grind

PTR Feedback
1

Current prestige grind is too excessive.

It takes about 24 brutal games to get a commander from level 1 to level 15 without any bonus such as holiday or stimpack(1,045,000 required exp, 44,000exp per brutal game with bonus objective, and no random map bonus).
Play time for map varies on several factors, such as map, partner, commander, etc. but let’s use “Void Thrashing,” one of the fastest map to clear with a random partner without any special cheese or gimick, to calculate the grind.

“Void Thrashing” on brutal takes between 14 to 21minute in game time to clear depending on commanders and their levels.

Brutal difficulty game time is 1.4times faster than earth time.

14min X 24 games = 336minutes / 1.4 = 240minutes = 4 hours
21min X 24 games = 504minutes / 1.4 = 360minutes = 6 hours

So, it takes about 4 to 6 hours of actual game play to unlock a single prestige.
You have to grind 3 times per character(4 if the commander you want is at level 1 but I’ll ignore that for now) so that’s 12~18hours of playtime per commander.

That’s IF you play brutal difficulty void thrashing exclusively, and don’t lose or get disconnected from a single game.

If you lose, start with hard and switch to brutal, play on random map, then expected play time can increase even further.

It’s true that not everyone will be interested in unlocking every prestige option for some commanders, but if your prestige of choice is at the bottom of the list, you’re stuck with hours and hours of grinding just to unlock the crucial perks that you get from blue level (and there’s no undo button to get you back to mastery level if even if you want to abandon your quest to prestige mid-way).

I understand that gaming company wants to milk out playing time as much as possible, but I feel like this is a tad too excessive as of right now.

Following are couple possible suggestions.

  1. Let us use our mastery points during the prestige grind from 1 to 15(it might be pretty unfair for players with low mastery points, and it doesn’t reduce number of games, but having mastery point might make it more tolerable for commanders like karax).
  2. Reduce the level to 10 instead of 1. Most, if not all, commanders should be able to perform well on brutal difficulty at that level, and it reduces required exp by about 50%.
  3. Let us grind 1,045,000 exp or set number of games with level 15 commander without mastery.
  4. Let us unlock all 3 prestige tied to a commander with a single re-run from 1 to 15.

I’d be okay with grinding 24 games for prestige, and I’d be okay with grinding a couple games with my hands tied behind my back(low commander level), but grinding 72 games per commander with my hands tied behind my back is just way too tedious and time consuming.

Edit

I feel like this is the best solution as well.

It’s apparent that some players are looking forward to re-leveling their commander multiple times, and this solution would cut down the time it takes to unlock all prestige for each commander by 1/3 for people that don’t want to grind 10+ hours per commander without interfering with the experience of people that want the current PTR iteration.

12 Likes
2

I agree, but my solution would be to lower the XP cost during the Prestige leveling. Maybe half the cost I think would feel good.

Similar to your 10 levels, but without cutting things out of the leveling process.

6 Likes
3

Maybe add a prestige stimpack?

4

In the Co-op forum I saw several posts saying that they were excited to be able to re-level their favorite commanders. I think that some kind of optional EXP buff is the best solution. Make it fast for those that don’t want the grind, but keep it normal for those that enjoy it.

2 Likes
5

Having leveled a couple commanders from 1 to 15 in Asia server, I’ll admit that there is some novelty in re-leveling from scratch.
However, it was rather frustrating to re-level some commanders, such as Zagara and Karax, and just the thought of having to go through that three times per commander(per server) just fills me with dread.

I feel like having a separate system that allows you to reset the commander level might be better than locking the new and exciting content behind hours and hours of mindless grinding.

5 Likes
6

I wouldn’t mind the 1-15 grind if we were able to choose which prestige we want to unlock. However as of now it’s locked in a specific order (probably to keep people playing longer). So it feels pretty bad to re-level 3 times if I only want to play the 3rd prestige option of a commander while not caring for the first 2.

4 Likes
7

Lol. U mean 10-14 minutes depend on enemy SI playeing as Aba. The terran is the worst enemy u can get. Pretty much dont care which commander my mate takes. But with good Tychus with heal or good Zeratul and protoss SI u can spam this map in 10-12 minutes.

8

As I said, “depending on commanders and their levels,” and in a pub setting. If you got a good partner, might as well just run CoD on B+6.

I admit I highly underestimated the minimum play time, but good luck finishing brutal VT with a random partner in under 14 minutes with commanders like sub level 12 zagara or low level Karax.

9

From 250 to 1000 mastery i just spammed ONLY Void Trashing. From 7am to 10pm playing only Abathur to get this stupid star. 12-13 mastery per day, 50 per week. Without any stimpacks. My point is: I didnt see 20 minut match. Thats why im talking about is IMPOSSIBLE.

Zagara is one of the fastest commander on this map even on 12 level. Watch some speedrun matches to learn how to play.

drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0kAPEv3WqAeZlhmbzN5NWlDc1E

Rockslapping Chamions. Series of “fun noob/begginers only” movies:

starcraft2coop.com/community/rockslappingchampions

But idea of topic is great and u got my point. Every commander must be leveled three times. A nightmare. Even with ptr stimpack u need a lot of time to do that. If patch will hit in this weekend mondays mutator all guys will plays 1st lvl hero.

10

Congratulations on your star, but not everyone has the time and mental fortitude to sit through playing 15 hours per day.

As for Zagara, I said “sub level 12,” meaning levels 1 through 11 where you don’t have the swarmling strain on your zerglings. After 12 is a breeze.

Also, The longest VT game I have in my replay took 20min 40sec as level 11 H&H playing with a level 9 Kerrigan, so that’s why I originally said that it takes between 14 to 21 minutes.

I was in 2 RsC episodes carrying 2 rock slappers, and while I don’t have any speedrun record, I have a couple brutation solo records, so I assure you that I know what I’m doing for the most part.

1 Like
11

Can someone explain to me please, so to get this points, I have to play hundreds of games again from level 1 without all level perks and master perks, where many players will leave the game, right when they see lvl1 to get these points?

1 Like
12

20-50 games to level up (50 at casual) and “dropping at 1” should become less common as people know you have prestige

13

20-50 for every commander, so hundreds.

14

My biggest complaint with the prestige system is that the talents are earned in order. If leveling was quicker after prestiging or if we could continue to use masteries while leveling (or both) this would help to alleviate that complaint.

15

It also feels a bit lengthy of a grind to me too. I think the grind would be fine by letting us pick the order of the prestige or having prestige mode give an exp multiplier for people less than level 15.

Some of these commander’s prestige options are very map dependent and make the grind a lot less fun because the commander is not very good on certain maps so you end up having to grind certain maps or pick random as a very sub-optimal commander.

Look at Swann for example. His second prestige option makes turrets better but combat units cost 50% more gas. I’m only interested in his 3rd prestige option. So I would have to grind through a static D Swann and unless I am picking the map, my commander is not very useful during that grind. On some maps, I would probably barely even use turrets if at all. So I may not even be using the prestige buffs at all during part of the grind.

1 Like
16

Even if it’s some hundreds of games, I am happy they decided to do it this way. It is “prestige” and this support for casual plays is kinda annoying.

17

Another possiblility would be to implement a separate “prestige experience bar,” which gets filled along with mastery/ascension experience bar.

49,500 exp from random brutal game giving that much exp to current mastery/ascension bar, and same amount to “prestige bar.”

When prestige bar gets filled, you get 1 prestige point that you can use to unlock prestige of your choice.

Some limitations can be implemented, such as the prestige exp being separate for all commanders, with the possibility of spending that prestige exp on other commander if there are no more available prestige for the said commanders.
IE. Completely fill Raynor’s prestige exp bar to get Raynor’s prestige token to unlock 1 Raynor prestige of choice. If Raynor has all 3 prestige unlocked and fills it again, 4th Raynor token can be used to purchase another commander’s prestige(with possible degree of randomness, from specific prestige of specific commander, or random prestige of random commander).

Or, the rate of prestige exp can be adjusted based on unspent mastery points, so that less mastery you use, the more prestige exp you get from the game.

18

I think the best solution is

  1. You can “Prestige” a commander as many times as you want…giving a “Prestige” Number that is displayed along with that commanders / your mastery/ascension level

  2. Having 1+ Prestige gives you access to all the Prestige talents AND your Mastery (even while 1-15)…this makes relevelling more fun and interesting

1 Like
19

I could live with that.

20

Yes, the amount of grind required to access all these prestige talents (basically alternate playstyle tweaks) seems insane.

But I do like the idea of going from levels 1-15 again. And letting you access masteries before level 15 seems problematic, since they were all designed with level 15 commanders in mind, and some of them assume features gained after level 1.

My preferred solution:

  1. Double the XP gain when releveling 1-15.

  2. Let people choose which prestige talent they want after the first relevel (for Gods’ sake, this seems like a no-brainer).

  3. Make the second relevel from 1-15 give access to the remaining two prestige talents.

This way, if you’re only interested in one prestige talent, getting it takes half as much time as the initial leveling from 1-15, which isn’t nothing, but doesn’t feel like it’s wasting too much of your time.

Then if you do yet another relevel from 1-15, you get the two remaining prestige talents. This double reward helps to motivate the third trip from 1-15, as the remaining two prestige talents are presumably the ones you wanted least.

1 Like