4Game

It has now been a couple of days since we learned of the Battle Pass XP change in Save the World. The XP amounts awarded for all Daily and Weekly quests are also now known. Let’s break it all down and see if what EPIC told us in the 22.40 Homebase Status Report is a fair assessment of the new system. EPIC stated the following about the change;

‘Because we've shifted the majority of the XP source to Quests, you’ll notice a reduced amount of XP earned from Mission Badges, but on average, we expect players will earn Battle Pass XP more quickly than before. To maximize your XP earned, prioritize completing the available Daily/Weekly quests.’

To see if this is a fair representation of the new system, we will need to know a couple of things. Firstly, we need to know how the previous XP system worked, Secondly, we will need to need to try and get a fair understanding of what metric EPIC is measuring when they say ‘on average’, or more to the point, the scope of which Save the World player accounts are being measured.

The Old XP system

Battle Pass XP was rewarded to players via what EPIC refer to as badges. These badges were rewarded to players at the end of any mission the player completed. The badges received were dependent on the mission type and objectives completed during the mission.

The player was capped with a maximum amount achievable each day before the game would give no more. This cap has been changed from time to time along with the amount of XP given in individual badges. In the week before the 22.40 Patch, the cap was set at 480,000 XP per day. This gave the player the ability to receive a maximum of 3,360,000 XP per week.

The New XP system

Battle Pass XP is now rewarded to player in a system that can be broken down into two different sections.

1 – XP awarded through badges in the same way the old system worked (above). EPIC has adjusted it so badges give less XP than the old system and the cap is also reduced to 100,000 XP per day. This adjustment takes into account the second way players can now earn XP (below).

2 – XP awarded on the completion of Daily and Weekly quests. XP awarded is not capped in any way other than by the number of quests available to the player on any given day. Here is a breakdown of these quests and the XP available in each for the current season.

• One daily quest awarding 32,000 XP a day. Providing the player logs in everyday up to three of these quests can be stacked before no more are given to the player.
• One daily dungeon quest awarding 48,000 XP per day.
• Four daily wargame quests each awarding 18,000 XP on completion for a total of 72,000 XP maximum per day.
• Six daily endurance quests which rotate daily though the players unlocked endurance missions. In the event of a player having only one endurance mission unlocked; the daily endurance quest is locked to that endurance biome. Quests are awarded after every 5th wave until completion. The XP awards are; 35,000 XP, 37,000 XP, 37,000 XP, 35,000 XP, 31,000 XP and 26,000 XP. Completing all endurance quests in a day award 201,000 XP maximum.
• One weekly quest awarding 180,000 XP once per week.

Summing up the change in simple terms, the new system is an adjustment to the old system with a new award structure to compliment it in the form of quests. The new system appears to move Save the World Battle Pass XP closer to a system used in Battle Royal.

Fact checking EPIC's assertion that on average, players will earn XP more quickly than before.

Let’s see what numbers say.

Assuming the player plays every day, has a working endurance, can max out any XP caps and finally complete all daily and weekly quests available to them. The result is as follows.

• The old system allowed a single player to receive 3,360,000 XP per week total.
• The new system allows a single player to receive 3,351,000 XP per week. (That is 100,000×7 in badges + 353,000×7 in daily quests + 180,000 in weekly quests)

Other factors to consider are players may not be at a power level in game to have unlocked any endurance modes. The result being these players have 201,000 XP missing from daily quests every day. This reduces the maximum they can get to only 1,953,000 XP per week. In the old XP system these players could still achieve the maximum 3,360,000 XP possible per week.

There is more to consider…

Daily wargames quests offer very little reward to a player once above a certain in-game power level. As an example, the Twine wargames quest awards the player either 120 Epic Perk-Up + 100 gold or 100 Legendary Perk-Up + 100 gold. There is no incentive for a player who has access to mid level Twine or above to use their available play time on wargames for this reward when they can use that time to do a mission in Twine and be awarded far more Save the World related items in return for their effort This Philosophy can also be applied to Stonewood, Plankerton and Canny Valley wargames.

The result of the above has been wargames has always been a mode only low level players normally play.

Wait, there is even more…

The way EPIC has implemented the daily endurance quests I feel tells the whole story. For players with only one endurance mission unlocked the daily endurance quest will be in this biome every day. For players who have all four biomes unlocked, it rotates through a different biome each day but so far has only been Stonewood or Plankerton. There has been no Canny or Twine daily endurance quest, yet Stonewood has already appeared twice.

Just like the war games situation above, forcing high level players to play Stonewood or Plankerton endurance does not give what the player needs to progress in Save the World.

Conclusion

• The new XP system does not treat all players equally. This is due to some daily quests not being achievable to some players and also because some daily quests are not desirable for high level players.
• In all cases when comparing the old XP system to the new XP system on a week-by-week basis, a player cannot earn on average more XP. The maximum they can earn is actually 9000 XP less regardless of how often a player can play.

As a result, EPIC’s assertion ‘on average, we expect players will earn Battle Pass XP more quickly than before’ is false.

This is cemented when also considering XP amounts awarded per mission in the old XP system were higher than XP awarded for completing the daily quest + badges in the new XP system. The only time the XP awarded could possibly be higher in the new system is on the completion of the weekly quest. This only happens at the end of one mission once every week however.

What does EPIC mean when they say ‘on average’?

I have thought long and hard on if there is any way EPICs assertion can be seen to be True given how they have worded the statement. There are two scenarios’ where it can be.

The first I struggle to believe EPIC would do intentionally. If it is this way, I believe it would be through error and not deliberate. This method would involve EPIC taking an average XP number of all players with access to Save the World, regardless of if they are an active player in the game or not.

The results of average XP gained per player calculated this way would be very different and lower than if the same calculation used active players only. It is very clear to active players just how much the player base has shrunk, one can see why it would be very different.

The 2nd method is more devious and begins to go into territory used by marketing companies or research groups to sway things like surveys or stats to show the result they want. This would involve EPIC first looking at the average playtime of all Save the World players and then deciding that players that play less than x hours a day or more than y hours per day cannot be considered an average player. These players are deemed by EPIC outside the scope of what an average Save the World player is and are dropped. The average XP per player is then calculated from the players left within that dataset.

The issue with this method is it does not include the most active players. Those players would also be the player base which gains the most Battle Pass XP playing Save the World given how the old system worked. Another issue is the calculated average XP time can be manipulated by small adjustments to x and y until the result is one that is acceptable to EPIC, which would make their assertion True.

I don’t want to say any more on this, I just wanted to show there are ways to make the statement statistically True or False depending on the viewpoint you want to put across.

What was EPIC’s goal when they decided to change the XP system?

This something we can only speculate on. My own personal belief is the answer is probably a few different reasons. From making the Save the World XP reward system more closely resemble BR, trying to use XP as a method to boost plays or even to reduce the amount of XP of the most active players.

Whatever the reasons are, it appears EPIC wanted to reduce the daily achievable XP to players while at the same time promote the change as a positive to players to justify the change. Businesses do this all the time and EPIC is a business after all.

Wrap up.

The issue for me personally is I just don’t think EPIC understand how intelligent players have become. It is no longer the eighties where players were mostly children, the nineties where players were also teens or the noughties where some players were young adults. Today there are professionals in real world jobs, highly skilled people who play games in their spare time. Game companies cannot treat their players like they won’t question what is put in front of them when their own experiences tell a different story. Just say it how it is and tell the truth.

The wording in the latest status report regarding Battle Pass XP is right up alongside the term ‘Premium Experience’ which was used to describe Save the World’s state when it came out of beta.

The feedback on reddit so far tells the story well and I’m sure EPIC have seen that. I hope EPIC look again at this XP system and make big adjustments upwards to make it truly comparable to the old XP system if that is what they really want. If they want an on par with Battle royal system they will need to add more daily challenges per day that can be completed inside any mission alert or increase the badge XP upwards and increase the cap. I assume here of course the chapter 4 Battle Pass will operate on the same 80,000 XP per level as chapter 3.

The daily endurance quests I feel need to be changed, period. Why did EPIC tie the quests to biomes like this? Why not simply allow the daily endurance quests be completable in any endurance biome each day? I can only conclude its a mechanic designed to hurt end game players again.

How things are now the system can be summed as giving Save The World players a choice. Either play Save the World to get Battle Pass XP and severely slow your progress in the game, or forfeit Battle Pass XP and make game progression faster.

I will sign off by saying…

EPIC, please give the players of Save the World more intelligence credit than you do, we are not blind or stupid. It is after all the original Save the World players that made EPIC what it is today by suggesting a BR mode. You listened to players back then and see how you were rewarded. Today it appears you are relying on surveys and stats to guide the direction of Save the World (and Fortnite). Look what it has given you in return over the last year or so.

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