Champion Rank: A Discussion

- MntRunner, taken from the recent "The New Rank is New" thread by Druser.

I'd like to preface this, as I do with basically any serious post of mine (there's barely any to be honest), that I am just one random CT member, and I absolutely do not represent the entire CT team, or even a subsection of it. I am just one clown.

What I eventually hope this thread can accomplish is generating enough positive feedback to create a well-balanced but worthwhile Champion Rank.

That out of the way,

[|CHAMPION|]
A discussion.

[|THE OVERVIEW|] ​

Champion rank is the newest rank teased in the 1.20 trailer, and is explained in further detail on the website, but you probably knew that already. Champion was (likely) created due to a current issue with financing and running the server, with costs rising with the addition of more hired Devs and expanded server space. Running wynn requires money and all that.

The suggested perks of this rank are as follows;

• Merchant Booths On-Map

• /switch Command To Quickly Switch Server

• Instant Class Deletion

• Class Backups

• Bomb Bell

• Reserved Slots

• Character Nickname

• And More!

Some of these perks have raised concerns within the community for being potentially Pay-To-Win if handled improperly, and don't get me wrong, I'm worried too. Bomb Bell and /switch seem to be the biggest concerns, but there's also fear about the pets leveling system and gatekeeping content behind a paywall.

I'll quickly break down what is currently known about the different perks (as I understand them, which, I might be totally wrong about)

Lets work down from the top, starting with;

Merchant Booths On-Map.
This is probably something along the lines of an instanced trade window-like thing placed around the world; whether this is limited to towns and cities is unknown, and how it exactly works isn't known either, but I'm not too worried about this feature, it seems pretty convenient but not game-breaking.

/switch
This command seems like it could be a little problematic, especially if handled poorly. In a vacuum, the ability to swap worlds with a command instead of needing to visit the hub seems very benign, but there are concerns about how it could be used to exploit hunted mode hunting or invading bomb parties. This is one of the features that is toeing the dangerous side of Pay to Win, with it potentially harming non-champion players.

Instant Class Deletion/Class Backups
Instant class deletion seems pretty nice, and it is, but this being a paid feature makes me wonder why it's not just a base feature of wynn. The answer is storage space (if i'm understanding colin correctly in this thread). To have instant class deletion, there needs to be a safeguard in case of accidental deletion of important classes, and that requires storage space to backup. I personally think this feature would be a lot less problematic if the non-paid wait time for class deletion was changed from 45 Days at max level (yeah, really, it's that long), to about a week at 106 or 3 and a half days at 105 (Numbers were suggested by Bart_mc). I think this is just one of the features where the context matters more, and if the game is changed around it, it seems perfectly fine to me to exist.

Bomb Bell
This is one of the scarier features. Although third-party programs like the Bomb Tracker discord exist, giving an instant lagless bomb ping to Champion rank members seems like a massively unfair benefit, given how important bombs can be for doing many wynn tasks, and how quickly servers fill up when a bomb party is made. The bomb bell and /switch combo practically guarantees that Champion players can access a bomb party without any challenge while regular players will struggle to get in.

A different reading of the bomb bell is that instead of receiving pings from bombs across the server, the Champion player that throws the bomb can choose to combine it with a ping that is sent to all players, basically announcing "Hey I have a prof leveling party here, come join me" without using shout bombs.
This feature is a lot less unbalanced, and I would fully support a feature like this.

Reserved Slots
Like some other features, how this perk works isn't exactly known, and it could be anything from Champion priority (kicking out nons or having a champion cue for joining servers), a set of 5-20 "Champion Slots" in addition to the 50 player max, a splitting up of the 50-player max to be 40 Non-Champion and 10 Champion Slots, or any other number of different ways to execute this feature.

Now, I like this feature conceptually, but it could easily lend to adversely affecting other players, which is an undesireable outcome. I would personally advocate that each server has its usual 50 player max, with 5 extra champion slots that can be filled by champions;
Ie. Say, a server is full of 50 players, with 3 of them being champions. This would allow up to 3 more non-champion players to join, moving the 3 champions to their reserved 5 slots, and would then only allow 2 more champions to join and no one else. Seems relatively fair and is kept to a small bonus to not cause an overload of server lag. (10 slots could work too, but I wouldn't go above that with wynn's current servers)

Character Nicknames
I like this feature a lot, and nicknames are pretty common in most servers, so it makes sense being a balanced feature. That being said, Linnyflower raised some concerns about well-known hunters disguising themselves to hide in plain sight; this all depends on whether the nickname feature changes the displayed username above the head or if it's just a chat feature.

Other Features
Other features like Pets and leveling haven't really been explained at all, so I won't go too deeply into them, although I still am slightly concerned that they aren't purely cosmetic as everyone believes.

[|THE FEEDBACK|]​

It's pretty clear that no matter what, Champion Rank is coming to wynn in one form or another. Now is a great time to speak up about what features you, the community, would want from such a rank. Figuring out a balanced way to both make a rank desireable enough that you would want to spend however much it costs to buy it while also not upsetting the balance for those who choose not to pay is very important, and it should be done right.

I personally have a few ideas for other perks that could be thrown in. I kinda visualize a way of adding and subtracting and really balancing different features with the help of the community to make Champion desireable and fair.

Extended Bomb Duration
More bomb for your money, say 1.25x or 1.5x bomb duration on bombs thrown by the Champion ranked player

Custom Rank Color
In case you don't like the Yellow and Cyan color of the Champion Tag (You could choose from a pool of maybe 4-5 different color combos)

Champion-Exclusive Pets
Just unique pet models that are given for free with purchase of champion and can't be acquired in any other way

Champion-Exclusive Skins/Hats/Particle Effects
Same as unique pet models but for weapon skins or hats or particle effects

Obviously these ideas are similarly rough and nebulous as anything that's been teased, but they're meant to just be concepts. If anyone else has other cool ideas on what could be added or taken away from the pile of "Potential Champion perks", that'd be great; post them down below.

That's all, have a great day everyone.

-Kio

 

Yoo it's like the 20th thread on this but this time by someone who knows what they're talking about pog

Extended bomb duration is


Honestly as long as it's not subscription, I'm generally fine w it (but there are definitely areas where it goes over the line, but then you can argue that for mob totems, but there's an argument against that as well,)

 

If it was a subscription, just in case, what would you change about it to make it less offputting?

 

Not the exact same as what you said, but we'll have this if you really don't like the champion color

 

If it's a subscription it's beyond saving imo

 

I think that the Merchant Booths won't be at worst any more than slightly annoying, and if nothing else they will serve as more convenient shops with specific ads.

I think that the /switch command should have some specific changes to it, but overall as a command I don't have any issues. I think that there should be a cool down between /switch commands, and depending on how the "bomb bell" works, it may be very possible that nons will not be able to get into bomb parties anymore. If that is the case, there should definitely be something added to combat this.

The first thing off the top of my head for some sort of solution would be to have Champion players using the /switch command take up their reserved slots instead of the regular slots for a duration of time. This would be (hopefully) easy to implement and stop the flooding of bomb worlds by people with this command, but the command itself would still retain its original purpose.

I agree with your commentary here. I think that as long as Champion players cannot use this feature to farm massive amounts of money through quests or have a distinct advantage over the other players, there's really no problem with it. It also definitely is possible to do something like store ingredients on the backup classes, but that said with the price tag this rank will likely come with it's just cheaper to buy an alt.

I think that the Bomb Bell should be optional. Holy shit, I would absolutely hate if any bomb I threw was instantly flooded with a massive amount of Champion players lagging out the world. It would be infuriating. The "different reading" you mentioned is the way I hope this feature will work, as well as a change to /switch.

As long as there is no queue and Champion players don't kick nons from the world by joining, I have no issue with it for the reasons you mentioned.

Salted himself confirmed that this nickname command only works on any place you can hover over it. In chat, specifically not above your head. I have no issue with this feature and it's fun. ironman btw

Again, I agree with you mostly. The thing that worried me about this is seeing the "cosmetic" upgrades to pets past level 20. They seemed much like Quality of Life changes and not... really cosmetic. I kind of have a problem with this and it feels just a tad scummy, but also I believe that there are good intentions behind the designing of this feature.

​

I don't have a problem with this because it's pay to win, but I think it will discourage people who are not Champion ranked from buying bombs if they are going to be somehow less efficient.

Salted has confirmed you can choose the colors of other ranks.

why not? it says there are other perks with the new rank so I'm sure something like this is probably being added.

....what're you doing kio go make more models


that said. overall I think Champion rank will be fun and an acceptable amount of pay to win like there is in the current game. it doesn't feel rubbed in your face that players with HERO rank have a massive advantage, and I'm hoping it stays that way. :)

 

I think that something like this is possible. However, I would add both a subscription and a way to buy the rank outright, and if you end up paying the full cost in subscriptions you get the rank ($10/month for 8 months if the rank is $80 will give it to you permanently.)

But. I'm not deciding this so :P

 

as long as it aint a subscription its fine by me

 

Excellent thread, Kio. My thoughts on the champion rank is this - as long as none of the features can harm other players, I'm fine with it. So far, no features ever introduced to Wynn have entered this category, but I feel like of done wrong, Bell Bombs, /switch, and Reserved Slots could enter it. But still - we don't exactly know how they work, so I'm still holding out hope that the features will be beneficial for keeping the server running in the end.

I still feel like having some sort of 10-minute cooldown before you can hunt people would be nice, I saw someone suggest this on another thread and I'm a fan. I also like that announcing bombs suggestion of yours.

 

That makes perfect sense, I just felt like throwing out everything I could think of onto the table, which was bound to include some bad ideas.

 

I'm only concerned with bomb bell + insta world switch command, everything else is great!

 

What a great feature, I see absolutely nothing wrong with this.

 

now that's a feature worth paying for

 

I feel like a lot of these features will get locked from hunted classes like /duel is. Using /switch to enter a world won’t let u log in past the class box with a hunted character. Nicknames will toggle off while in hunted mode or be perma off if a class is perma hunted. Let’s face it tho, there are existing hunted mode problems that I’d like to see fixed first regarding toxo, friend tracking and better clarification about rules/hunting like being able to get tagged and fight in cities

 

You could probably sell that by itself. Just saying.

 

I think that the bomb bell is a bit of an issue, and that /switch should have some limitations. I think it would totally okay if it can't be used in hunted mode and can't be used/ has a delay when used to enter servers with a bomb active to prevent it from making bombs practically Champion exclusive bonuses. Other than that most of the features seem okay (as long as we non-champions at least get a faster class deletion timer, three weeks is ridiculous).

Champion could also give a monthly/weekly (daily seems a bit too OP and like it would decrease sales) bomb or something like that as a bonus. As long as it wasn't too often I don't think it'd hurt bomb sales, but it would certainly be a nice incentive/ perk.

I'm glad to see a civil discussion about it and to have an opportunity for the community to give some feedback. I have a lot of faith in the Wynncraft team and I'm not too worried about this, but I think it's always good to err on the cautious side.

 

This is cool! I'm glad to have a place that I can voice some opinions on some of the new features.


Merchant Booths On-Map.
This is probably something along the lines of an instanced trade window-like thing placed around the world; whether this is limited to towns and cities is unknown, and how it exactly works isn't known either, but I'm not too worried about this feature, it seems pretty convenient but not game-breaking.

I definitely support this, it looks great!

/switch
This command seems like it could be a little problematic, especially if handled poorly. In a vacuum, the ability to swap worlds with a command instead of needing to visit the hub seems very benign, but there are concerns about how it could be used to exploit hunted mode hunting or invading bomb parties. This is one of the features that is toeing the dangerous side of Pay to Win, with it potentially harming non-champion players.

I do agree with you that this could lead to some dangerous situations, but I personally think this is a good feature and should be added with Champion. I'll get into why it should be a in the bomb bell section.

Instant Class Deletion/Class Backups
Instant class deletion seems pretty nice, and it is, but this being a paid feature makes me wonder why it's not just a base feature of wynn. The answer is storage space (if i'm understanding colin correctly in this thread). To have instant class deletion, there needs to be a safeguard in case of accidental deletion of important classes, and that requires storage space to backup. I personally think this feature would be a lot less problematic if the non-paid wait time for class deletion was changed from 45 Days at max level (yeah, really, it's that long), to about a week at 106 or 3 and a half days at 105 (Numbers were suggested by Bart_mc). I think this is just one of the features where the context matters more, and if the game is changed around it, it seems perfectly fine to me to exist.

Yes! This would be a great feature... although I think it should be accessible to all players.
This seems like something that people would not really buy champion for, but would still use. Waiting for deletion timers is a real pain, and skipping that shouldn't be locked behind a paywall.

Bomb Bell
This is one of the scarier features. Although third-party programs like the Bomb Tracker discord exist, giving an instant lagless bomb ping to Champion rank members seems like a massively unfair benefit, given how important bombs can be for doing many wynn tasks, and how quickly servers fill up when a bomb party is made. The bomb bell and /switch combo practically guarantees that Champion players can access a bomb party without any challenge while regular players will struggle to get in.

A different reading of the bomb bell is that instead of receiving pings from bombs across the server, the Champion player that throws the bomb can choose to combine it with a ping that is sent to all players, basically announcing "Hey I have a prof leveling party here, come join me" without using shout bombs.
This feature is a lot less unbalanced, and I would fully support a feature like this.

Ahh, the bomb bell. I would like to say that I do not support the first paragraph's version of the bomb bell, as it makes /switch abusable and is way too op. Even if I had the rank, I would rather have /switch instead of having an op variant of the bomb bell.
I have always seen bombs as a pleasant surprise when somebody throws one, you don't rely on them but they are nice when it happens. Any in-game feature that actively notifies people when a bomb goes off would be increasing the players' reliability on bombs and dull their wynncraft experience without them. I think the bomb tracker discord is already guilty of this, but adding an in-game feature, especially locked behind a paywall, would do more harm than good.

I think the second paragraph's version of the bomb bell is great! It always pains me when people pay extra to shout when they throw a bomb... aren't they already paying to help everybody enjoy wynn more?

Reserved Slots
Like some other features, how this perk works isn't exactly known, and it could be anything from Champion priority (kicking out nons or having a champion cue for joining servers), a set of 5-20 "Champion Slots" in addition to the 50 player max, a splitting up of the 50-player max to be 40 Non-Champion and 10 Champion Slots, or any other number of different ways to execute this feature.

Now, I like this feature conceptually, but it could easily lend to adversely affecting other players, which is an undesireable outcome. I would personally advocate that each server has its usual 50 player max, with 5 extra champion slots that can be filled by champions;
Ie. Say, a server is full of 50 players, with 3 of them being champions. This would allow up to 3 more non-champion players to join, moving the 3 champions to their reserved 5 slots, and would then only allow 2 more champions to join and no one else. Seems relatively fair and is kept to a small bonus to not cause an overload of server lag. (10 slots could work too, but I wouldn't go above that with wynn's current servers)

I don't think a champion designated slot system would work, because of how many people would buy champion. From what I've seen, Hero is the most common rank, which doesn't really make sense because its the most expensive... right? Well, that's just how Wynncraft's community is, I guess. When champion comes out, there's going to be so many people that buy the rank making the special player slots completely pointless.

Let's face it, clicking on that red box for 20 minutes straight to get into a prof world is awful. I think this is far from anything wynncraft intended to be as an experience, and this should be removed in every way possible. One suggestion (I don't know how possible it would be) would be to create a queue for servers, and an inactivity kick to go along with it. This would be to allow more players to get in through the queue so it doesn't feel as hopeless.

An inactivity kick would be extremely controversial, so it would have to be done right. I know how much people love afking on wynncraft, so I would think somewhere around the 1 hour range would be appropriate.

Champion's access to this queue would be priority, with some exceptions. All champions in queue would be granted access to the server (when somebody leaves) first. If a world is having an irregular community event, however, this would make it impossible for non-champions to get in. A way around this issue would be to make it so for every 2 champions (or whatever number works best) a non-champion that was top in queue is allowed in. The ratio for this would have to be optimized, of course, but it may be a good system.

Character Nicknames
I like this feature a lot, and nicknames are pretty common in most servers, so it makes sense being a balanced feature. That being said, Linnyflower raised some concerns about well-known hunters disguising themselves to hide in plain sight; this all depends on whether the nickname feature changes the displayed username above the head or if it's just a chat feature.

Character nicknames feel a little bit strange for me. Sort of like the player housing, it doesn't really feel like the style of wynncraft as it is.
Wynncraft is obviously subject to change, but there is some great things, stylistically, that should stick around.

What I would really like to avoid personally is G A M E R L O R D K R E D K in wynn.

Although it would be funny a couple times to see what people name themselves and have this seemingly out-of-place thing in an epic medieval adventure... I don't think it would age well.

One thing that I love about wynncraft is how it always sticks to character, everything seems right in the world that has been created. I think housing (if done improperly) and nicknames would seriously hurt the feel of wynncraft and the style that has been so carefully put together over so many years.

An alternative to a completely customizable nickname system would be more of a title system. Before the player's name there could be cool things like Assassin of the Winds (cringe, I know). When I thought of this idea, my mind immediately came to the customizable character class icons in /class. There is freedom for choice, and everything is pretty cool. There could also be prefix titles that unlock with level like novice, apprentice, master, grandmaster. (1, 50, 100, 106)

There would also be another "main" title before the players name that would unlock with the champion rank.
Some examples would be:
Air Assassin: Of the Winds
Earth Assassin: Of the Earth
etc...
So a level 50 air assassin with champion rank would look like:
Apprentice of the Winds [57 As] Kredk
I know the wynncraft team could create WAY cooler names than that, it really serves the purpose as an example.


Other Features
Other features like Pets and leveling haven't really been explained at all, so I won't go too deeply into them, although I still am slightly concerned that they aren't purely cosmetic as everyone believes.

[|THE FEEDBACK|]​

It's pretty clear that no matter what, Champion Rank is coming to wynn in one form or another. Now is a great time to speak up about what features you, the community, would want from such a rank. Figuring out a balanced way to both make a rank desireable enough that you would want to spend however much it costs to buy it while also not upsetting the balance for those who choose not to pay is very important, and it should be done right.

I personally have a few ideas for other perks that could be thrown in. I kinda visualize a way of adding and subtracting and really balancing different features with the help of the community to make Champion desireable and fair.

Extended Bomb Duration
More bomb for your money, say 1.25x or 1.5x bomb duration on bombs thrown by the Champion ranked player

Interesting, I like this feature.

Custom Rank Color
In case you don't like the Yellow and Cyan color of the Champion Tag (You could choose from a pool of maybe 4-5 different color combos)

Sure! I like this a lot.

Champion-Exclusive Pets
Just unique pet models that are given for free with purchase of champion and can't be acquired in any other way

Hmm... I don't really like this. I think champion should get easier access to cosmetics but I don't really like the idea of exclusive cosmetics.

Champion-Exclusive Skins/Hats/Particle Effects
Same as unique pet models but for weapon skins or hats or particle effects

Obviously these ideas are similarly rough and nebulous as anything that's been teased, but they're meant to just be concepts. If anyone else has other cool ideas on what could be added or taken away from the pile of "Potential Champion perks", that'd be great; post them down below.

That's all, have a great day everyone.
You too! I really enjoyed writing this up and looking into the complications that will involve adding a new rank, and I hope my opinion can be of some help!

Oh, and also... I don't really support subscription ranks. I do like what Linny said though, how it could be a one-time purchase or a subscription payment. Don't pull the MVP++

 

Im sure that Salted and the other Admins are going to make the champion rank mostly cosmetic. They would probably not add something pay 2 win into the game. Im a bit worried about the /swich and Bomb Bell features but I hope that the way this works wont break the game. Salted and the others did never really dissapoint us and I dont see why they would do that now.
But if those features get added as I imaggine them that would be a problem imo