Player sentiment about playing against higher and lower levels

Some weeks ago, Alarak created a poll to quantify players' sentiment about levels. Because on the one hand, general wisdom would say that most players would prefer a game without levels. But on the other hand, levels give players an advantage, so some might actually prefer such a system.

A whopping 214 Rivals players participated in the poll. Alarak posted the results of this survey on Reddit. In collaboration with him, here's some upgraded visuals on the poll results that you might fight interesting.

In the first chart, we look at the answer to the question "How do you feel about playing against opponents with higher levels?"

• Each bar shows the share of respondents that voted for a certain sentiment
• Color indicates the answer to the question for a players' levels in comparison to their "standard league". Translating my categories to the exact answer options:
• Very low: Not enough for Challenge matches in my league. (4 under level cap). (This means less than 11 in tiberium league and less than 9 in Masters)
• Low: Barely enough for Challenge Matches (this would mean between 9-10 in Masters and 11-12 in Tiberium League)
• Middle: Middle of the league. (10-11 in Masters, 12-13 in Tiberium League).
• Top: Almost capped or fully capped. (12-13 in Masters League, 14-15 in Tiberium League)

Click the chart to enlarge

Unsurprisingly, the negative sentiment about playing against higher levels increases if players have lower levels, hence experience the situation more frequently.

In the next chart, we look at answers to the inverted question: "How do you feel about playing against opponents with lower levels?"

Here, players with low levels seem to be able to put themselves into the opponent's shoes more easily. But even among the players with low levels, there's still people who don't chose the clear "I don't like it" option.

Who responded to the poll? Alarak asked questions about the respondents' levels and their (typical) league:

Also, Alarak asked how often players have lower levels compared to their opponents. Below, I plotted this against the players' responses for their own levels compared to the league. One idea of this is to sense-check the responses. E.g. if someone answers "my levels are near the top for my league", e.g. L14-15 for high Tiberium, it would be strange if they responded that they "almost always" play against higher levels. And indeed, none of the respondents chose this combination.

You can read Alarak's thoughts on the answers here and the Reddit discussion here.


Video of the day

After thinking about how much you don't like to play against higher levels, let us look at tournament play, which happens at equal levels. Here's the finals of the weekly Coliseum tournament. You can find more about this weekly tournament series on 13lade's Twitch Channel.

StrikerVX against nickcool, who will prevail?