In the near future, the Internet Office will be implementing a change on the site that will change how multiplayer (MP) match wins increase the pilot’s combat rating (CR) and Flight Certification Wing (FCW) point totals.
To get two obvious concerns out of the way, we’re not changing the number of points needed to achieve CR ranks or FCW echelons and steps are being taken to ensure that no pilot gains or loses progress in their CR or FCW when the new system takes effect.
The change being made is to how many points a win will contribute to your total when you win a match. Right now, all MP wins are worth one point each. Similar to what we’ve been doing in competitions like Raise the Flag, Ace of the TIE Corps, and Imperial Storm, we’re going to give each game a different weight based on the type of combat (PvP or PvE), the average match duration, the anticipated win/loss rate over time, and even some incidentals like average queue times. In addition, for the first time we’ll be awarding bonuses for playing with or against other members of the Emperor’s Hammer and we’ll have the ability to award a bonus for winning a match while an event is active. The bonuses will be in the form of percentages that we can modify as needed as opposed to being set in stone at the beginning.
For example, a pilot that wins an EABF2 PvE match in the new system will earn 3.5 points. With two other EH players in the match they’d earn a 35% grouping bonus, bringing them to 4.725 points. With an event offering a 20% bonus for EABF2 matches, that’d bring the total to 5.67 points. We’ll be rounding up to the nearest tenth to keep the numbers trim, so 5.7 points. Because we’re not changing the CR or FCW thresholds, we’ll need to do some normalization and divide that by a conversion factor based on the average of all match base values, currently 3.6, so the pilot will earn 1.6 points towards their CR and FCW. That’s a 60% increase over the current system that would’ve only awarded the pilot 1 point.
The main reason for this change is that we’ve been recognizing that not all MP matches are equal. Some take longer, are more difficult to win, or even take more time to get into. To make sure that tougher matches are as attractive as more spammable matches, we’ll rebalance the number of points being awarded. The grouping bonus and event bonus are new benefits meant to bring pilots together and encourage group play.