If I personally could make changes to the rivals event, this is what I'd do:
1. Make the rivals event much longer. Turn it into a marathon instead of a sprint. Instead of 5 days where people with the biggest wallets and most time can just sprint across, I would make it a 10-12 day event. This would help the event in a few different ways:
- It should in theory help the people who don't use hotstreaks. I was able to secure a top 4 spot for the first event and top 50 spot in the 2nd event by using hotstreaks almost every game. If we increase the length of the event, it would pace many players where we wouldn't feel obligated to hotstreak so frequently and pace ourselves. It would help keep more of a balance, since the time invested would balance more over the amount of money you spend on hotstreaks (in theory). I know many people who don't buy hotstreaks, and feel at a disadvantage because they don't have 50-100 bucks to shell out for a 5 day event. It should prevent players like me from just being able to buy their spot constantly and let people with real time on their hands get a better position.
- It would also give many more people a chance to compete. Just from the discussion thread there are stories of people not being able to play for 1 day and suddenly being out of the race completely. If we have a longer event, 1 day away should not destroy a person's chances for reaching their goal.
- Preventing burnout of the same repeated quick games. In shorter events, to keep up you have to play a minimum of 8 hours to get into a good tier. Over 12 hours if you want a really good spot. Players will start getting burnt out because the fundamental quick game spam system is not very enjoyable to begin with. A prolonged event would again put less pressure on having to play X many hours a day, and not feel absolutely sick of quick games.
2. If the length was prolonged, I would think the brackets would slightly expand also. This is something for the devs to decide how they would like to re-work the rewards, whether to expand the tiers slightly or however they choose to adapt the rewards with the new prolonged event. It may also put less pressure on the devs to constantly have to come out with new cards or rivalries.
Just from all the feedback in the discussion thread, I think these have been the two main complaints: The fact that it's putting too much pressure on players to put in insane amounts of hours a day, feeling like a constant sprint towards their goal. And the fact that in a shorter event, buying hotstreaks is a superior way of doing well while the people with genuine time put in are constantly in an uphill struggle.
*shrug* just my two cents