Why I'm so critical about PvP

palenoue

Look, I like this game! I want this game to succeed! Unfortunately the way they have PvP now turns away far more people than it attracts. You people here in these forums obviously have no trouble with the PvP because you're still here, but may more people delete the game after the first few slaughters and tell their friends to avoid it. I've brought this up in several mobile gaming forums and for every one person who says they like the game as-is there's 20+ who said they deleted it after their first PvP massacre.

A while ago I read a post-mortem of a failed game company where the ex-manager talked about how their game never caught on, that people would download then delete it after ten minutes of playing. Yet their forums were filled with positive comments about how great the game was. Wasn't until they were desperate to stay afloat that one of their few remaining employees noticed all the favorable posts were coming from the same fourteen people. The few posts that were critical or pointed out serious flaws were shouted down by these fourteen players so they only posted once or twice before being bullied away. Worse yet, by the time the company figured this out and studied the criticisms it was too late, it would have taken a complete overhaul because the gameplay flaws were so entrenched into the game.

After reading the post-mortem I realized that not commenting on flaws (such as the PvP matching) usually spells doom for games I like because the company behind the game might never know about the problem until too late. They're too close to the game to be objective and you forum people like the game as it is. This ship could be sinking while all aboard are applauding the crew.

Look at the various tourney results, the same people keep winning because they are so powerful that nobody can even get close. Skill doesn't matter when the battle is so lopsided you get obliterated before you can get an ability off. Because the prizes are more powerful characters the same people just keep getting more untouchable. This keeps on much longer and there will just be five Galactus-class players who keep winning every contest while the rest of the remaining players are relegated to Howard the Duck status who never get past the first tier. How many new players do you think will settle for that? How many of them will tell D3Publishers why they're deleting the game? And if they don't fix this flaw, how long do you think this game will last?

I want this game to last for years, which is why I'm trying to tell them about this serious flaw and why it's damaging the game's popularity.

Unknown

They do look at tourney results. IceIX commented on this a few weeks ago. They look at who is winning/placing. It isn't as small a group as you seem to think.

And again, there are ways around this problem. Use the skip button--don't fight those high level opponents when there is no need to do so. And if your response is that everyone you see has them, then your rating is too high. Finish low for a few rounds and that will change. It is true that people not reading the forums (vast majority) may not realize that, which is a problem.

Unknown

Like yourself, I really find myself enjoying this game and hope it has staying power. Though, I'm not so convinced the PvP situation is quite as grave as you're saying. I started this game about a month ago and really enjoy playing daily. I've completed the single-player (with the exception of Ragnarok at the end), and gotten all the prizes possible. Over time, I have accumlated covers consisting almost soley of 1* and 2* characters and find I do okay in PvP. I haven't spent a dime on this game and I spend all my my HP on slots for covers (i.e. no consistently lucky draws for characters that wouldn't be available to the general populace of players).

Recently, I was able to win a 4* Invisible Woman and also placed 2nd in the IM40 Double Shot tournament this morning. My team consists of Thor, C.Storm, and whoever I feel would make a good third (usually Wolverine or Venom), which any experience in any tournament will tell you, is a cookie-cutter team. All it takes to succeed in PvP is a little experience and persistence. I'm placing well in tournaments without exorbitant work. Yes, it is difficult to hit the high ranks, it is supposed to be. I had to watch my rank on the Double Shot like a hawk. Yes, some players will have a better hand than yours, but at other times, you'll have a better hand than those against you. I've been building my characters slowly and can only testify that you will get stronger in time. Quite honestly, that's what makes it fun for me. I got destroyed too when I started, but people that quit after 10 minutes or a couple tries aren't looking for a decent challenge to begin with. Now if people are honestly no better off in a game after a reasonable effort and it's been a month, that's another story, but it's not one I find applicable here. We all pay our dues in any game like this. I ran IM35, M.Storm, and Widow for quite a while at the start and aimed for nothing but low-hanging fruit in the tournaments at the beginning, i.e. standard/heroic tokens, ISO. Over time, your piddly 1*s have gotten strong enough to bag you some better prizes. You'll get better with persistence, but it just won't be fast.

Stick with it, you'll find it will pay off. As for me, I'm liking the pace of the game.

Unknown

Honestly, I just wish they'd buff 1-stars or the weaker 2-stars like Moonstone and Bag-Man.

Unknown

I really don't recognise the game you are describing. It's certainly not the one I'm playing. The one I'm playing allows you to skip PvP fights, so you don't have to fight opponents that you cannot beat. Also the one I'm playing gives you details of opponents before you starts a PvP fight, so you can tell if your opponents are stronger than you or not, so you know whether to skip or not.

palenoue

If you skip a PvP fight, they're still there. I've had the same five overpowered opponents in the SHIELD Versus for over a week now, and I still can't beat them. PvP is only fun if you have a chance of winning.

What I would like to see is matches based on the levels of your characters. Right now if I have three 10-level characters the game will match them to another team that's in the same ranking, despite them being three 50-levels. This forces people to play nothing but their highest level characters all the time and still get overwhelmed by superior firepower.

If they changed it to level-based matches I could make teams out of my lower-level characters and play them for a change. I'm getting tired of running the same 3-4 characters all the time, but that's the only way to compete.

palenoue

Just a quick post to say the Skip button was glitched. It never seemed to do anything useful, but just now I shut down my iPad and restarted it for another app and now the Skip button is working as it's supposed to.

Unknown

Humphrey wrote:

I really don't recognise the game you are describing. It's certainly not the one I'm playing. The one I'm playing allows you to skip PvP fights, so you don't have to fight opponents that you cannot beat. Also the one I'm playing gives you details of opponents before you starts a PvP fight, so you can tell if your opponents are stronger than you or not, so you know whether to skip or not.

As if it matters if you can skip fighting someone when those same people you are skipping are allowed to hit you and make you lose more points than you could get fighting someone you can beat.

I was at 1st place by 25 points with 1 min remaining, took the best fight I could get, and when I came back from that fight I had been hit by 7-8 people and dropped out of the top 25. If they don't find a way to fix PvP, especially given the lack of useful PvE content, I am likely to be joining the group of people who simply delete the game - because it is not fun grinding your way to the top only to get destroyed in the last min and never being able to actually advance in the game.

Unknown

zhadum wrote:

Humphrey wrote:

I really don't recognise the game you are describing. It's certainly not the one I'm playing. The one I'm playing allows you to skip PvP fights, so you don't have to fight opponents that you cannot beat. Also the one I'm playing gives you details of opponents before you starts a PvP fight, so you can tell if your opponents are stronger than you or not, so you know whether to skip or not.

As if it matters if you can skip fighting someone when those same people you are skipping are allowed to hit you and make you lose more points than you could get fighting someone you can beat.

I was at 1st place by 25 points with 1 min remaining, took the best fight I could get, and when I came back from that fight I had been hit by 7-8 people and dropped out of the top 25. If they don't find a way to fix PvP, especially given the lack of useful PvE content, I am likely to be joining the group of people who simply delete the game - because it is not fun grinding your way to the top only to get destroyed in the last min and never being able to actually advance in the game.

u describe something that every player has probably gone through once or twice or a...lot.

simple bad luck really, sometimes i get attacked six billion times at the end (tourney for red wolv ****) or i'm left alone like i'm made of poop (recent double shot tourney). its a mmr/elo type system where if you rise above where you should be in ranking, u become a juicy target and get targetted by everyone for ez points.

Unknown

forgrim wrote:

u describe something that every player has probably gone through once or twice or a...lot.

simple bad luck really, sometimes i get attacked six billion times at the end (tourney for red wolv ****) or i'm left alone like i'm made of poop (recent double shot tourney). its a mmr/elo type system where if you rise above where you should be in ranking, u become a juicy target and get targetted by everyone for ez points.

Which would not be as much of a problem, except that the only way to actually advance to the point where you are not a juicy target is to win those competitions. Chicken and the egg, you can only win if you have the powerful cards, and you can only get those powerful cards by winning (or paying through the nose)

The current system says that either you have to have been playing constantly since the very beginning (where you had a chance at the power cards before the current elite players got them) or you have to be willing to put more money into the game than any online game deserves. New players or people who don't have more than a few hours they can play each day are simply screwed. And that is not a good state for a game that has aspirations of being around for very long.

Unknown

i think some of the problem has been alleviated these days with brackets and 3 star covers being handed to top 25.

before the days of brackets, it was ffa everyone in the world against each other in one bracket with top 100 getting meaninful rewards. now that was brutal.

so basically you claw ur way to a couple top 25 finishes, then slowly move to top 10, etc. etc.

even the lightning tournaments i started with thor/storm combo, into dr doom, then dr doom + rag.

its incredibly gratifying to see the progress throughout the two months i've played this game.

Unknown

forgrim wrote:

i think some of the problem has been alleviated these days with brackets and 3 star covers being handed to top 25.

before the days of brackets, it was ffa everyone in the world against each other in one bracket with top 100 getting meaninful rewards. now that was brutal.

so basically you claw ur way to a couple top 25 finishes, then slowly move to top 10, etc. etc.

even the lightning tournaments i started with thor/storm combo, into dr doom, then dr doom + rag.

its incredibly gratifying to see the progress throughout the two months i've played this game.

Except you can't claw your way into the top 25 without those cards (unless you are insanely lucky). And yes, you used to be able to get into the higher ranks with Thor/Storm - that was before the entire top was taken by people with the high level rag/doom combos.

Unknown

palenoue wrote:

If you skip a PvP fight, they're still there. I've had the same five overpowered opponents in the SHIELD Versus for over a week now, and I still can't beat them. PvP is only fun if you have a chance of winning.

What I would like to see is matches based on the levels of your characters. Right now if I have three 10-level characters the game will match them to another team that's in the same ranking, despite them being three 50-levels. This forces people to play nothing but their highest level characters all the time and still get overwhelmed by superior firepower.

If they changed it to level-based matches I could make teams out of my lower-level characters and play them for a change. I'm getting tired of running the same 3-4 characters all the time, but that's the only way to compete.

When you say skip a fight, do you mean you IGNORE the opponents you can't beat OR do you mean you HIT the 'SKIP' button.

Unknown

zhadum wrote:

Except you can't claw your way into the top 25 without those cards (unless you are insanely lucky). And yes, you used to be able to get into the higher ranks with Thor/Storm - that was before the entire top was taken by people with the high level rag/doom combos.

Yes you can. And you can get them from tokens (which didn't exist initially). Thing is, you can do well in a bracket without having the strongest team -- it's a matter of matchmaking. This isn't true for the Lightning rounds, where everyone is in a single bracket, but it is true for the other tournaments.

Kyoku wrote:

When you say skip a fight, do you mean you IGNORE the opponents you can't beat OR do you mean you HIT the 'SKIP' button.

Hit the skip button. The person in question later stated that his wasn't working but restarting the game fixed it.

Unknown

Zathrus wrote:

zhadum wrote:

Except you can't claw your way into the top 25 without those cards (unless you are insanely lucky). And yes, you used to be able to get into the higher ranks with Thor/Storm - that was before the entire top was taken by people with the high level rag/doom combos.

Yes you can. And you can get them from tokens (which didn't exist initially). Thing is, you can do well in a bracket without having the strongest team -- it's a matter of matchmaking. This isn't true for the Lightning rounds, where everyone is in a single bracket, but it is true for the other tournaments.

I see, so it is just my lousy luck (or the fact that the matchmaking is completely screwed) that makes it so I'm matched with everyone who can beat the **** out of me.

That doesn't make me want to keep playing any more that constantly getting knocked down 50 spots in the rankings in the last min does. So my point still stands.

Unknown

zhadum wrote:

I see, so it is just my lousy luck (or the fact that the matchmaking is completely screwed) that makes it so I'm matched with everyone who can beat the **** out of me.

That doesn't make me want to keep playing any more that constantly getting knocked down 50 spots in the rankings in the last min does. So my point still stands.

No, as Zathrus and others have said, you can use the skip button to find opponents who are a better match. If you're really coming up short, you can purposely tank your score by throwing the odd match here and there, and bust yourself down to opponents that are more appropriate. You can also use boosts to give yourself an edge.

Also to your point about getting knocked down a bunch of spots in the 11th hour of a tourney...let's just say that wonderful little experience isn't limited to newer players only.

Unknown

someguy wrote:

zhadum wrote:

I see, so it is just my lousy luck (or the fact that the matchmaking is completely screwed) that makes it so I'm matched with everyone who can beat the **** out of me.

That doesn't make me want to keep playing any more that constantly getting knocked down 50 spots in the rankings in the last min does. So my point still stands.

No, as Zathrus and others have said, you can use the skip button to find opponents who are a better match. If you're really coming up short, you can purposely tank your score by throwing the odd match here and there, and bust yourself down to opponents that are more appropriate. You can also use boosts to give yourself an edge.

Also to your point about getting knocked down a bunch of spots in the 11th hour of a tourney...let's just say that wonderful little experience isn't limited to newer players only.

Perhaps you should bother READING before opening your trap. I do skip those I can't beat - that does not help me get to any of the rewards that would lead me to actually being able to compete in the future. I've tried tanking my score - it seems to have absolutely no effect whatsoever with getting into any better seeding. I've used boosts - but that still won't stop you from getting kicked in the teeth and dropped out of the useful rewards.

So I have tried everything I can, other than investing more time than I have available or more money than any online game is worth and all that happens is that I get further and further behind the power curve.

Unknown

zhadum wrote:

Perhaps you should bother READING before opening your trap. I do skip those I can't beat - that does not help me get to any of the rewards that would lead me to actually being able to compete in the future. I've tried tanking my score - it seems to have absolutely no effect whatsoever with getting into any better seeding. I've used boosts - but that still won't stop you from getting kicked in the teeth and dropped out of the useful rewards.

So I have tried everything I can, other than investing more time than I have available or more money than any online game is worth and all that happens is that I get further and further behind the power curve.

I did read what you wrote, and tried to offer you helpful suggestions, which you didn't seem interested in paying attention to. Honestly, it doesn't sound like you're looking for actual solutions. It just sounds like you're upset and don't want to hear anything from anybody who doesn't agree with you. Just IMO.

Here's some extra advice for you if/when you do decide to genuinely seek help later on: being rude to people is a good way to have them not want to help you in the future.

Unknown

its a gradual process, you win one good cover, then slowly build that cover up, there's no instant gratification. its a time investment to get better, and due to your limited time, it'll take longer.

the more you try, the more chances you have of placing higher. when i started i got smashed all the time but i just kept playing in all the events and building up 2 star characters from my 3 1 stars, and now i've built up 3 stars from my 2 stars. if you liek the game, u'll play to slowly grow but if you want instant all army of 3 stars, it just isn't gonna happen.

i've played 2-4 hours a day for 2 months straight pretty much, and i have a 3 3 star party that's not maxed out. it takes time and effort that you get by SLOWLY placing in tournaments and moving on up. i placed 500 in the initial tournaments, then 200, then 100, then 50 25 5 and now top 2's.

being hostile to ppl trying to help doesn't promote your cause also.

Unknown

someguy wrote:

zhadum wrote:

Perhaps you should bother READING before opening your trap. I do skip those I can't beat - that does not help me get to any of the rewards that would lead me to actually being able to compete in the future. I've tried tanking my score - it seems to have absolutely no effect whatsoever with getting into any better seeding. I've used boosts - but that still won't stop you from getting kicked in the teeth and dropped out of the useful rewards.

So I have tried everything I can, other than investing more time than I have available or more money than any online game is worth and all that happens is that I get further and further behind the power curve.

I did read what you wrote, and tried to offer you helpful suggestions, which you didn't seem interested in paying attention to. Honestly, it doesn't sound like you're looking for actual solutions. It just sounds like you're upset and don't want to hear anything from anybody who doesn't agree with you. Just IMO.

Here's some extra advice for you if/when you do decide to genuinely seek help later on: being rude to people is a good way to have them not want to help you in the future.

Gee, suggestions that I have already tried - and they are worthless. Why should I care if you don't offer help in the future given how useless your help has been?

As for why I was writing this, it is so that the developers can see that there is a problem that they need to look into - if they want to actually keep customers that it.

Unknown

forgrim wrote:

its a gradual process, you win one good cover, then slowly build that cover up, there's no instant gratification. its a time investment to get better, and due to your limited time, it'll take longer.

the more you try, the more chances you have of placing higher. when i started i got smashed all the time but i just kept playing in all the events and building up 2 star characters from my 3 1 stars, and now i've built up 3 stars from my 2 stars. if you liek the game, u'll play to slowly grow but if you want instant all army of 3 stars, it just isn't gonna happen.

i've played 2-4 hours a day for 2 months straight pretty much, and i have a 3 3 star party that's not maxed out. it takes time and effort that you get by SLOWLY placing in tournaments and moving on up. i placed 500 in the initial tournaments, then 200, then 100, then 50 25 5 and now top 2's.

being hostile to ppl trying to help doesn't promote your cause also.

I don't want instant anything - what I want is to not watch the power curve get further and further out of reach. Meanwhile, every tournament that goes by, the players who have the top cards get better cards, while those that don't have those top cards get further and further behind.

I would expect to be able to do is to be able to slowly get better cards and from that be able to slowly climb the ranks - instead what happens is that each tourney that goes by, I slip further and further down the rankings, because I simply do not have the cards that are needed to compete.