Shield hopping makes the game pay-to-win

mjh

let's not forget to add daily reward coins (HP is health, these are coins, I won't call it HP) and pve progression reward coins. Add that to the mix and you don't really have to pay to shield hop once or twice per pvp.

Another strategy is to shield hop once and break at the last minute to hop a 3rd time, not requiring a 3rd shield

Unknown

Kelbris wrote:

Muspel wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

trey9 wrote:

I think a simple, elegant solution to this entire shield hopping problem would be to limit players to 1-2 shields per pvp.

Only 2 is crazy low, even for people that do not shield hop. 4-5 seems like a fairer number to everyone, while greatly limiting shield-hopping.

4-5 is a ridiculous number of shields. It's completely possible to place in the top 25 and even the top 10 while only ever using a single shield.

The only reason to use that many shields is for shield-hopping, which I'd argue is degenerate gameplay.
.

Cheapest shield is 3 hours.

Health packs fully recharge in 3 hours.

You really don't think us Netflix binge-watchers have another use for shields? It's a lot cheaper than buying 5 health packs.

(Seriously, who plays this very average game without watching TV during?

Buying health packs isn't really worth it, either.

A mistake that I think a lot of people make is they push their way into the top 30 or so without shielding, then they get absolutely wrecked by all of the people that are attacking them because of how many points they give.

What works much better is to sit around 50th place. You'll get attacked some, but nowhere near as much, because you're giving out much lower points. When it gets down to the end of the event, make a push to whatever point value you want, then throw up a shield.

By doing this, you can very easily get into the top 50 with only a single 3-hour shield. If you don't get badly screwed by cascade RNG, top 10 is also very doable (provided that you have a decently covered/leveled version of the featured character).

The only reason that the top 5 or so ranks are so crazy is because of shield-hopping, and in my opinion, it really needs to go.

In fact, what I think might be an interesting experiment would be to make an experimental PvP event where you don't lose points from being attacked, winning matches gives you fewer points, and you get a point multiplier for each character that you've won a match with in that tournament. So, for instance, if you've used 20 different characters to win 30 matches, you would have a lot more points than someone that won 30 matches while using the same 3 characters the whole time. This would encourage players to use their whole rosters, instead of seeing the same FotM teams all the time,and it would remove the need for shield hopping.

Raffoon

I see a lot of people arguing that the HP gain from events makes up for the HP spent on shields. The issue with this argument is that gaining HP from events doesn't remove the direct link that exists between money and HP. Money spent on shields is money not spent on covers or health packs. HP is a resource, attached to money, that people are forced to spend in order to place at the top of a competition. Add the fact that someone using only 1-2 shields will never ever beat someone using 15 shields in terms of score, and that destroys the essence of fair play in the game.

I shield hop too, and pay to do it, but I can't fool myself into thinking it's in any way a fair system.

Unknown

Muspel wrote:

Kelbris wrote:

Cheapest shield is 3 hours.

Health packs fully recharge in 3 hours.

You really don't think us Netflix binge-watchers have another use for shields? It's a lot cheaper than buying 5 health packs.

(Seriously, who plays this very average game without watching TV during?

Buying health packs isn't really worth it, either.

A mistake that I think a lot of people make is they push their way into the top 30 or so without shielding, then they get absolutely wrecked by all of the people that are attacking them because of how many points they give.

What works much better is to sit around 50th place. You'll get attacked some, but nowhere near as much, because you're giving out much lower points. When it gets down to the end of the event, make a push to whatever point value you want, then throw up a shield.

By doing this, you can very easily get into the top 50 with only a single 3-hour shield. If you don't get badly screwed by cascade RNG, top 10 is also very doable (provided that you have a decently covered/leveled version of the featured character).

The only reason that the top 5 or so ranks are so crazy is because of shield-hopping, and in my opinion, it really needs to go.

In fact, what I think might be an interesting experiment would be to make an experimental PvP event where you don't lose points from being attacked, winning matches gives you fewer points, and you get a point multiplier for each character that you've won a match with in that tournament. So, for instance, if you've used 20 different characters to win 30 matches, you would have a lot more points than someone that won 30 matches while using the same 3 characters the whole time. This would encourage players to use their whole rosters, instead of seeing the same FotM teams all the time,and it would remove the need for shield hopping.

Why are you giving away my strategies?

Unknown

Why do people attempt to justify losing HP for nothing as a gain? You can do 100 HP for progression, 50 HP for alliance, and 50 HP for placement for a total of 200 HP fairly casually. Assuming your alliance cannot finish in top 2 then the maximum HP gained is 300 (100 progression/100 alliance/100 placement). The 50 HP from alliance isn't going to depend on one person, and it's almost certainly going to be net loss anyway unless your alliance is around exactly #50 because you either are way above what's needed or not close to getting. At the individual level you get 50 HP for going from #50 to #10 and you're not going to get #10 without shields unless you play a ton or just had a really weak bracket. Even if you fall to #100 it's still the same tradeoff (25 HP for #100 versus 100 HP - 75 HP for the shield). Of course there are the cover prizes, but a lot of the time you don't need the covers and the iso 8 gain is fairly minimal unless you're trying to save up for X Force.

Shields are P2W and it's hardly a good investment unless you also need the covers, and by need I don't mean maxing out She-Hulk so she can continue to be never used. But it's because shields are a net loss of HP that it doesn't really matter that it's P2W because you 'win' quicker by just not shielding so that you've the extra HP left to buy the covers or use them for the covers that do matter.

For the progression rewards right now they're likely way easy to hit compared to what D3 is expecting due to Sentry. Before Sentry was out it was more like a couple guys could get 1300 and even that took a lot of luck. Now it's more like if you have 500 HP you have a 90% chance to get a cover that D3 values at 2500 HP. That sort of worked back when the 4* sucked so nobody would ever pay 2500 HP for a X Force or IW but that's no longer the case. I'd expect Sentry nerf to come in shortly after whenever a X Force cover is offered and a couple thousand people got it at 1300.

kidicarus

Just because an in game resource has monetary value doesn't mean that it's pay to win.

Paying to win usually implies forking over some cash, otherwise it's called "resource management".

avs962

Muspel wrote:

In fact, what I think might be an interesting experiment would be to make an experimental PvP event where you don't lose points from being attacked, winning matches gives you fewer points, and you get a point multiplier for each character that you've won a match with in that tournament. So, for instance, if you've used 20 different characters to win 30 matches, you would have a lot more points than someone that won 30 matches while using the same 3 characters the whole time. This would encourage players to use their whole rosters, instead of seeing the same FotM teams all the time,and it would remove the need for shield hopping.

I think the second you take away retaliation point loss, you make pvp a ridiculous grind fest based solely on who wants to poke at there screen the most. Not good.

atomzed

avs962 wrote:

Muspel wrote:

In fact, what I think might be an interesting experiment would be to make an experimental PvP event where you don't lose points from being attacked, winning matches gives you fewer points, and you get a point multiplier for each character that you've won a match with in that tournament. So, for instance, if you've used 20 different characters to win 30 matches, you would have a lot more points than someone that won 30 matches while using the same 3 characters the whole time. This would encourage players to use their whole rosters, instead of seeing the same FotM teams all the time,and it would remove the need for shield hopping.

I think the second you take away retaliation point loss, you make pvp a ridiculous grind fest based solely on who wants to poke at there screen the most. Not good.

Exactly. If you don't make pvp having a point loss system, then it will be like pve, a game mode which depends on how much you grind. I like pvp bec it favors some 'skills', though some may think that shields are not skill, but I like to see it as resource management.

Phantron wrote:

Why do people attempt to justify losing HP for nothing as a gain? You can do 100 HP for progression, 50 HP for alliance, and 50 HP for placement for a total of 200 HP fairly casually.

Why would gaining 4 covers be considered as "nothing"? Each cover is worth 1250. While some covers are less valuable than others, I would think that covers are still winning. I mean, there's nothing for us to do besides earning covers right?

If I have the covers already, like the doom covers, then I will play to hit 800 pts and get all the HP progression rewards that way, I will earn the max HP I can for this pvp

_RiO_

atomzed wrote:

Exactly. If you don't make pvp having a point loss system, then it will be like pve, a game mode which depends on how much you grind.

PvE is not about how much you grind. It's about how close to the finish line you can manage to play and exploit maximixed rubber-banding.

simonsez

_RiO_ wrote:

PvE is not about how much you grind. It's about how close to the finish line you can manage to play and exploit maximixed rubber-banding.

In the most current PvE, yes, rb was a joke. Prior to that, people were actually rewarded, not penalized, for playing. Much prefer the latter.

HailMary

Raffoon wrote:

Shield hopping (not necessarily the coordinated kind) is an absolutely essential technique to place highly in a given PVP bracket. If you do not use this technique and you have a lot of points, someone will attack you and lower your score, meaning you're no longer at the top.

Not unless you mean "get #1" when you say "place highly." The highest score I've gotten (outside of Kyipgate) before using a single shield was around 1200 (1187, I think?). I used a 3hr shield after that to protect against the last-hour feeding frenzy. Completely unshielded, I can very reliably end with a score in the mid-900s, which is generally good enough for T10 in my non-fluffy brackets.

Raffoon wrote:

Being forced to maintain a shield using real-life currency is quite literally the definition of pay-to-win.

Except you aren't forced to maintain a shield using real-life currency. You're given the option of buying HP (shields, covers, etc.) with real-life currency. I've been completely F2P, and I now shieldhop fairly regularly in PVP while maintaining a healthy HP surplus.

Raffoon wrote:

I see a lot of people arguing that the HP gain from events makes up for the HP spent on shields. The issue with this argument is that gaining HP from events doesn't remove the direct link that exists between money and HP. Money spent on shields is money not spent on covers or health packs. HP is a resource, attached to money, that people are forced to spend in order to place at the top of a competition. Add the fact that someone using only 1-2 shields will never ever beat someone using 15 shields in terms of score, and that destroys the essence of fair play in the game.

I shield hop too, and pay to do it, but I can't fool myself into thinking it's in any way a fair system.

The ability to buy in-game currencies using real money as a progression "shortcut" is pretty common in F2P games. Heck, you could argue that allowing players to buy Iso at all makes MPQ "P2W" since you can buy boosts and level characters using Iso, which definitely gives you a competitive advantage. Your issue then becomes "players can use real money to buy useful things in the game at all", and not "shielding isn't fair because you can buy HP."

Muspel wrote:

In fact, what I think might be an interesting experiment would be to make an experimental PvP event where you don't lose points from being attacked, winning matches gives you fewer points, and you get a point multiplier for each character that you've won a match with in that tournament. So, for instance, if you've used 20 different characters to win 30 matches, you would have a lot more points than someone that won 30 matches while using the same 3 characters the whole time. This would encourage players to use their whole rosters, instead of seeing the same FotM teams all the time,and it would remove the need for shield hopping.

So you basically want a three-node PVE with zero rubberbanding, instantaneous point refreshes, and every node pitting you against semi-random non-goons. That nightmarish grindfest is not my idea of fun.

emaker27

kidicarus wrote:

You get 100 HP for reaching 800 points in every pvp.

You get 100 HP for placing top 10

Your alliance gets 100HP for placing top 50.

That's 300HP income.

That pays for 4 3 hour shields.

It's only pay to win if you want to spend more than that and I've not spent a single cent in the last 9 months or so but I typically end up top 5.

There are a bunch of assumptions made here. First, not every player has the roster to score 800 when retaliations exist. Second, not everyone can place Top 10 when there are brackets that require at least 1000 points for that. Third, they have to be a part of a Top 50 alliance which as the game progresses, becomes more difficult. Yes, a lot of us on the forums can hit those marks, but that doesn't apply to every player as the OP implies.

Unknown

emaker27 wrote:

There are a bunch of assumptions made here. First, not every player has the roster to score 800 when retaliations exist. Second, not everyone can place Top 10 when there are brackets that require at least 1000 points for that. Third, they have to be a part of a Top 50 alliance which as the game progresses, becomes more difficult. Yes, a lot of us on the forums can hit those marks, but that doesn't apply to every player as the OP implies.

If you can't score 800 then perhaps rather than it being pay to win you simply don't have the time/roster/inclination (delete as applicable) to do all that well and the other guys deserve to be above you anyway?

Kidicarus has a good point. If you're breaking even you aren't really paying to win anything... (although you certainly can basically buy points with HP and ISO in PvP by buying shields and boosts).

If you remove or limit shield hopping there would still need to be something that determined who came first. If it's not the willingness to spend HP and ISO then what? Luck by doing better than others in a last minute scramble (old way it worked)? Co-ordinating with your alliance to climb higher earlier before everyone is trying to hit big scoring targets then buying longer shields out of some arbitrary allowance of shields per event? (still pay to win though)

There has to be a determining factor in who's coming first and since there are far too many people with 2 maxed 3* heroes +/- featured it's not going to be roster. Having a deep roster wouldn't solve the issue that it only takes 2 decent heroes to beat you and if you're ahead of the pack then the horde will come for you if you're unshielded and they WILL hit you faster than you can hit other people.

Simply limiting shield hopping would, IMO, make PvP worse and more frustrating overall. If you wanted to make it less pay to win then you would need to completely rework the way PvP works. Even then it will need to come down to SOMETHING that makes a given person place first and whether it be luck, available time, having a specific hero that gives an advantage etc etc there will be people who are unhappy with it because they don't have the time or hero or whatever that alows them to do as well as the next guy.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

emaker27 wrote:

There are a bunch of assumptions made here. First, not every player has the roster to score 800 when retaliations exist. Second, not everyone can place Top 10 when there are brackets that require at least 1000 points for that. Third, they have to be a part of a Top 50 alliance which as the game progresses, becomes more difficult. Yes, a lot of us on the forums can hit those marks, but that doesn't apply to every player as the OP implies.

If you can't score 800 then perhaps rather than it being pay to win you simply don't have the time/roster/inclination (delete as applicable) to do all that well and the other guys deserve to be above you anyway?

Kidicarus has a good point. If you're breaking even you aren't really paying to win anything... (although you certainly can basically buy points with HP and ISO in PvP by buying shields and boosts).

If you remove or limit shield hopping there would still need to be something that determined who came first. If it's not the willingness to spend HP and ISO then what? Luck by doing better than others in a last minute scramble (old way it worked)? Co-ordinating with your alliance to climb higher earlier before everyone is trying to hit big scoring targets then buying longer shields out of some arbitrary allowance of shields per event? (still pay to win though)

There has to be a determining factor in who's coming first and since there are far too many people with 2 maxed 3* heroes +/- featured it's not going to be roster. Having a deep roster wouldn't solve the issue that it only takes 2 decent heroes to beat you and if you're ahead of the pack then the horde will come for you if you're unshielded and they WILL hit you faster than you can hit other people.

Simply limiting shield hopping would, IMO, make PvP worse and more frustrating overall. If you wanted to make it less pay to win then you would need to completely rework the way PvP works. Even then it will need to come down to SOMETHING that makes a given person place first and whether it be luck, available time, having a specific hero that gives an advantage etc etc there will be people who are unhappy with it because they don't have the time or hero or whatever that alows them to do as well as the next guy.

I have to agree with the basic idea here. As long as rewards are given out based solely on your score compared to other players there are always going to be people that don't get everything and are thus unhappy. But that's just the rewards structure of this game is designed. After nearly a year I can't imagine they'd completely re-design how rewards are earned.

Unknown

2 shields is way to low. There would be no chance to get to 1300 progression. I never go for them, but they are part of the game, and the only real way to cover max your 4 stars. I think 5 is a reasonable number. Or maybe they could max it at 24 hours of shielding per event. I don't shield hop to much, occasionally to get to 1100, but normally I just play and shield once for 8 or 3. That being said shield hopping is one of the most talent based parts of this game and to remove it completely seems pretty silly. The hoppers are the people who consistently spend money on this game and I really can't see the devs making a move to directly lower income. One you've played for a while the only thing to spend money on in this game is shield hopping. Sure it may be pay to win, but the people paying are also trying a lot harder. Servers don't run themselves. It's an interesting idea to limit them though. I hadn't really thought about it, and I think it would add a little strategy to the overall experience.

Unknown

It can be quite hard to get to even 800 because it should be rather obvious that the quality of the opponents rarely change as you go up in points. There are plenty of guys with Sentry/Daken sitting at 100-400 points and if more than 2 of them decide to beat on you at the same time because you have 700 points, you're still getting nowhere without shields. Now at 700 it takes a shorter amount of time before those guys find some other victim to beat up so you can eventually make your climb, but you can easily get unlucky and be stuck for a while. There's nothing clever to somehow avoid getting hit by 3 guys who are exactly as strong as you are that have 400 less PvP rating than you besides using shields, but then climbing the PvP ladder is more or less an endless repetition of fighting guys who have almost the exact team as you for prizes you almost certainly don't need, so it shouldn't matter that much if it's P2W because it's pretty pointless.

At any rate all the talk about how you need to get progression rewards seems to overlook the fact that prior to Sentry become widely available, 1300 was some kind of rare sighting relative to an entire event. There's no way D3 is supposed to be satisfied that anybody with Sentry and about 500 HP worth of shields/boosts can get a cover they try to sell for 2500 HP. Why don't they do anything about it? Because I've come to realize they're just really slow at doing anything. Whereas the average company tends to take their time on anythin that hurts players but immediately fix anything that gives player an undue advantage, D3 takes their time on both. For some incomprehensible reason D3 doesn't seem to really care bugs or severe design flaws is severely cutting into their profit, and I guess that's actually a pretty good deal for all the players so we shouldn't be complaining.

By the way, people really need to stop this myth of how shield hopping pays for the game. IceIX already said shields/boosts aren't where they make most of their money from. It's very consistent with their revenue breakdown chart released back in April. There's actually nothing particuarly valuable from a financial point of view to the company. If anything it's likely to cost them because the biggest enabler of shield hopping, Sentry, sure is very good at ensuring you'd never need to buy tokens/ability upgrade/roster slots.

Enoc99

I really like the idea of shields, but their current utilization and implementation seems off compared to their flavor.

What about a shield cooldown? Say, whenever you break your shield before its duration is up, you cannot be re-shielded for 30 minutes. However, if you let your shield expire naturally, then you could re-shield immediately if desired. Otherwise, leave the shield system otherwise unmodified.

Unknown

Enoc99 wrote:

I really like the idea of shields, but their current utilization and implementation seems off compared to their flavor.

What about a shield cooldown? Say, whenever you break your shield before its duration is up, you cannot be re-shielded for 30 minutes. However, if you let your shield expire naturally, then you could re-shield immediately if desired. Otherwise, leave the shield system otherwise unmodified.

Although I would agree a change to shields would be nice (if it improved their use) but a 30 min downtime on early breaking means you would get MURDERED if your score is good. I shudder to think how many times I get hit 30 mins after unshielding and i'm only discoverable for the time i'm unshielded which is significantly less then 30 minutes.

Having Shields only instantly re-usable if they expire naturally means I need to arrange my life around MPQ PvP to make proper use of shields which is a terrible idea IMO.

Having said that I can't think of a better idea so can only suggest leaving them as they are....

Unknown

If you want to do a CD on shields you can make it like you can't apply another shield 30 minutes after you applied your first one, though I'm not sure this even fixes the problem.

I'm not convinced shield hopping is some kind of inherently unworkable mechanism. I remember before Sentry was around, the most amusing things I had was watching people give live updates on shield hoppers and whether they succeed or fall into oblivion because they dared trying to win 3 games on a shield hop, and a lot of them ended up with "Soandso was eaten by the horde". There used to be significant risks for shield hopping before Sentry made it trivial to win quickly. Get rid of Sentry's ability to shield hop with impunity and it'd be a far more reasonable invesment. Of course those who can afford shields will always have an edge but you'd use them closer as a way to recharge your health pack and/or take a break, as opposed to shield + Sentry = 3 easy wins.

Unknown

Raffoon wrote:

So, the basic concept with shield hopping is that you keep a shield up constantly once you reach a certain amount of points, break the shield only to play 1-3 games, and then re-shield before the retaliation comes in. More extreme versions of this technique include coordinating with high scoring players to leapfrog each other only when shields are up.

Shield hopping (not necessarily the coordinated kind) is an absolutely essential technique to place highly in a given PVP bracket. If you do not use this technique and you have a lot of points, someone will attack you and lower your score, meaning you're no longer at the top.

Being forced to maintain a shield using real-life currency is quite literally the definition of pay-to-win. You pay money for a shield and then you get to place higher in the tournament. Perhaps, if you pay enough and have a good roster that money even results in winning.

The fact that there is no way to win a tournament without paying D3 money is ridiculous, and I don't know why we stand for it.

There must be a better system than this. I know that D3 loves raking in the money on shields, but allowing shield-hopping to exist creates a direct link between how much money you pay and how high your score is. Whatever happened to fairness?

to be honest this game is a pay to win. but it is a rather fair model compare to a lots of cell phone game.
i myself not a big spender but 2 logan loonies got me easy ride to 6 maxed char on my 200+ days. i still have a healthy social life and maintain priorities before a game i loved to play.
if i can play a little money to not to be play like a salve, i take the deal.

i just want to ask if shield hop is off the table, will you be more likely to pay the game , i highly doubt it.
u know they have to make money somehow right?? if people are voting with their wallet, i say its legit.