Defensive Loss Cap/Timer

Raffoon

So, everyone's been there: You finish a big PVP push, or you're right before that progression reward. Suddenly as you exit, that screen:

YOU'VE LOST 200 POINTS, HAHAHAHA

What if there were a limit to how many points you could lose in a given timeframe? Say, no more than 50 points in a 15 minute time period or something in that ballpark.

Upsides? No more mega-surprise-hits as you're finishing up a match.

Downsides? I guess you can't hope that the guy ahead of you suddenly loses 200 points so you can move up a rank?

Unknown

Downsides:

1. All the prizes would go to the grinders.
2. It would reduce people's incentive to buy shields, thus depriving d3 of monies.
3. The progression rewards would have to be rethought out; getting to 2500 probably wouldn't be that difficult once the effects of it resonate down the ladder.
4. Everyone would have to put in an insane effort to try to rank. I think people are sick of the grind enough as it is in PVE. To introduce it into PVP as well? No, thanks!

simonsez

daibar wrote:

Downsides:
All the prizes would go to the grinders.

I'd call this an upside, but that's just me. But I don't see any inherent difference in prize-worthiness between grinding, and seeing who can spend the most hp on shields/rainbow boosts and iso on the skip button.

Unknown

A better fix would be:
once you break shield, you don't show up in nodes for 2-3 minutes.

Gives you a buffer of one game. Now instead of winning one and losing 3, you can win one and only have lost 2.

It would reduce the sting of defensive losses, without eliminating it. You can unshield to get that extra 100 or so points without dropping 200 points.

Unknown

still doesn't do anything for the 2* person who works hard to break 700 points and then finds themselves at 400 points 10 minutes later.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

daibar wrote:

Downsides:
All the prizes would go to the grinders.

I'd call this an upside, but that's just me. But I don't see any inherent difference in prize-worthiness between grinding, and seeing who can spend the most hp on shields/rainbow boosts and iso on the skip button.

I don't think that's a fair dichotomy. If you have a decent roster and are more of a casual player you can still rank without using boosts/shields or maybe using 1 shield at the end. The new system would take away that option altogether.

I don't have a great roster, so I would probably rank higher with this newer system when I'm trying. If you implemented this system wrong, due to the increased points towards the end acting as rubber banding with MMR, there could be even more of a focus on end game play, further screwing over non-Pacific time players.

Nellyson

Here's the thing I hate the most.....losing 35-45 points a match to a team that is WAY better than mine. Case in point, I lost 47 points in one match to a roster of X-Force at lvl 255, Maxed Lazy , and a maxed and buffed . I think I had up a maxed and maxed lazy , along with my lvl 150 :blackpanter:. Now I wasn't completely overmatched, but **** man. They're still a better team than what they were fighting. The only reason to losing that many points was rankings. I think a loss to a team better than you should net you a smaller loss. The rankings should only play a little into how many points are earned/lost. Therefor, if I use just maxed 94s to try and beat a maxed 166s, I should gain a bunch of points! But if I use a max 166 team against a really low leveled 2 team, I wouldn't gain that many points, even if they were ranked way above me at the start. Now...how does this get implemented, would it work or solve anything? Probably not. But it just irks me so much. It's a **** ranking system.

Raffoon

daibar wrote:

Downsides:

1. All the prizes would go to the grinders.
2. It would reduce people's incentive to buy shields, thus depriving d3 of monies.
3. The progression rewards would have to be rethought out; getting to 2500 probably wouldn't be that difficult once the effects of it resonate down the ladder.
4. Everyone would have to put in an insane effort to try to rank. I think people are sick of the grind enough as it is in PVE. To introduce it into PVP as well? No, thanks!

I think you misunderstand my proposal. People would still have every incentive to buy shields. Here are some examples:

Person A is playing in our current system
-He gets to 1300 and 2nd place through a mass of ISO/HP boosts and some diligent timing.
-He sets an alarm for 5 minutes before his shield is about to fall off
-Suddenly, real life calls and he's left exposed for a half hour.
-IT'S OPEN SEASON TINY LITTLE KITTIES!!
-After being unshielded for a half hour, Person A reshields as quickly as he can. He's lost 400 points dropping him to 900 and has dropped from 2nd to 15th.
-Too bad you couldn't completely rearrange your life around the game, Person A. Looks like you're out of luck.

Person B does all the same things, but within the proposed system rather than the current one:
-Person B drops to 1250 points right away, then to 1200 points 20 minutes later.
-He reshields as soon as he can (that's 10 minutes later, keeping with the previous example).
-He is punished for being unshielded, but maintains the benefit of his previous efforts to some degree.

Person C is in the proposed system too but:
-Person C doesn't reshield at all.
-After around 2 and a half hours of being unshielded, Person C is in the same boat as Person A.

In this way, shields are still encouraged, but sudden large drops in rating over the course of a small amount of time are eliminated. (Heck, I've seen over 200 points disappear in the space of a single match)

I agree this would have an upward effect on total scores to some degree. I don't think this is a big downside, and if progression rewards need to change to fit the new distribution, so be it.

Regarding points 1 and 4, I'm not seeing the logic, though. Over the course of extended play sessions (i.e. grinding), you would still see the same decrease in your score. You would just see the decrease take effect more slowly, rather than in sudden bursts. The incentive to play for more total time would still be the same for everyone, so I don't see how this would force a grind.

Maybe tweak the numbers a bit until it's right? Perhaps 50 points maximum lost every 10 minutes instead of every 15. Maybe 100 max every 40 minutes. The important point is that you're not losing massive amounts of points in small amounts of time.


(Oh good lord. I just realized how this would probably be implemented in the game to make more money. They'll call it armor, and you can buy this protection separate from (or in addition to) a shield. It lasts for a set amount of time and does not break on attack. Let's not do it that way, please.)

Unknown

Nellyson wrote:

Here's the thing I hate the most.....losing 35-45 points a match to a team that is WAY better than mine. Case in point, I lost 47 points in one match to a roster of X-Force at lvl 255, Maxed Lazy , and a maxed and buffed . I think I had up a maxed and maxed lazy , along with my lvl 150 :blackpanter:. Now I wasn't completely overmatched, but tinykitty man. They're still a better team than what they were fighting. The only reason to losing that many points was rankings. I think a loss to a team better than you should net you a smaller loss. The rankings should only play a little into how many points are earned/lost. Therefor, if I use just maxed 94s to try and beat a maxed 166s, I should gain a bunch of points! But if I use a max 166 team against a really low leveled 2 team, I wouldn't gain that many points, even if they were ranked way above me at the start. Now...how does this get implemented, would it work or solve anything? Probably not. But it just irks me so much. It's a **** ranking system.

:blackpanter:



Sorry, couldn't help it.

Unknown

Raffoon wrote:

daibar wrote:

Downsides:

1. All the prizes would go to the grinders.
2. It would reduce people's incentive to buy shields, thus depriving d3 of monies.
3. The progression rewards would have to be rethought out; getting to 2500 probably wouldn't be that difficult once the effects of it resonate down the ladder.
4. Everyone would have to put in an insane effort to try to rank. I think people are sick of the grind enough as it is in PVE. To introduce it into PVP as well? No, thanks!

I think you misunderstand my proposal. People would still have every incentive to buy shields. Here are some examples:

Person A is playing in our current system
-He gets to 1300 and 2nd place through a mass of ISO/HP boosts and some diligent timing.
-He sets an alarm for 5 minutes before his shield is about to fall off
-Suddenly, real life calls and he's left exposed for a half hour.
-IT'S OPEN SEASON TINY LITTLE KITTIES!!
-After being unshielded for a half hour, Person A reshields as quickly as he can. He's lost 400 points dropping him to 900 and has dropped from 2nd to 15th.
-Too bad you couldn't completely rearrange your life around the game, Person A. Looks like you're out of luck.

Person B does all the same things, but within the proposed system rather than the current one:
-Person B drops to 1250 points right away, then to 1200 points 20 minutes later.
-He reshields as soon as he can (that's 10 minutes later, keeping with the previous example).
-He is punished for being unshielded, but maintains the benefit of his previous efforts to some degree.

Person C is in the proposed system too but:
-Person C doesn't reshield at all.
-After around 2 and a half hours of being unshielded, Person C is in the same boat as Person A.

In this way, shields are still encouraged, but sudden large drops in rating over the course of a small amount of time are eliminated. (Heck, I've seen over 200 points disappear in the space of a single match)

I agree this would have an upward effect on total scores to some degree. I don't think this is a big downside, and if progression rewards need to change to fit the new distribution, so be it.

Regarding points 1 and 4, I'm not seeing the logic, though. Over the course of extended play sessions (i.e. grinding), you would still see the same decrease in your score. You would just see the decrease take effect more slowly, rather than in sudden bursts. The incentive to play for more total time would still be the same for everyone, so I don't see how this would force a grind.

Maybe tweak the numbers a bit until it's right? Perhaps 50 points maximum lost every 10 minutes instead of every 15. Maybe 100 max every 40 minutes. The important point is that you're not losing massive amounts of points in small amounts of time.


(Oh good lord. I just realized how this would probably be implemented in the game to make more money. They'll call it armor, and you can buy this protection separate from (or in addition to) a shield. It lasts for a set amount of time and does not break on attack. Let's not do it that way, please.)

The logic is that people could be taking hundreds of points off of you, but you would only have lost 50. Combine this with the hundreds of people in the same boat and you see a massive influx of points into the system. Further, this would work even greater with the alliances who attack shielded members, only now, they wouldn't even have to shield! The threshold would kick in, and low level players could win 50 points off of their top players at a time, while the defender would lose 50 points once, and then stop losing points.

Actually, with coordination, you could see people reaching ten thousand points. Just grind, put out a feeder team, and watch tons of your team mates feed off of you. If anything, you may be underestimating the coordination that some teams have which allow them to get high points, as well as the aggressiveness at the top tier.

It's not that I don't understand the frustration of losing 200 points in the last hour, but the proposed solution has drawbacks that make it worse than the original problem (in my opinion). I don't want to turn PVP purely into a grindfest.

simonsez

daibar wrote:

If you have a decent roster and are more of a casual player you can still rank without using boosts/shields or maybe using 1 shield at the end.

Yes, I agree. I was thinking more in terms of the high end prizes. I'd rather grind a pve for 5 days than deal with the stress of trying to get to 1300 for a 4*, but like I said, that's just me (and a small minority)