November MPQ Developer Q&A - Submit Your Questions

Unknown

theshadeofopal wrote:

2) Is it realistic that players might be able to share or transfer or link steam and mobile accounts some time this year? I've played on both but while I prefer the steam ui, the ability to actually play on the go in addition to the facebook rewards is pretty nice as well. It seems like a feature that would probably benefit all players and users who had their accounts linked from the beta seem to have had few problems as a result.

Voicing my own opinion here, but I think it is not possible to link Steam to FB. They are two different platforms and there is money involved in here. Unless D3 comes up with another way to backup your game, I don't think you will be able to link it to Steam anytime soon.

Other games like Kabam games have their own Kabam ID for example which is used to transfer data around. It does not happen yet with MPQ. But if they want to have synchronization throughout platforms, I think they should consider adding a D3 ID into the game if you want to link your devices.

Spoit

I know I asked more questions upthread, but is the tripling up of the covers for top 100, alliance, and then the progression reward in the next event, and thus the subsequent nonavailability of the top 5 reward, intentional?

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

I know I asked more questions upthread, but is the tripling up of the covers for top 100, alliance, and then the progression reward in the next event, and thus the subsequent nonavailability of the top 5 reward, intentional?

Yes. IceIX said it in some post that they did that change to prevent people from jumping from one alliance to another just for the rewards.

Now, I don't know how that prevents people from still doing it, but w/e.

Sidlon

Basically, what is the current intended purpose of the skip tax, and are there any plans to improve it? Could we potentially stop getting taxed for skipping opponents with less event points?

some background:

When the skip tax (aka victory bonus) was introduced, it seemed that it was intended to encourage people to take difficult fights in PvP rather than skip 100x to find the low-risk/high-reward target. The skip tax was thankfully amended to not be charged when I choose not to retaliate.

Unfortunately, it still gets charged when I am simply hunting for someone (even a difficult fight) with more points than I have. I think it's clear at this point that attacking someone with less event points is counter-productive, since they can retaliate and take more points back than I obtained.

Lately I find myself often needing to skip 20-30 times just to find someone with more points, and I get taxed so heavily that I often don't see the point in playing. (see http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=17723 for others with similar experiences)

Given that the matchmaking is failing to deliver suitable targets, does it really make sense to charge me ISO to skip all the bad targets? I understand that coming up with an ideal matchmaking algortihm is *very* difficult. So in the meantime, wouldn't it make sense to not tax skips for opponents with fewer points?

Unknown

For its intended purpose of "stop skipping so much and just fight someone" it would work better if instead of an iso tax, each skip is worth -1 point on your next match (to a cumulative minimum of 1).

3-4 skips to find someone more than 25 points? Great. 100 skips to find that 50 point match? well it would be better to fight the 10 pointers as they come up.

This would break the current meta and cause the shield hoppers to break out the pitchforks and torches but might be fun to watch.

hurcules

Is there any chance of running Lightning Rounds on weekends? Either instead of or in addition to weekdays'.

y2fitzy

Cryptobrancus wrote:

For its intended purpose of "stop skipping so much and just fight someone" it would work better if instead of an iso tax, each skip is worth -1 point on your next match (to a cumulative minimum of 1).

3-4 skips to find someone more than 25 points? Great. 100 skips to find that 50 point match? well it would be better to fight the 10 pointers as they come up.

This would break the current meta and cause the shield hoppers to break out the pitchforks and torches but might be fun to watch.

This would also cripple transitioners who hit 500 and then have to skip 10+ times to find someone they have a chance of beating

Sidlon

Cryptobrancus wrote:

For its intended purpose of "stop skipping so much and just fight someone" it would work better if instead of an iso tax, each skip is worth -1 point on your next match (to a cumulative minimum of 1).

3-4 skips to find someone more than 25 points? Great. 100 skips to find that 50 point match? well it would be better to fight the 10 pointers as they come up.

That definitely wouldn't fix the problem that for most time in a PvP event, all the options it presents me will give me a net loss in points if I win and the other person retaliates.

Ideally, this will be fixed with improvements to matchmaking & MMR. For now, it'd be nice if they didn't charge us ISO for times when the game fails to provide viable matches.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

For its intended purpose of "stop skipping so much and just fight someone" it would work better if instead of an iso tax, each skip is worth -1 point on your next match (to a cumulative minimum of 1).

3-4 skips to find someone more than 25 points? Great. 100 skips to find that 50 point match? well it would be better to fight the 10 pointers as they come up.

This would break the current meta and cause the shield hoppers to break out the pitchforks and torches but might be fun to watch.

PVP would be functionally unplayable. I'm not skipping looking for easy matches; I'm skipping looking for a match there's a point in playing - that is, generally something where they're not just going to just retaliate the points away. There's literally nothing to gain from fighting 166s for 22 points, because I'll have a net loss of points, and that's what about 95% of matches are after I hit 600 points in PVP.

user311

I dont have any questions for you. I just want to say thanks for changing up the LRs to add in different characters.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

Cryptobrancus wrote:

For its intended purpose of "stop skipping so much and just fight someone" it would work better if instead of an iso tax, each skip is worth -1 point on your next match (to a cumulative minimum of 1).

3-4 skips to find someone more than 25 points? Great. 100 skips to find that 50 point match? well it would be better to fight the 10 pointers as they come up.

This would break the current meta and cause the shield hoppers to break out the pitchforks and torches but might be fun to watch.

PVP would be functionally unplayable. I'm not skipping looking for easy matches; I'm skipping looking for a match there's a point in playing - that is, generally something where they're not just going to just retaliate the points away. There's literally nothing to gain from fighting 166s for 22 points, because I'll have a net loss of points, and that's what about 95% of matches are after I hit 600 points in PVP.

I disagree that there is literally nothing to gain from hitting 22 point nodes. As you climb every retaliation against you looks better and better towards your opponent. And while it would never be implemented try to keep in mind that such a shift in meta would affect everyone. Would be a whole new wasteland to explore and old strategies may not work as well but I am sure those who can find a way to do well now would also thrive if they had to fight a 10 pt node from time to time.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

For its intended purpose of "stop skipping so much and just fight someone" it would work better if instead of an iso tax, each skip is worth -1 point on your next match (to a cumulative minimum of 1).

3-4 skips to find someone more than 25 points? Great. 100 skips to find that 50 point match? well it would be better to fight the 10 pointers as they come up.

This would break the current meta and cause the shield hoppers to break out the pitchforks and torches but might be fun to watch.

Nobody skips 100 times to find 50 point matches. When you get up to shield hop range the field of opponents widens so it's not uncommon to find 40+ point matches in under 10 skips.

However, before you reach shield hop range, it can easily take 100 skips to find 3 matches that give more than 25 points. This is exacerbated by the fact that the game feels the need to lock you inside of an MMR bucket that no amount of ISO can get you out of. If each skip were worth -1 point, then you'd effectively be playing seed teams from 400-800, except that these seed teams will retaliate for quadruple the points. Your "solution" actually would make things worse.

Puritas

Will the stealth change of sharding (bracketing high-scoring/veteran players away from the rest of the population) ever be addressed or changed?
This still remains the only game on my play list that punishes people for putting time and money into the game.

Spoit

Okin107 wrote:

Spoit wrote:

I know I asked more questions upthread, but is the tripling up of the covers for top 100, alliance, and then the progression reward in the next event, and thus the subsequent nonavailability of the top 5 reward, intentional?

Yes. IceIX said it in some post that they did that change to prevent people from jumping from one alliance to another just for the rewards.

Now, I don't know how that prevents people from still doing it, but w/e.

Uh....what does that have to do with anything? The change was the progression reward, which used to be the same as the top 5 and is now the same as the mot common color

wymtime

Are you looking to increase the ability to generate ISO. To level 3* characters takes so much ISO and it takes an extremly long amount of time to collect. In the aniversary week you doubled the ISO and that felt like it was the right amount of ISO to drop per match. With so many new characters comming out it will take even longer to level 3* characters. If you put the ISO to double players would be able to level more characters and play more characters. As it is right now it is level the best characters and get to others if you want to.
If you are not going to have ISO flow more, can you please explain how long you feel it should take to level up a new 3* character? Please list for top 3* players and average 3* players and transition 3* players. As it is right now it feels like it is about 6 months to bring along a 3* character for a top 25 PVP player who also gets 2-3 covers in PVE. What is your expectation for how quickly a character should get to playable 10-13 covers and up to level 140??

Unknown

[quote="Cryptobrancus"I disagree that there is literally nothing to gain from hitting 22 point nodes. As you climb every retaliation against you looks better and better towards your opponent. And while it would never be implemented try to keep in mind that such a shift in meta would affect everyone. Would be a whole new wasteland to explore and old strategies may not work as well but I am sure those who can find a way to do well now would also thrive if they had to fight a 10 pt node from time to time.[/quote]

That's what I mean by unplayable, though. Every retaliation looks better, meaning that every 22 point gain would result in a 28 point loss. You lose points taking a 22 point match that could beat you on a retaliation, and with such a sharp skip penalty everybody would take those retaliations.

The other part of it is that the shield hoppers would have an even bigger advantage, they could just get away with lower point matches. The end result would be lower points overall and pure pay-to-win play. It would punish the people trying to get from 600-1000 ten times as much as the big shield hoppers.

IReallyHatePVP

Question 1: Now that we are hovering right around the saturation mark for rare characters(28 characters from a total available 54 upon Thoress's release), what plans are in the works to maintain quality standards for cover distribution and player experience?

Question 2: As my signature states, are we going to see a 3 passive character(or 2 ability-2 passive character)?

Lystrata

So, actual questions.

Is anything being considered / going to be done about reward tiers? As is point out in many, many threads, there are an increasing number of 'high end' players, and that will just get worse with time. Keeping your reward tiers so limited, whilst the player base actually grows/increases in level, is really just going to result in newcomers being completely locked out of PvP rewards.

Related to that is of course the problem of the 4* Season reward, which basically means all T100 alliances are going to be spending heaps of time blocking up the top PvP rankings for characters they typically don't even need. I live with a 3* player, who usually ranks at #25 (at the lowest - is usually higher), then sells off whatever cover reward was given because it's just not needed.

How is this logical? Progressing players can't get rewards because T100 alliances need to keep up their PvP scores, whilst PvP rewards are actually useless to the people who can get them.

TL;DR:

1) Are you going to expand reward tiers at any point?
2) Do you think the current Season Score tied to PvP score system is working in the best interests of all players?


EDIT: In light of changes to the alliance slots, this is really going to start to be a problem. I honestly expect some sort of planned, considered response to #1, beyond just "We're working on it.", now.

Unknown

Just one question: Is there any plans to rework the PvE scaling structures, post C.Mags balance? It's clear the increased cap was to deal with C.Mags being able to roll any fight with relative ease, and now some fights are just getting out of hand unmanageable without that "I win" button on the roster. Are there plans in the future to address this issue?

Unknown

When will you attach facebook to steam accounts? Why is it only for mobile?