New feature: Shields

Unknown

You don't HAVE to pay for shields. It's not like just because you're not using a shield you all of a sudden become Public Enemy #1. You show up in the list same as everybody else. Everyone is attacking everyone, including the shielded people. This only helps people who zoom up the rankings and then purchase a shield to gamble on not dropping too far in the last little bit of a tournament (which is what has been happening lately). If you gamble wrong, and get passed, there goes 50 HP.

It's hardly P2W when you only get a marginal benefit and could end up with a complete loss. It's a good mechanic that allows for an extra bit of risk and strategy while also avoiding the nightmare of PVP lately. That being said, I hope a PVP fix is still in the works so that people who don't shield don't have to experience a -120 during the span of their 60 second fight.

Unknown

This is an interesting way to create rubberbanding of a sort for PvP.

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DumDumDugn wrote:

For everyone complaining about P2W...it's 50 cents people. Is every player here on food stamps?

Put an 8 hour shield up when you go to sleep, and an 8 hour shield up for work, and suddenly you're paying 300 dollars a year for tournament insurance.

Thanks OBAMA.

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DefectiveChicken wrote:

Sure, it STARTS with fifty cents... then another fifty cents, then another fifty cents, and before long this is the future of gaming.

^This. I originally started playing this game because of a first impressions video TotalBiscuit had of it. He kinda warned that this may happen, and I have to admit this new addition has concerned a bit. http://youtu.be/usGccWjp0Os?t=19m5s

Unknown

I'm of two minds about this new feature. On the one hand, it can prevent the huge frustration of losing 250 points in the last hour of a tournament. On the other hand, it's gonna make the grind that much worse. It's going to be much harder to climb the ranks if there are people who won't budge from their spot. If you're at 300 in 55th place and there's 10 shielded people above you around 350, you're gonna have to "jump over" them and get to >350 in order to see a change in your rank. This could make the going slower and seeing less progression for your grinding could be discouraging.

Also, this inevitably means that at the beginning of a tournament everybody's going to be grinding to get as far ahead as they can and then shield themselves. So it's going to be a free-for-all melee situation in the first day of a tournament. That will be very frustrating as well. It will be very tough to get to a number that's worth shielding yourself because you'll be constantly attacked by other people trying to do the same thing.

Also, I think it's kind of lame that it costs HP to do this. I have 2k HP stashed right now, so it's not going to be a problem in the immediate future. But in general, having to buy HP to shield yourself is a bad thing. It will be the people who have cash to spend who will start winning tournaments, just like it's people with money to spend who have maxed Rags and Classic Spideys. They already had one advantage. Now they have another one. I hope that shields will be random rewards for basic PVE/PVP matches, even if it's just the 3-hour shield. That would be a major perk and something to grind for.

DumDumDugn wrote:

For everyone complaining about P2W...it's 50 cents people. Is every player here on food stamps?

Sure, it starts out as 50 cents (99 actually cuz you have to buy it in 99 cent increments). But I did the 99 cents at a time thing and I've now spent 8(?) dollars on this game so far. In two months that's not too bad, but it took a lot of self-control to limit myself.

Unknown

Soooo spending for an advantage is a bad thing?

(PS: I've only spent $1 on this game and have 6000 HP banked)

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Oversoul wrote:

^This. I originally started playing this game because of a first impressions video TotalBiscuit had of it. He kinda warned that this may happen, and I have to admit this new addition has concerned a bit. http://youtu.be/usGccWjp0Os?t=19m5s

:O Hadn't seen the PC UI before, that's shiny.

Narrator doesn't seem to have done his research though. Doesn't know about power caps or how fast prologue ends, uses bagman, and misses a match 5 right at the start of his match.

Unknown

You shouldn't think of shield as P2W, because it's not. It's a calculated risk. You get 50 HP for virtually any PvP tournament for progression reward. The question you should ask is, can you turn 50 HP in a shield (or 100 HP, or whatever) into something with the value of 50 HP? If so, you should go for it, even though there's obviously a chance it won't work. Unless you have no need of any of the progression rewards, in the long run it is beneficial to get everyone's rating up. That is suppose there's a 50 HP reward at 800 rating, and you had to use a 50 HP shield at 700 to obtain it. That may appear as no gain, but being able to push to 800 gives you at least a chance to push for the 900 *** cover that you otherwise couldn't have even contemplated attempting. Even if you don't end up getting it, doing a HP neutral move for a shot at a *** cover is certainly worth it.

In terms of actual placement, unless you're far ahead of everyone else, using a shield wouldn't make much of a difference. That is, it's easy to think 'use shield when you're #1', except during the last 20 minutes of a tournament you'll generally find your rank steadily dropping. It's still going to be mostly luck because you'll rarely be in a position where you're #1 to use the shield.

Unknown

I guess only after certain then we will truly see whether it's work for now.
But personally I feel that it's should work this way.
As mentioned, 50HP is easy to get whixh is at 400points? N by going that far meaning yiu have akready thought of winning at least a cover. So spending that 50HP to save guard your position. It's shouldn't hurt anyway.

The trick is whether will you risk taking that 3 hr shield or play abit longer n shield it?
Would love to see what's the resuly on lighting rounds with shield in it.

Also pls...this is a in-app purchase game. (Which in future, our younger generation will have more this yype of game)
Noted that nobody force us to purchase the game to win, if you can win it without spending then good for you. If not..pls stop complaining abt it's unfair to those free / spend little players..

Just amazed that till this day, ppl r still complainting abt the pricing..seriously this game purchasing consider mild with chances to win awards. Especially we r still in the early stage on this game. Imagine those who came in late, they will be harder to get into the game without spending any. Spend that little HP, n start playing. Have fun!

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DumDumDugn wrote:

Soooo spending for an advantage is a bad thing?

I personally think, yes, it is. Weird analogy, but would you think it was fair if you had to go into battle in a t-shirt against people who could afford to buy Kevlar? You'd say, hell no, everybody in t-shirts or give me some damn Kevlar. The game is advertised as F2P, not P2W. Those are two very different things in my opinion.

Phantron wrote:

You shouldn't think of shield as P2W, because it's not. It's a calculated risk. You get 50 HP for virtually any PvP tournament for progression reward. The question you should ask is, can you turn 50 HP in a shield (or 100 HP, or whatever) into something with the value of 50 HP? If so, you should go for it, even though there's obviously a chance it won't work. Unless you have no need of any of the progression rewards, in the long run it is beneficial to get everyone's rating up. That is suppose there's a 50 HP reward at 800 rating, and you had to use a 50 HP shield at 700 to obtain it. That may appear as no gain, but being able to push to 800 gives you at least a chance to push for the 900 *** cover that you otherwise couldn't have even contemplated attempting. Even if you don't end up getting it, doing a HP neutral move for a shot at a *** cover is certainly worth it.

In terms of actual placement, unless you're far ahead of everyone else, using a shield wouldn't make much of a difference. That is, it's easy to think 'use shield when you're #1', except during the last 20 minutes of a tournament you'll generally find your rank steadily dropping. It's still going to be mostly luck because you'll rarely be in a position where you're #1 to use the shield.

These are both good points.

Unknown

pumkin wrote:

DumDumDugn wrote:

Soooo spending for an advantage is a bad thing?

I personally think, yes, it is. Weird analogy, but would you think it was fair if you had to go into battle in a t-shirt against people who could afford to buy Kevlar? You'd say, hell no, everybody in t-shirts or give me some damn Kevlar. The game is advertised as F2P, not P2W. Those are two very different things in my opinion.

Well your book is wrong. There's no such thing as F2P.

Unknown

Aluminium_Man wrote:

:O Hadn't seen the PC UI before, that's shiny.

Narrator doesn't seem to have done his research though. Doesn't know about power caps or how fast prologue ends, uses bagman, and misses a match 5 right at the start of his match.

You do realize I said "First Impressions," right? If you're able to immediately ascertain that a character is good or not, let alone every facet of a game within the first few minutes, than good for you. I however wouldn't make the assumption that every other player can do the same in such limited time periods. He said that Bagman sucks earlier in the video, and it's quite difficult to make active commentary on a game while making optimal moves at the same time. Frankly, such comments about his play is irrelevant and distracts from the topic of the monetization model in MPQ.

Unknown

DumDumDugn wrote:

Soooo spending for an advantage is a bad thing?

(PS: I've only spent $1 on this game and have 6000 HP banked)

It depends on the size of the advantage.

I've spent no cash so far, though at some point I may do what I did with PAD and drop $5 on it to tip the developers. I've spent my earned-and-banked HPs because I needed the slots for new characters and power upgrades for some of them (2500 on Rags, 2500 on Spidey, 1250 on Grey Widow, 2500 on Magneto Classic). I consider those to be good investments because (a) they were permanent, (b) they didn't have the slot-machine risk involved with Recruit pulls, (c) they significantly increased the chars' capabilities when I needed them to win others, and (d) they helped me keep up with people who had simply bought their upgrades with cash.

At present, do people who spend cash have an advantage? A slight one -- they can get to higher power levels faster -- but not so much that a freebie can't compete and win. We've gone on for ages about how boosts + suspect AI mean that no teams are safe past a certain point, and you can earn your way to effective equal footing with the whales. Apart from health packs, which haven't been a problem for anyone in a while, there haven't been HP-purchaseable consumables that could swing a tournament.

Now, potentially, we have one. Time will tell whether people will use them en masse in events, or if there will be prizes in events that'll make using them en masse worthwhile.

Unknown

DumDumDugn wrote:

pumkin wrote:

DumDumDugn wrote:

Soooo spending for an advantage is a bad thing?

I personally think, yes, it is. Weird analogy, but would you think it was fair if you had to go into battle in a t-shirt against people who could afford to buy Kevlar? You'd say, hell no, everybody in t-shirts or give me some damn Kevlar. The game is advertised as F2P, not P2W. Those are two very different things in my opinion.

Well your book is wrong. There's no such thing as F2P.

I agreed on this. +1
Nowadays we have to spend to have that extra advantages. It's whether do you want to spend it to win?

Unknown

DefectiveChicken wrote:

DumDumDugn wrote:

Soooo spending for an advantage is a bad thing?

(PS: I've only spent $1 on this game and have 6000 HP banked)

It depends on the size of the advantage.

I've spent no cash so far, though at some point I may do what I did with PAD and drop $5 on it to tip the developers. I've spent my earned-and-banked HPs because I needed the slots for new characters and power upgrades for some of them (2500 on Rags, 2500 on Spidey, 1250 on Grey Widow, 2500 on Magneto Classic). I consider those to be good investments because (a) they were permanent, (b) they didn't have the slot-machine risk involved with Recruit pulls, (c) they significantly increased the chars' capabilities when I needed them to win others, and (d) they helped me keep up with people who had simply bought their upgrades with cash.

At present, do people who spend cash have an advantage? A slight one -- they can get to higher power levels faster -- but not so much that a freebie can't compete and win. We've gone on for ages about how boosts + suspect AI mean that no teams are safe past a certain point, and you can earn your way to effective equal footing with the whales. Apart from health packs, which haven't been a problem for anyone in a while, there haven't been HP-purchaseable consumables that could swing a tournament.

Now, potentially, we have one. Time will tell whether people will use them en masse in events, or if there will be prizes in events that'll make using them en masse worthwhile.

People are overblowing how big of an advantage this is.

Unknown

The notion that shields are P2W is ridiculous because you get enough to shield for 3 hours for participating in every PvP tournament, so if shields are P2W that means I win every tournament I participate in because I obviously must have enough to shield at the last 3 hours.

In terms of placement, shields offers more stability. If you shielded at #1 with 20 minutes left with minimal lead, you'll probably end up at top 20. Right now, you could be anywhere from #1 to #200. You almost certainly won't hold your #1 rank with a shield, but you also don't have to worry about some kind of catastrophic fallout and maybe that's worth it to some people, depending on what is exactly at stake. Yes if you shielded at #1 with 3 minutes left you probably will hold that rank, but how often do you actually get such a favorable outcome?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Yes if you shielded at #1 with 3 minutes left you probably will hold that rank, but how often do you actually get such a favorable outcome?

Given the game doesn't sync with the server particularly aggressively, there's going to be some wailing if people try to preserve a late lead only to see they already lost some points.

Unknown

Okay guys,

In my bracket, I have 824 points. I have purchased the 24 hour shield. I have had a lot of people attack me when I was at 710 [edit: I tried out the 3 hour shield]. Looks like some people attacked me multiple times. I ran into a problem I haven't run into in a while. I can't find anyone with more than 9 points.

Unknown

If u are the first now keep watching the scores

Unknown

I'm first by 200 points. Other brackets ought to see higher scores first. There's someone else with 800+ points racking them up off me.

[edit]
I noticed that the most I can attack someone outside of retaliation is twice. I notice that the most the same person has attacked me after retaliations is twice.