PvP Suggestion Based on Nefarious Foes Algorithm

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dkffiv
dkffiv Posts: 1,039 Chairperson of the Boards
edited November 2014 in MPQ General Discussion
My suggestion is a Gauntlet style PvP event that could be thrown in every x events as a change of pace. The aggressive algorithm in nefarious foes would be perfect in this situation.

-I would probably recommend that boosts be disabled for this.
-Matchmaking will be similar to what is currently in Nefarious Foes, you are constantly being put up against players with similar or slightly stronger rosters than your own.
-Points are not lost for losing battles and there is no personal placement rewards, all of those rewards are distributed via progression.
-Progression rewards would include the 3 covers of a specific character used in the next PvP as opposed to the 3 random covers given out in the PvE gauntlet. I would not include a 4* cover for the first test run or two until you get a feel for where it should be placed.
-Alliance rewards are still given out based on total number of points earned by members.
-Season progression rewards may need to be adjusted depending on how easy it is to earn points in this event compared to normal PvP.
-If your team of defense wins, you gain points based on your roster strength vs. the one they used (suiciding a weak 1* team into a full 3* results in no points to prevent exploitation).
-If not already implemented, a character strength weighting system should be used. If your best characters are IM40 and Daredevil, you would not be matched against Hood XForce teams until you reach certain gates (say 800+). Similarly 2* teams wouldn't face strong 3* teams until 600+. The weight should not be modified for the featured character so that is a flat bonus that your featured is covered and leveled, not a hindrance.

In order to encourage usage of HP I would institute a point decay that occurs 5m after your last battle. Shields will prevent this point decay. Here's a brief breakdown of a potential decay rate / reward payout (assume every battle is worth about 25 points and you won't be earning 40+ a battle)

-- NO DECAY --
50 - SRT
100 - 100 ISO
150 - SRT
200 - 250 ISO
300 - Recruit Token
-- 300+ 1 point decay every 2m --
400 - 25 HP
500 - 2* Cover
600 - First 3* cover
-- 600+ 1 point decay every 1m --
700 - 250 ISO
800 - 25 HP
900 - Recruit token
1000 - Second 3* cover
--1000+ 2 point decay every 1m --
1100 - 500 ISO
1200 - 50 HP
1300 - Featured character random cover
1400 - 1000 ISO
--1400+ 3 point decay every 1m --
1500 - 50 HP
1600 - Third 3* cover
(not sure whether to end there or continue to add ISO / HP rewards. Every 400 points increase the decay by 1. After some testing a 4* could be offered at some high point total)

This would encourage the usage of a diverse roster without the repercussion of getting hammered. The points you earn should probably be capped at 25 with the potential of earning fewer if you are facing players with much lower point totals (2* players will end up getting blocked around 800 unless they can consistently beat 3* teams). With the use of skipping you can either find other players with stronger rosters close to your point total or players with a roster similar to yours with lower point totals (which may give a lot fewer than 25 points). Numbers may need to be tweaked so that roughly the same amount of effort currently needed to qualify for top 100 / 25 / 5 finish corresponds to this event (with some ease emphasized on maxed 2* players being able to reach the first 3* cover).

Comments

  • emaker27
    emaker27 Posts: 285 Mover and Shaker
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    And this is how a great feature starts. I wouldn't say this is perfect, or something that can be implemented currently in the game, but it's a very good idea and some form of it could definitely make its way to us. It'd get me reinterested in PVP again, that's for sure.
  • Some new styles of events would probably be a good thing for the life of the game. This is a good concept.
  • All that'd do is make you fight Sentry + Hood + someone or X Force + Hood + someone a lot of times at the end, and while that's plenty challenging in itself, it just doesn't sound quite right.

    This might work if there's a way to draft a new team for the duration of the event and then apply the same thing. That is, as you get high you'd be fighting PvP teams of guys who also scored high, but since the team is drafted it's not going to be the usual powerhouses. It'd be more like you lucked out and got 3/3/3 on Punisher but then you've to fight a guy who pulled 2/4/3 on Thor, and that'd indeed be quite challenging to defeat. Of course I have no idea what the drafting mechanism would look like for this to even make sense in the first place...
  • dkffiv
    dkffiv Posts: 1,039 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Phantron wrote:
    All that'd do is make you fight Sentry + Hood + someone or X Force + Hood + someone a lot of times at the end, and while that's plenty challenging in itself, it just doesn't sound quite right.

    This might work if there's a way to draft a new team for the duration of the event and then apply the same thing. That is, as you get high you'd be fighting PvP teams of guys who also scored high, but since the team is drafted it's not going to be the usual powerhouses. It'd be more like you lucked out and got 3/3/3 on Punisher but then you've to fight a guy who pulled 2/4/3 on Thor, and that'd indeed be quite challenging to defeat. Of course I have no idea what the drafting mechanism would look like for this to even make sense in the first place...

    Sentry Hood wouldn't be great due to lowering your own health. You'd either need to shield hop or buy kits. You could actually fight those teams with Spidey + She Hulk + whatever and not worry about a fight taking forever. If you want to sentry bomb and blow hp that's good for d3. For people who want to just enjoy the game the won't have to stress as much about playing bad teams while their main teams / kits are regenerating.

    Part of what I find fun about (non heroic) PvE is I can bring whoever I want and see what happens. On the last few rotations of Hard Simulator I was taking OBW IM40 Punisher to fight the lvl320 Magneto She-Hulk Falcon node (due to my main team being injured or dead). If I lose no big deal, if I win its points. If I took that team into PvP at 800+ I'd get beaten like there's no tomorrow.
  • When fighting a high powered team you still take way less damage for ending the game with a World Rupture as opposed to letting the opposing team fire off any threatening move. X Force, a 3 match green move, does more damage to one person than World Rupture + Sacrifice will likely to do total and that's not even X Force's strongest move.
  • dkffiv
    dkffiv Posts: 1,039 Chairperson of the Boards
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    No one is denying that sentry will probably be the fastest way to win a match. Sentry is a terrible PVE character due to WR not being a sustainable strategy over many matches. With the removal of losing points from being attacked, time is no longer an issue other than trying to maximize points for alliance rankings. With people trying different weaker teams, it gives people with transition rosters more diverse and challenging teams.

    If I beat a hood daken sentry team with my spidey falcon patch team, someone with an Ares 3* cap obw team can see me and give it a whirl if he chooses. If he manages to rush down patch he's probably looking at a win. Take that transition players team against the first team I listed and I think it's nearly impossible. Trickle down team setups (which people were reporting seeing with the new algorithm)
  • Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you're talking about something like you have nodes that are "PvP 100" "PvP 200" and so on that's supposed to be represenative of the teams you'll go up against but in that case anything higher than PvP 900 or so is going to be the same 4 guys (Hood, Sentry, X Force, featured). But you're going to still have a massive number of the same fights at the high end until the weaker teams eventually climbed their way to the top, and I'm not sure if that's any different than what already happens other than that in this system people can't retaliate, and if you do see a large variety of team that'd just be super easy mode because if you could have someone with say 3 2*s hitting 1000 under this system (which would be practically impossible right now) you'd just have people beating that guy up for easy points and that'll prop up even more weak teams with high scores and it'll likely turn into a joke once you have a certain threshold of weak teams that can get to high 1XXXs by beating each other up. I like the concept but you're going to just have ever increasing degradation of the difficulty of high point as weak teams eventually climb their way to the top that it'll most likely lose any meaning of challenge. For this to work you have to have a person climbing while the rest of the world is frozen. That is, it should look like you're running your Spiderman against rest of the world (but you don't lose points) so that you see a consistent increase in difficulty as you climb higher. Without the world being frozen all you have to do is wait until other people running weak teams get good scores and beat those guys up.
  • dkffiv
    dkffiv Posts: 1,039 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Phantron wrote:
    Oh, I see what you mean. I thought you're talking about something like you have nodes that are "PvP 100" "PvP 200" and so on that's supposed to be represenative of the teams you'll go up against but in that case anything higher than PvP 900 or so is going to be the same 4 guys (Hood, Sentry, X Force, featured). But you're going to still have a massive number of the same fights at the high end until the weaker teams eventually climbed their way to the top, and I'm not sure if that's any different than what already happens other than that in this system people can't retaliate, and if you do see a large variety of team that'd just be super easy mode because if you could have someone with say 3 2*s hitting 1000 under this system (which would be practically impossible right now) you'd just have people beating that guy up for easy points and that'll prop up even more weak teams with high scores and it'll likely turn into a joke once you have a certain threshold of weak teams that can get to high 1XXXs by beating each other up. I like the concept but you're going to just have ever increasing degradation of the difficulty of high point as weak teams eventually climb their way to the top that it'll most likely lose any meaning of challenge. For this to work you have to have a person climbing while the rest of the world is frozen. That is, it should look like you're running your Spiderman against rest of the world (but you don't lose points) so that you see a consistent increase in difficulty as you climb higher. Without the world being frozen all you have to do is wait until other people running weak teams get good scores and beat those guys up.

    According to what I heard, players were constantly being put up against people stronger than their own roster in Nefarious Foes. The algorithm could be modified so the threshold of what is considered the appropriate difficulty keeps ramping up. For instance a non-maxed 1* team was facing fully leveled 1*s. After say 300 they start facing incomplete 2* and eventually 3*. People with 2* will start seeing the slightly weaker 3* teams (like that Spidey Patch Falcon example) and eventually run into full Xforce Hood Sentry etc. teams when they break something like 800. However, because there is no penalty for losing, with persistence and either a deeper roster or investment in shields/kits, they should eventually be able to move up if they want to grind through the gauntlet.

    My hope for this event is that with enough persistence 1* / non maxed 2* should be able to hit 600, 2* can make it to 1000, and weak 3* rosters can hit 1600. It will probably involve shield hopping to let your characters regenerate and some rotation in what teams you use but it should be a lot of fun. Players with maxed rosters can either play just enough to get the rewards they want or run up the score ridiculously high to cement their lead in the season score.
  • Your system sounds a lot like if instead of Simluation 1-30 they're called PvP Rating 100 to PvP Rating 2000 but the teams are themed as to what you'd expect to fight in PvP. I don't think that's a bad idea but I can't think of too much interesting variety at the higher end that wouldn't just be a large repeat of the same type of teams. For this to work you can't ever be matched up against another player with weak team that just somehow slogged his way to 1K or so, because otherwise all you have to do is beat each other's weak teams and then anybody can hit the max score but I don't see how they'd be able to determine how a team is too weak to be considered an opponent for 1000 PvP or any other rating when you give people the chance to climb higher than normal.
  • SnowcaTT
    SnowcaTT Posts: 3,486 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Everyone basically has PVE increases, so I think decay is a great idea. Interesting use, but it will fuel a problem that already exists in abundance: last minute only play. To combat that I've wondered about having your defensive team points decay (-1/hour?), which would encourage play throughout the event - or earlier, at the very least.

    Then again, that idea decreases the use of shields, so it won't ever be implemented. Yours would likely increase the use of shields, so is a possibility.
  • dkffiv
    dkffiv Posts: 1,039 Chairperson of the Boards
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    SnowcaTT wrote:
    Everyone basically has PVE increases, so I think decay is a great idea. Interesting use, but it will fuel a problem that already exists in abundance: last minute only play. To combat that I've wondered about having your defensive team points decay (-1/hour?), which would encourage play throughout the event - or earlier, at the very least.

    Then again, that idea decreases the use of shields, so it won't ever be implemented. Yours would likely increase the use of shields, so is a possibility.

    Capping the number of points you earn per match to around 25 will limit how effective last minute play is (I believe). Remember that there's no decay for the first 300 points so getting that out of the way early is beneficial. Sub-600 you lose about 90 points in 3 hours, sub-1000 is 180. If you can manage 8+ wins every 3 hours you can afford to slowly push to 1000 without shielding. Again, remember there's no penalty for losing so you have your entire roster at your disposal. The more people doing this the more defensive wins you end up getting too.

    Trying to grind 52 wins in a row against teams of equal or greater strength than your own won't be possible without lots of kits. This event would let 2* players have access to 2x 3* covers if they're willing to invest in shields to buffer the time between character/kit regen.

    There isn't any placement reward other than the alliance ones so if a 2* player were to hit 1000, sliding back all the way back to 300 doesn't matter too much other than season progression / season score. If the player finds that to be very important they can shield until the event ends.