Operation Pay Harder: A Debrief

franckynight

This should go down as the worst bracket ever seen..

Unknown

Vanapak wrote:

i am still abit puzzled about what there is to 'abused'.

You're right, I should have said "make the best use of the new system".

I was more referring to the super high scores than the last minute swapping. I was asleep so I could not see what happened "live".

Once again, the OPH is a great thing. It must have been super exciting to be part of the project but it only shows what you can do when you are coordinated. It does not show Time Shards are bad.

acescracked

arktos1971 wrote:

acescracked wrote:

I needed the black xforce cover in the hulk PvP.

Don't worry, you'll have plenty of other occasions to win this Back XForce cover. That's not the problem now.

I chose the worst shard, and it was not as fun to play as usual, just because I was not used to it.

But choosing the time when it is best for your personal life to end an event is actually something pretty good. And we should try to adapt to the change (if several members of the same Alliance are in the same shard they can feed each other for example) rather than starting another riot on the forum.

Thanks, I'm not worried. We all have personal preferences. Your preference is that you have different end times. My preference is that I dont have to burn much more iso and hp than someone else to hit a progression just cause we picked different time slices. I can see the merit of different end times and suggested listing player details per time slice as one solution.

You are reasonable so I'm sure you understand that costs of climbing in the same event shouldn't be so disparate.

WilsonFisk

So, that was a lot of fun

Not to be a jerk, but just to clear it up, the idea came from DeadpoolsTacos originally. If I wouldn't have been so proud of the idea, I wouldn't have said anything.

There were several reasons I threw this idea out to other alliances. I wanted to beat the X-men once, no ill will towards them, they do what they do and I'm fine with that, most of them X-men are great people. I also saw an area we could easily exploit in the sharding system. I personally like different ending times, but this DOES NOT WORK. Keep working D3, and get it right. The main reason I did this though, is I just thought it would be fun! Also, the game is getting really dull, I still love it, but it needs something new. This operation became a game within the game. This was seriously the most fun event I have ever participated in. MPQ Inception, next time we go a level deeper.

I'd like to thank all the members of the contributing alliances that went along with this crazy idea. Also, individually I'd like to thank reckless, when she came on board, she took control, got things organized, and the rest was easy! I'd also like to thank LoreNYC for the alliance name. Just for fun, some that didn't make the cut:

Un Xmen - Brothanoomsy
Ex-Men - Hail Mary
Shart Me Not - Me
Winning! - Talahamut

The thing that we proved without a doubt though is, if you Pay Harder, you WILL win. All you need is a Sentry, and after that the only thing holding you back is how much HP you are willing to spend to achieve the score you want. I doubt highly this would be disputed by any sane MPQ players. The sentry nerf is coming though, and that is a good thing IMO.

Lystrata

reckless442 wrote:

This is fundamentally unfair and unworkable. We ask D3 to remove the time-shards and return PVP events to single end times. While it is admirable that D3 wanted to find a solution to the inconvenient end times for European players, this system is a failure. Instead, let’s rotate end times between events. Let the entire player base share the burden of problematic end times.

Dude, there are other places on Earth besides the USA and EU. End times were godawful in a lot more places than Europe - even if they were the loudest voices.

Personally, I don't find the fact that the T20 alliances can jump around amongst themselves and score obscenely high points to be a good enough reason to discard time-shards that are beneficial to thousands of other players. Being able to choose an end time that doesn't make me get up in the middle of the night is far, far more important to me than whether or not a T20 alliance gets another 1000 points (or whatever) than usual.

I also don't think that two PvPs in is a good enough basis to declare the system a 'failure'. I will agree that there certainly may need to be tweaks, and the HP-spending disparity between shards is something to look into... but after months of forum complaining for a new system, to request they completely abolish it after two PvPs is absurd.

OneenO

You guys take this game way to serious.

Unknown

WilsonFisk wrote:

The sentry nerf is coming though, and that is a good thing IMO.

Said someone with a maxed XForce.

Unknown

To change the game to suit the tiny minority of "high performers" is wrong. Time shards work for the majority of players, I got a reasonable score 800+ in Hollowpoint and I didn't have to wake at 4am to do it. Also in my experience when small groups of players in an Online game conspire to make the experience worse for everyone else they get banned, so I'd proceed with caution on this.

Unknown

acescracked wrote:

You are reasonable so I'm sure you understand that costs of climbing in the same event shouldn't be so disparate.

It costed me more too. I had one hop, 3 matches for a total of 15 points for ALL 3 matches.

But while you have the choice to choose a shard where you can be fed with points (apparently it is easy to know), I wouldn't have the choice to sleep better should the system be deleted.

Unknown

WilsonFisk wrote:

So, that was a lot of fun

Not to be a jerk, but just to clear it up, the idea came from DeadpoolsTacos originally. If I wouldn't have been so proud of the idea, I wouldn't have said anything.

There were several reasons I threw this idea out to other alliances. I wanted to beat the X-men once, no ill will towards them, they do what they do and I'm fine with that, most of them X-men are great people. I also saw an area we could easily exploit in the sharding system. I personally like different ending times, but this DOES NOT WORK. Keep working D3, and get it right. The main reason I did this though, is I just thought it would be fun! Also, the game is getting really dull, I still love it, but it needs something new. This operation became a game within the game. This was seriously the most fun event I have ever participated in. MPQ Inception, next time we go a level deeper.

I'd like to thank all the members of the contributing alliances that went along with this crazy idea. Also, individually I'd like to thank reckless, when she came on board, she took control, got things organized, and the rest was easy! I'd also like to thank LoreNYC for the alliance name. Just for fun, some that didn't make the cut:

Un Xmen - Brothanoomsy
Ex-Men - Hail Mary
Shart Me Not - Me
Winning! - Talahamut

The thing that we proved without a doubt though is, if you Pay Harder, you WILL win. All you need is a Sentry, and after that the only thing holding you back is how much HP you are willing to spend to achieve the score you want. I doubt highly this would be disputed by any sane MPQ players. The sentry nerf is coming though, and that is a good thing IMO.

I like this version of the story much more than the other.

D3P are discovering the problems of the new system with us.

But, as everyone may have noticed, the covers to be won were ones that were not so appealing to the Core Players, and I'm sure it was done purposefully. No one mentioned that. So, they tried to make it "off season" by selecting the least appealing covers to the vets.

Had it been Blade or Mystique, I would have understood the complaints.

So, they really acted in all good faith.

Unknown

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

WilsonFisk wrote:

The sentry nerf is coming though, and that is a good thing IMO.

Said someone with a maxed XForce.

XForce and IW are the easiest characters to max if you can score 1300 on a PvP. If you have Sentry/Hood, you can now do it. Reading your comment, that's the case.

Pylgrim

So basically, "please remove this feature that potentially helps thousands of players around the world, because it provides a way for us, the top 0.0001% or so of the playerbase to game and manipulate the system, affecting the scores of the top 0.0001%." No, "please find a way within this feature to diminish this problem". Outright, "remove it". Sheez, entitlement much?

And the suggestion that testing stuff off-season would make it ok is laughable. The outrage from the MMR experiment was ridiculous even without a season score at stake.

Change always affect negatively a subset of people. It's up to the people introducing change to ensure that this subset is as small as possible, but in the end there must be understanding that a change in dynamics for that small subset is worth the improvements it brings across the board for the big majority.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

WilsonFisk wrote:

The sentry nerf is coming though, and that is a good thing IMO.

Said someone with a maxed XForce.

XForce and IW are the easiest characters to max if you can score 1300 on a PvP. If you have Sentry/Hood, you can now do it. Reading your comment, that's the case.

Yeah thats the case for what, maybe a thousand players? less?

How many people play this game? Who should it be balanced around?

Unknown

So, in summary?

- People liked timeslot selection
- However, one slice was the predominant choice of the top point scorers
- People in that slice benefited from easier progression and higher points values, especially in the top 10 alliances
- But getting a good ranking was tougher (so not an issue with current rewards, but prepare for butthurt with Mystique / R&G / Blade rewards)
- People outside that slice may have got better end times, but struggled to get high scores which impacted on progression rewards and their ability to compete in season rankings
- Late joiners to select PvP timeslice either got empty fresh brackets (easy high ranking) or already populated brackets with some people with 1100 scores already (hard to get high ranking)
- Some alliances successfully manipulated the event to finish top (not that this couldn't already be done, but it made it easier)
- Players outside the top alliances seemed to find it tougher in the mid-score section (400pts+) but overall seemed to enjoy the flexibility of a finish that suited them better

I think that's a platform to work from. Especially in terms of how matches are made and the impact of so many time options. However, I'm not sure it can be 'fixed' in PvP without:

1. Opening up matchmaking to be cross-slice (and slices to be no more than +/- 8hrs from the EST midpoint
2. Reducing the slices, to allow quicker 'fills' of brackets
and/or, 3. Relaxing the MMR element of bracketing

Unknown

You guys.... I like that Wilson just stated what it was; u saw a way to beat the x-men and you used it.

Please dont disguise it as a crusade to improve the game/system. The time-shards are a long needed improvement and a lot of players are benefiting from it. Not only the top 50 Alliances.



The x-men accept you challenge.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Yeah thats the case for what, maybe a thousand players? less?

How many people play this game? Who should it be balanced around?

How many people shield hop ?

Anyone with Sentry/Hood can get the XForce covers now. All it takes is shield hopping.

So, it's not a question of toughness, it's a question of money.

My point was "if you now have Sentry/Hood, you can get XForce".

Who cares to have XForce if he does not want/need to score high ? You can do without if you don't.

Unknown

At the risk of alienating myself from my alliance, I'm going to have to be the voice of dissent and partially disagree with the OP.

First off, I congratulate the ingenuity of the players here who find ways to testing the system and pushing it to its limits. All games need this. Also nice to see The X-Men get dethroned for the first time in... well... ever

But I'm going to echo the statements posted by the other players. The new time selection system is good. It's still salvageable and should be re-worked on, rather than simply being scrapped. For a lot of people (myself included), there are only a few rewards that are of any concern. Namely, they are: alliance top 100 prize, PVP top 5, 1300 progression. I can't speak for everyone, but I have no interest in racking up monster +2000 scores, just so that at the end of the season I can get terrible season rewards that won't come close to covering the amount of HP I spent in shieldhoppping to get +2000 in the first place. My season bracket is filled with try-hards from the top alliances. At the very most, if I'm lucky, I can come top 50 and win one 10-pack. And you know what? I'm fine with it. It seems silly everyone would have to suffer just because a few of the veterans are concerned with season score bragging-rights.

Time brackets have improved the game by letting players play at their own pace, rather than the pace dictated to us by the devs. People have been requesting this since forever, and now that its here I think its great. I'm coming top 5 without having to buy shields, I can sleep in late, I don't need to plan out my entire day around the game, and other casual players (who have been playing this game for a year) have come top 10 for the first time ever. It's rejuvenating interest in the game again, and its keeping the majority of the playerbase active and healthy. I don't know why we'd want to go back from this. If we brought back the old time system, and the prize was something highly coveted, we'd get one group of players who would be okay with it, and everyone else in the world complaining about end times. I simply don't see how that is a better alternative.

I'm not saying the new time sharding system is perfect. Not by a long shot. Operation Pay Harder has proved that. But I think it's a system that is still worth implementing and improving upon. Namely, the shard discrepancy, the matchmaking system, and the ability to target players from other shards needs to be looked into. Any new system in its infancy will always have problems, but those problems should be worked on. I don't think we need to throw the entire system out onto the curb.

If the developers are going to make a successful game, they need to create a system that involves everyone, not just the top 10%.

Unknown

JessyC01 wrote:

If the developers are going to make a successful game, they need to create a system that involves everyone, not just the top 0.010%.

h4n1s

wow. Sorry I meant big WOW!

what are the people capable of doing for just proving a point. And frankly said proving a point that significant majority of player base doesn't give a damn about.

You see, the fact I can choose my own ending time is awesome and I really mean AWESOME. Now I can select a timeslot that ends at 1 am in the morning, enabling me to play until 10 pm and then just shield for 3 hours, unlike in every previous events where I had to shield for at least 8 hours, to keep some time for myself for either sleeping or working. The bottomline impact? I still hit the wall at 600 pts, I still rank top 50-top100 to get my reward, I am still member of alliance who has a shot on top 100 but now it costs me LESS HP and it is LESS breaking my own pace and private life.

I would be really astonished if D3 would cancel the time slot selection based on your, indeed, very interesting, but also nearly-useless-to-vast-majority-of-player-base kind of experiment. No offense...

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Budget Player Cadet wrote:

WilsonFisk wrote:

The sentry nerf is coming though, and that is a good thing IMO.

Said someone with a maxed XForce.

XForce and IW are the easiest characters to max if you can score 1300 on a PvP. If you have Sentry/Hood, you can now do it. Reading your comment, that's the case.

Okay, wise guy, you tell me - how easy is it gonna be to hit 1300 once Sentry (one of my only maxed 3*s, by the way) is out of the picture?