Operation Pay Harder: A Debrief

lokiagentofhotness

ZenMonkey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

This issue isn't about the 1 percent, it effects everyone. You may just not have noticed it yet because most have been joining the standard time slot out of habit. If you pick the wrong slot

1)Progression rewards become a lot more expensive or impossible to reach for many
2)Alliance rankings are hurt. I have been in alliances struggling for 100 before, it usually consists of a few players that can score high and help carry the team to victory. If any of these players pick the wrong slot kiss top 100 goodbye. you can argue all day about not needing a high score. I don't score high for my personal rewards I do it for the alliance. The alliance is the only thing keeping me in the game.

As for the statement session placement doesn't matter..... Well then seasons don't matter...... But they exist and they are a part of the game. If they don't matter they should be removed, until then this feature goes directly against a fundamental game design.

You can't develop a feature in a void and once again it just demonstrates what's wrong with the game, It's schizophrenic.

They introduce seasons then they make game changing changes during a season totally invalidating rankings.
They nurf characters to encourage a varied roster then they release sentry
They give us alliances with ranked rewards then they split alliances up with different time shards.


How splitting alliances up is a good thing is beyond me but hey I guess I'm an out of touch 1 percenter


Lastly I just want to give a shout out to X-men. They are often villainized but they have always played nicely with me. You guys are insane but I love you, this wasn't about beating you but to make a statement against a feature that may kill the game for me.

No it really is about the 1 percent.

As a casual-ish player I like the new timw slots. Yes I never get 40 plus pointers but I could never beat sentryhood 40 pointers to begin with - the only difference now is that I have a chance at top 10 in a lazy time shard with others in the same boat as me. This is a win as far as I can tell.

I have never hit 1300 points and that's fine with me - if I can stay out of the time slots all the 1 percenters congregate at, all the better for me. I doubt it will affect my alliance score either, I'm still getting the minimum requirement they set.

The only way to beat someone with sentryhood is with sentryhood or similar - and no casual or semi-casual player really ever gets over 1300.

Unknown

seasong wrote:

Hi, I'm Seasong and for some context on my perspective, I'm one of the late/non-crazy scorers in X-men 2.

Firstly, congrats to OPH for some awesome scoring and for taking first! You guys did a great job! However, I don't think the ability to form such an alliance after slot 4 had ended implicates a new flaw in the system. As many have said, you can always manipulate placement by last minute switching. X-men could have similarly responded by switching people around though that's generally not our policy.

I think the real hypothetical flaw is one where you have a hard-gunning alliance who all go to slot 5, look at the scores already posted and then work together to outscore that. If X1/X2 were all in slot 4, we wouldn't have a way to come back legitimately by having our players score higher. But if this hypothetical alliance did exist, then I guess everyone would just have to go to slot 5 and be done with it.

Meanwhile, I think the real problem that needs to be addressed is the much smaller player pool in each time slot and its effect on the game. To me, the most pressing issues are:

1. Crazy sharding. When you have an over-concentration of top scorers in one slot, you're naturally going to have more competitive brackets, and the "gentle nudging" provided by the game becomes overkill.
2. Disparity of points between time slots. To make the system more viable, I think you should have at most two or three slots. This would give you a more robust pool of targets allowing those who wish to score higher to still find targets to hop off of while also increasing the chance of finding other high scorers who did not go with the herd.
3. Unfair skip tax. Not as important in the larger scheme of things, but when you're at 1900+ and continuously cycling through people who are at 0(!) points to 300 points, it does seem a bit unfair. Maybe when MMR is so weird, consider getting rid of skip tax.

Overall, I think my experience with time slots has not been as bad as some though I disagree with it from an even playing field standpoint. In PVP as opposed to PVE, where player choices directly impact each other, having which time slot you chose be a factor seems to take something away from the competition. I'm lucky to be part of a large, organized alliance group who can adapt to this change, but I feel for high scorers in smaller alliances who have to make their own way.

Finally, I've seen some people say, "Why should D3 listen to the top 1% of players when it makes the rest of the 99% player base happy?" I think the simple answer is that that 1% shoulders much more than 1% of the cost of the game. As Operation Pay Harder highlights, to truly compete requires a financial commitment. D3/Demiurge should be commended for making a very enjoyable game on the F2P level but on the other hand, the needs of the paying players who help sustain the game shouldn't be glossed over. Different end times offer a seemingly universal benefit in providing choice, but for top competitive players, there is still no real choice. Thus, top players are saddled with the negative effects without fully realizing the positive. I think D3/Demiurge should do more mitigate those negative effects.

SeaSong makes great points! (As usual lol)
1) crazy sharding is a problem. I have a new "baby" account that barely gets 100pts. Those brackets are won by people getting 300 pts! I understand the value of not putting "everyone" together but there's also no value in taking ALL OF THE TOP 5% & just shoving them together nonstop
2) time slots. Agreed that 5 is too many. 3 would be a better number. The problem is that just a few % point changes from one slot to another in a 5 time system can radically distort groups, whereas with 3 slots, that factor is minimized
3) skip tax. A traditional problem

SOLUTIONS
1) crazy sharding solution - two PvP events at once! BUT... you can only pick one. Current events would now be "hard" events but with 2x rewards for ISO & hp. The new PvP "easy" events will have ISO & up rewards that are the same as now & only use the 3* that are out of rotation & would constantly rotate that bunch throughout the season. Veteran players will have 0% interest in those new events because why do they need more Punisher/Doom/Rags (or whoever else is out). HOWEVER, the lack of veterans will allow new & 2*=>3* transitional players to ACTUALLY accumulate 3*. They may not be the "best" but they would give these traditionally "no 3* cover in the roster" people a chance to have a few 3* people

2) 3 time slots - the 3 time slots don't always need to be the same times. D3 should divide the world into 3 zones (Americas, Europe/Africa, Asia). They should then have 2 time slots for each zone that are "ideal" (tho maybe west vs east in each zone may find 1 time more favorable than the other). They should then alternate between those 2 time slots every other event. This way each of the 3 zones of the world will have some "alright" times but overall matchmaking balance can be kept. The "play against different time slot" stuff isn't addressed per se by this but the "shields remaining or not after individuals play time ends" is still a programming issue that hasn't been addressed. A way to solve that would be for D3 to "give" every player a 24hr shield automatically after their individual time slot has ended

3) skip tax - skip already doesn't exist for retal. That should be expanded. There shouldn't be ANY skip tax until after all the progressions have been achieved. So right now that would mean no skip tax until after 1300 pts. D3 did have progressions as high as 2400 pts back around a year ago. They should honestly add some more ISO ones up to 1600 or 1700 to help deal w the ISO expense of 4*

I also feel that providing useful solutions based in game play is the most effective way of dealing with this. Stunts like OPH or skipping events "to prove a point" aren't as useful IMO because while they make a sensation & get people talking, they inherently provide no solutions. Solutions are what D3 needs. They can determine whether programming any/all solutions is viable but they have no ability to deal w stunts (other than closing exploits/loopholes that allow them to be caused)

Off soapbox now

franckynight

onimus wrote:

So, this entire test has made just about everyone except for the highest scorers basically have to choose between progression rewards and event rewards.

That is just tragic.

whitecat31

reckless442 wrote:

Operation Pay Harder is now in effect. Welcome to the new MPQ.

Actually, no, that’s not true. But we have your attention now and wanted to explain who we are and why we stole first place in Hollowpoint Kiss.

Reckless you did not steal it, you won it. As a member of the X-Men I congratulate you on the first place alliance victory.

Now I would like to talk logic. Time shards or no time shards, you guys beat both of our top 2 alliances by over 5000 points. If you think either of our alliances were going to make 5000 points within a 3 hour time span, you have a darn high opinion of us.
The option to switch people around has always been there since season 1 as Jamie M pointed out in an earlier post. So I don't think really think Time Shards is the problem for alliance event winning or season even winning.
Yes, the 3 hour time limit made it easier to coordinate. Then again, would you not say the majority of the people are usually done doing their last hops with 2 hours to spare?

Individually, your season rankings might suffer if you are in the wrong time shard. That is plain in simple. I can tell you though, as a winner of my last seasons bracket, the prize is not worth the HP I spent. I doubt it has been for anybody. It was basically all about pride. So this is something to point out to D3. Through the wallet in the NEGATIVE way.

"Dear D3, because I was not in the correct time shard in one of my pvps this season, my season point total is now too low, so I won't waste tons of HP in trying to win a prize that is not worth the HP I would spend on it to win anyway."

Free 20 slots alliances may be an issue, but if operation PAY HARDER was in full effect, you would have PAID HARDER for those player roster spots.

FYI, if a person feels they normally can't beat the X-Men they can always join the X-Men. There is always going to be turn over or retirement in all alliances. You can always contact one of the recruiters or commanders and ask to be put on whatever we are using as a waiting list.

One last thing, did you know alliance chat is not working right now?

lukewin

Phantron wrote:

I'd need to see some demographics from D3 before I buy the whole 'certain timezone guys have it much harder hitting 1300 (max progression) reward'. If there are shards where they have to spend about 2500 HP to hit 1300 then I can see that being a problem, but I have a hard time believing that. Now if you want to say people in EST can score 2000 while people on European time can only get 1600, I'm sure that's quite possible but since you only need about 20 guys willing spend a ton of money to prop up an arbitary high score, that just means there aren't enough crazy guys in Europe to do it and maybe that says more about how rest of the world isn't as crazy as people on US time rather than a fundamental flaw of the system. If MPQ become the national sport of South Korea and you start seeing the Asian timeshard with scores of 5000 that just means Koreans are more competitive than the rest of the world and I see no reason to change the game just because one timezone is dominating the game.

I was in 5th time slice for Hollowpoint. 1st was 1193, 10th was 858. No one hit the 1300. In talking with alliance mates, scores like these were average across time slices 1, 2, 3 and 5.

Raekwen

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

As a casual-ish player I like the new timw slots. Yes I never get 40 plus pointers but I could never beat sentryhood 40 pointers to begin with - the only difference now is that I have a chance at top 10 in a lazy time shard with others in the same boat as me. This is a win as far as I can tell.

And as a casual-ish player you shouldn't be able to have a chance at the top 10, and have the same rewards as the rest of us killing ourselves. It's like saying you feel you should be able to show up the day of the SAT test without studying and have a chance at the same score as the people who studied for weeks. It just shows how far the system is flawed right now.

Unknown

Seeing as how the "power" slot turned out to be the "normal ending time" slot, everyone who cares about timeslot uneven-ness can play exactly the way they did before and not be affected a bit, and let the rest of us enjoy our sleep

Unknown

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

ZenMonkey wrote:

Hi Everyone,

This issue isn't about the 1 percent, it effects everyone. You may just not have noticed it yet because most have been joining the standard time slot out of habit. If you pick the wrong slot

1)Progression rewards become a lot more expensive or impossible to reach for many
2)Alliance rankings are hurt. I have been in alliances struggling for 100 before, it usually consists of a few players that can score high and help carry the team to victory. If any of these players pick the wrong slot kiss top 100 goodbye. you can argue all day about not needing a high score. I don't score high for my personal rewards I do it for the alliance. The alliance is the only thing keeping me in the game.

As for the statement session placement doesn't matter..... Well then seasons don't matter...... But they exist and they are a part of the game. If they don't matter they should be removed, until then this feature goes directly against a fundamental game design.

You can't develop a feature in a void and once again it just demonstrates what's wrong with the game, It's schizophrenic.

They introduce seasons then they make game changing changes during a season totally invalidating rankings.
They nurf characters to encourage a varied roster then they release sentry
They give us alliances with ranked rewards then they split alliances up with different time shards.


How splitting alliances up is a good thing is beyond me but hey I guess I'm an out of touch 1 percenter


Lastly I just want to give a shout out to X-men. They are often villainized but they have always played nicely with me. You guys are insane but I love you, this wasn't about beating you but to make a statement against a feature that may kill the game for me.

No it really is about the 1 percent.

As a casual-ish player I like the new timw slots. Yes I never get 40 plus pointers but I could never beat sentryhood 40 pointers to begin with - the only difference now is that I have a chance at top 10 in a lazy time shard with others in the same boat as me. This is a win as far as I can tell.

I have never hit 1300 points and that's fine with me - if I can stay out of the time slots all the 1 percenters congregate at, all the better for me. I doubt it will affect my alliance score either, I'm still getting the minimum requirement they set.

The only way to beat someone with sentryhood is with sentryhood or similar - and no casual or semi-casual player really ever gets over 1300.

Sentry Hood wall is a flaw of the game but I can see your point for casual game play. However this just shows how Schizophrenic the game design is.

1)There are seasons
2)There are alliances

Both with ranked based rewards. You can't create a system like this then cater to the "casual player". I don't know of any other game that does that.
If they want to reward casual players it should be in pve or other new game modes. Give better rewards on the lower end, work out a better transition game for players.

Also gambling on a time shard whether your looking for an active one or a slow one is a poor game design. You better believe X-men are going to start rotating their shards.

Raekwen

gamar wrote:

Seeing as how the "power" slot turned out to be the "normal ending time" slot, everyone who cares about timeslot uneven-ness can play exactly the way they did before and not be affected a bit, and let the rest of us enjoy our sleep

You're right. I'm US, and my gameplay wasn't affected at all. My bracket wasn't horrible, and it was business as usual for me this last event. The whole reason I'm saying something is because the solution can be better. If you actually read everything I said, I'm not advocating taking away the time changes. I feel horrible for my alliance mates who are outside of the US and have to either choose low scores or sleep. Again, why can't they have both? What's so wrong about that?

Unknown

ZenMonkey wrote:

Also gambling on a time shard whether your looking for an active one or a slow one is a poor game design. You better believe X-men are going to start rotating their shards.

Psst... Spread the word. X-men are choosing slot #1 the rest of the season

Spoit

Raekwen wrote:

gamar wrote:

Seeing as how the "power" slot turned out to be the "normal ending time" slot, everyone who cares about timeslot uneven-ness can play exactly the way they did before and not be affected a bit, and let the rest of us enjoy our sleep

You're right. I'm US, and my gameplay wasn't affected at all. My bracket wasn't horrible, and it was business as usual for me this last event. The whole reason I'm saying something is because the solution can be better. If you actually read everything I said, I'm not advocating taking away the time changes. I feel horrible for my alliance mates who are outside of the US and have to either choose low scores or sleep. Again, why can't they have both? What's so wrong about that?

Part of it is probably sentry going away soon, but the brackets have been terrible since this started. IIRC, my top 10 was like 1.9k for my bracket. I didn't care about IM40, so I only went to 1.2k before shielding because I was out of packs, and that was barely top 25

_RiO_

Raekwen wrote:

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

As a casual-ish player I like the new timw slots. Yes I never get 40 plus pointers but I could never beat sentryhood 40 pointers to begin with - the only difference now is that I have a chance at top 10 in a lazy time shard with others in the same boat as me. This is a win as far as I can tell.

And as a casual-ish player you shouldn't be able to have a chance at the top 10, and have the same rewards as the rest of us killing ourselves. It's like saying you feel you should be able to show up the day of the SAT test without studying and have a chance at the same score as the people who studied for weeks. It just shows how far the system is flawed right now.

Given the fact that roster progression is the exclusive goal in the game, you are essentially telling more casual players that progressing further into the game is not meant for them, that they should be content with being stuck in the 2* morass of limited rosters and that that they should just suck it up. It goes without saying that this is an extremely flawed premise off of which to base further discussion...

Ask yourself this; would a veteran, hardcore player continue playing this game if D3 were to decide to stop introducing new 3*s and 4*s and would concentrate on new 2* or 1* every other week instead? Because that's pretty much what casuals are facing in 2* land without a shot at earning 3* covers and eventually transitioning into playing the much more expansive and varied 3* roster.

Unknown

Raekwen wrote:

gamar wrote:

Seeing as how the "power" slot turned out to be the "normal ending time" slot, everyone who cares about timeslot uneven-ness can play exactly the way they did before and not be affected a bit, and let the rest of us enjoy our sleep

You're right. I'm US, and my gameplay wasn't affected at all. My bracket wasn't horrible, and it was business as usual for me this last event. The whole reason I'm saying something is because the solution can be better. If you actually read everything I said, I'm not advocating taking away the time changes. I feel horrible for my alliance mates who are outside of the US and have to either choose low scores or sleep. Again, why can't they have both? What's so wrong about that?

My post wasn't a reply to you as much as a general statement on the topic of ending times being "broken." In fact I agree with you that having one big "pool" of everyone that's active will have a very minimal effect on timeslot "point balance"

Raekwen

_RiO_ wrote:

Raekwen wrote:

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

As a casual-ish player I like the new timw slots. Yes I never get 40 plus pointers but I could never beat sentryhood 40 pointers to begin with - the only difference now is that I have a chance at top 10 in a lazy time shard with others in the same boat as me. This is a win as far as I can tell.

And as a casual-ish player you shouldn't be able to have a chance at the top 10, and have the same rewards as the rest of us killing ourselves. It's like saying you feel you should be able to show up the day of the SAT test without studying and have a chance at the same score as the people who studied for weeks. It just shows how far the system is flawed right now.

Given the fact that roster progression is the exclusive goal in the game, you are essentially telling more casual players that progressing further into the game is not meant for them, that they should be content with being stuck in the 2* morass of limited rosters and that that they should just suck it up. It goes without saying that this is an extremely flawed premise off of which to base further discussion...

Ask yourself this; would a veteran, hardcore player continue playing this game if D3 were to decide to stop introducing new 3*s and 4*s and would concentrate on new 2* or 1* every other week instead? Because that's pretty much what casuals are facing in 2* land without a shot at earning 3* covers and eventually transitioning into playing the much more expansive and varied 3* roster.

If 2* players had no shot of earning 3* covers, how did people get 3* covers to begin with? I'm not saying they shouldn't be able to acquire them at all, I'm saying there should be a natural separation in the rankings based on roster strength, willingness to hop, etc. Someone with a month of playtime and shields up once shouldn't have the same opportunity for rewards that someone who has been playing since the beginning, worked very hard on their roster, and spends much more hp on shields has.

GrumpySmurf1002

lukewin wrote:

I was in 5th time slice for Hollowpoint. 1st was 1193, 10th was 858. No one hit the 1300. In talking with alliance mates, scores like these were average across time slices 1, 2, 3 and 5.

Taking the 858 player: He got 2000 ISO,100 HP and two covers, plus progression up to 800.
For exactly 1100 in one of the death brackets, I got top 25: 1000 ISO, 50HP, and 2 covers. I also got progression up to 800, plus a token, GSBW, and 1000 ISO.

858 in a bad slice: 2000 ISO, 100 HP, 2 covers
1100 in a good slice: 2000 ISO, 50HP, 3 covers, token.

Now, that's a comparison assuming the 858 could get to 1100 in the good slice with the same investment. It's also very easy in one of these brackets for 1100 to fall out of top 25 (I think I finished around 20th, +/- 1). If you fall even to 26th, the difference is now a trade off of 50HP for a token, which I'm not sure many would take given the terrible rate of token drops. That tells me at the individual level, there's virtually no difference between the two results.

So to what onimus said, this isn't about progression vs event. It's about individual vs alliance.

1100 is obviously more valuable to your alliance than 858, but exactly how much is a function of how many inconvenienced members you have, how willing they are to offset their convenience with spending, and how many members you have that can take advantage of the good slice to make up for those in the bad slices.

GrumpySmurf1002

_RiO_ wrote:

Given the fact that roster progression is the exclusive goal in the game, you are essentially telling more casual players that progressing further into the game is not meant for them, that they should be content with being stuck in the 2* morass of limited rosters and that that they should just suck it up. It goes without saying that this is an extremely flawed premise off of which to base further discussion...

Ask yourself this; would a veteran, hardcore player continue playing this game if D3 were to decide to stop introducing new 3*s and 4*s and would concentrate on new 2* or 1* every other week instead? Because that's pretty much what casuals are facing in 2* land without a shot at earning 3* covers and eventually transitioning into playing the much more expansive and varied 3* roster.

I get your general premise, but top 10 is not a requirement for progression, nor is PvP the only source of progression. And when things like 2* marvel were released, I'm pretty sure the hardcore PvE guys kept right on going, because the nature of PvE is to feed on itself due to essentials.

Unknown

Just got a message from HM :

via Imgflip Meme Maker

acescracked

Phantron wrote:

I'd need to see some demographics from D3 before I buy the whole 'certain timezone guys have it much harder hitting 1300 (max progression) reward'. If there are shards where they have to spend about 2500 HP to hit 1300 then I can see that being a problem, but I have a hard time believing that. Now if you want to say people in EST can score 2000 while people on European time can only get 1600, I'm sure that's quite possible but since you only need about 20 guys willing spend a ton of money to prop up an arbitary high score, that just means there aren't enough crazy guys in Europe to do it and maybe that says more about how rest of the world isn't as crazy as people on US time rather than a fundamental flaw of the system. If MPQ become the national sport of South Korea and you start seeing the Asian timeshard with scores of 5000 that just means Koreans are more competitive than the rest of the world and I see no reason to change the game just because one timezone is dominating the game.

I was in shard 3 in hulk PvP and I was unable to hit 1300. I was in shard 5 for gsbw PvP and was unable to hit 1300.

Each time I got to 1050 the point totals of targets was 3 to 9 for 85% of the targets. The remaining 15% were worth 10 to 15 pointers. Once in about 100 skips I would find a 20 pointer. I burnt so much **** iso skipping since I tried to be optimistic that it couldn't be that bad then shielded out for 8 hours cause there was no point in playing. I finished with 1125 in gsbw and I played hard that event.

Why should one player pay (via iso\hp) more to hit a lower score than another player only because they joined a different time slice?

I'm really getting tired of reading peoples comments that their end times are somehow more important and a more lofty problem than what players who like to score high are now facing with this new feature. Neither are more important problems. Each are problems that should be solved. The big difference is us high scorers at least acknowledge multiple end times is good and trying to make it better. Please stop just dismissing our desire to care about high season, PvP and alliance scores. We all play for different reasons.

Wonko33

So the whales screwed over each other who cares?

I would sometimes get caught in a death bracket before, what does it matter to me if the scores were in the 2ks instead of 1600s, I can't reach either.

My alliance made top 100, like we usually do, only difference was if I clicked top alliance scores I saw a different name at the top.


End times choice saved me 150 HP though since I did not need an 8 hour shield to keep my top 25, let the big boys have the last shard, there are still plenty of other choice let them game the metagame instead of the game itself (sentry bomb) at least they are cannibalizing from each other this way and I did my final push without hitting a wall of sentry.

In a month I'll have saved enough HP to buy the cover I want anyway, or we'll cater to the 0.01 crowd ,who is used to having things go their way, and I'll keep paying for my shields and get my 2 3*, hoping to hit a 4* on a token

JamieMadrox

I ****.