The fundamental problem - and a suggestion

zeeke

Hi

I am one of those crazy people who have played the game for more than 400 days and I follow the forums quite a bit. I've notised something lately and that is that almost every new character that is release get a luke warm reception from the community. And I want to explain why I think that is and why nerfing and remaking characters is a fools errand for the devs.

First of all, at this writing there are 57 characters in the game. less then 10% of those come in to top level play in PVP.

Roughly the PVP progress look like this (and don't argue about specifics, thats not the point)

0-700p climb with true healers. Patch, Laken, maybe Grocket, xforce
700-1000p double/tripple jump with xforce/Thora/Hood/cMags
1000-1300. single/double jump with xforce/Thora/Hood/cMags
1300+ Alliance coordinated jumps with xforce/Thora/Hood/cMags

Sure, you might see a Fury or a Dino or Deadpool up there in the 1k+ woods but really who are we kidding.

The reason it is like this is not becase of other characters beeing bad, but that they are slow. The game at top levels is not about winning in a clever way, it is about not loosing while unshielded. This is the fundamental problem with new characters and why you only see the chosen few at the top.

I will say it in another way to be really clear: The potential loss if a match you play takes too long is nearly unlimited, the potential gain is max 50 points, but realistically sub 25 points.

So for the devs, if you want to see more diversity in the top space (we players do) and not be forced to bring out the nerf bat every time the new equlibrium is reached, your need to change the setup. We will use the fastets team. Always. Becase we have to. Right now we even retreat from a bad board that takes to long to limit our exposure and reshield.

As I understand it the point system works like this: If you attack someone with the same score as you, you will gain 25p, if you loose they will gain 25p. this value is offset by the point difference but the total will roughly be 50 points.

So, to my suggestions

1: Rebalance the point system. Same score fight to 30p/20p instead of 25p/25p. So max points is 60 and min 10.
2: Increase the balanced penalty for loosing a fight to 20p/30p as well
3: Limit the downside. a defensive loss is max 20p
4: Increase the defensice win points in the same way
5: Only reduce points for defensive losses in your bracket.

These will tilt the system in favour of winning, not just beeing fast. Hopefully we will also see a bit more tactics and clever defence strategies. I wouldn't mind if someone could actually use a Patch/Hulk/Hood team unshielded and climb with defensive wins.

I love this game, but I'd rather see it be more like if Rock-Paper-Scissors had a love child with Chess than Hexagon. I suspect the former will be a better long term plan for your company as well.

simonsez

I've been saying forever that I wish PvP could be redesigned so that it wasn't all about how fast you can win a fight, so I like where you're trying to go. Unfortunately, I don't see your suggestions eliminating the speed incentive. Slightly nerfing the penalty for being slow isn't going to stop people from wanting to be fast. As long as points can be lost while unshielded, people will always opt for the fastest team they have.

san

simonsez wrote:

I've been saying forever that I wish PvP could be redesigned so that it wasn't all about how fast you can win a fight, so I like where you're trying to go. Unfortunately, I don't see your suggestions eliminating the speed incentive. Slightly nerfing the penalty for being slow isn't going to stop people from wanting to be fast. As long as points can be lost while unshielded, people will always opt for the fastest team they have.

This is why I suggested PvP checkpoints (see: http://www.d3pforums.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=19590). Point totals that once attained, do not go down below a certain threshold. This would allow people to not only continue to try and progress, but also give some incentive for making that push to the next checkpoint. Even very difficult games (I play mostly console) do not penalize you THIS much for losing (or even worse, not having time to play), and most do come with checkpoints...

zeeke

Checkpoints would be a good compliment