Planned Updates To Shields - New Start Date

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  • Phaserhawk
    Phaserhawk Posts: 2,676 Chairperson of the Boards
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    As long as the lower the progression reward requirments I'll be happy in the end. My only request is that they add a 12 hour shield. Shield hopping is problematic because it does become a spending war. Because what they are not telling you, but telling you is, "there are players and allicances that are breaking our progression system where we dangle the carrot in front of the horse, but these players are getting that character i.e. 4* rewards, and we don't like it, so while we will lose money from them, we hope now that the bottom pack will be closer, they will spend more $ thus negating the loss from the top tier."
  • I think, ultimately, that each shield will create a shield cool down equal to the length of shield used. For example, use an 8hr shield & no other shields for 8 hrs but use a 3hr shield & only get a 3hr cool down. If this is the case, then long run the system will work out. All of them w an 8hr cool down doesn't really make much sense. Also we need to consider the possibility that there are programming issues involved (cop out excuse but entirely possible). Mainly I think it's a "workable" idea & that D3 had planned this for a long while

    BECAUSE...

    This clearly was done to stop "organized & coordinated" shield hopping. Could someone please explain to me how people are supposed to coordinate after the shield cool downs end? Is it gonna be a domino thing? Guy A goes, then everyone queues him up, guy A shields, guy B & C repeat the process, then that whole bunch of remaining guys can hit those 3 targets maximum. Maybe they could get lucky w the timing & find one of the 3 again & possibly hit 4. They obviously can't be hitting teammates without shields regardless of points. This will mean that these groups will probably have to spend a longer time each hop period & will all have to hop simultaneously. Additionally everyone else will be able to time this affair & will themselves be ready 8 hr later, which will mitigate this strategy substantially "oh i see some famous names out, everyone get ready to make your jumps again"

    This is clearly a response to longtime complaints about P2W, dominance of xmen & other "regular" top 10 teams (d3 probably wants more diversity in top 10. Good luck w that D3), the OPH incident & multi alliance battle chats (how many of the top teams currently coordinate: xmen group & another composed of the remaining various top 10 teams that have essentially coalesced because of shared battle chat). This is D3 attempt to balance things out for these complaints. Not an ideal solution but it is something that they are doing to change the names at the top. Most likely many of these groups will remain on top (deep rosters, knowledge of the game, coordination to the extent it will be available, sheer desire to win)

    As for why this will help transitioning players... It's really quite simple. Right now transitioning players are screwed. They have no chance at top 25 placements because of the spread of scores. Scores essentially create a modified bell curve. People who get 2000+ (the .05%) are all the way on the right & new accounts getting 0-100 are on the left. The curve is clearly skewed left because of the obvious fact that newer players will always start off w small scores & that retiring elite players are not "immediately" replaced by equal scorers. That said, let's say the current average is 500-600. Since that is the average score, those players scoring those amounts clearly won't win top prizes. But let's say this whole shield thing depresses scores to the point where the collective average is 350-450. Obviously those scores won't win top 25 still, but people who could score 500-700 now maybe can get to top 25 if they are clever about when they score & how they shield. Smaller spreads on scoring will allow more people to have a chance at top 25. In reality, the people getting hurt the most are the people who "draft" on the early playing high scoring folks "I get 1300 on 3 shields" people. Those people will need to spend more to get to 1300. However, 1300 may not matter as much anymore. If they lower progressions maybe the 1300 reward is now at 900 (or something like that). I get the complaints that progressions may have to be lowered. This has happened before. There used to be progressions all the way up 2400 pts in the early days of PvP/shielding. Obviously it has been changed before.

    The TL:DR "overall depression of scores creates a smaller margin from average to reward placement level, this smaller margin will allow more people to have a chance at top 25 placements"

    Hopefully this post won't make tooooooooo many people upset lol
  • gamar wrote:
    Sweenz wrote:
    Cooldown should never be longer than the shield itself.
    Since the objective seems to make it more difficult/costly to make huge, prolonged climbs in points while remaining (almost) entirely protected the entire time, having cooldowns be longer than the shield duration is the only way to make the cooldown mechanic work

    Use a 3 hour shield... Want to break it? Fine, but you still have to wait those three hours before reusing it. It would still be three hour "jumps" at the earliest.
  • I'm fine with the cooldown idea but not 8hrs for a 3hr shield... that makes no sense.

    I'd prefer a 5 shield budget though (any type, maximum of 5 per event) - that would be a far more elegant and tactical solution to shieldhopping, and in many ways would increase the use of shields amongst casuals as limiting things always has an improved purchasing effect on consumers (i.e. when you see 'special price, maximum of 3 per customer!' in supermarkets).
  • Zen808
    Zen808 Posts: 260
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    As I see it, this is the distribution of players in a typical PVP:
    Rank 1-15: Shield hoppers.
    Rank 16-50: strong rosters, just pushing as hard as they can go.
    Rank 51-125: guys with marginal rosters trying their best to score one 3* cover
    Rank 126-400: "i got my Event Token, don't care what happened after that"
    Rank 401-500: "i just started playing this PVP because I had nothing better to do while sitting on the toilet"

    As such, this change seems like it will piss off #1, might or might not help #2, and will have no effect on the rest of the 90%.

    just going by risk-reward, I don't see that this change will be beneficial to the MPQ community as a whole.

    That wall of 166? When that gets lower, it should tell you that the lower MMR's are leaving PVP. Why would they leave? Because they can't make Top 100, and there's no incentive to play for any other prize.
  • mohio
    mohio Posts: 1,690 Chairperson of the Boards
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    The TL:DR "overall depression of scores creates a smaller margin from average to reward placement level, this smaller margin will allow more people to have a chance at top 25 placements"

    Hopefully this post won't make tooooooooo many people upset lol
    I did read the whole thing - just snipping it. Anyway - as I and NP have said earlier, you're still going to have the same hierarchy where transitioners can beat up on 2* teams, and 3* teams will beat up on 2* and transitioning teams, and 4* teams will beat up on anyone. So, the change won't alter that hierarchy, at most it will simply compress it into a smaller range. What I mean is that where before you might have had 2* teams naturally topping out at 5-600 points, transitioning teams topping out at 6-700 points and 3*+ teams topping out at 8-900 points (mind you this is all before any shield hopping has occurred), now these are more like 450, 500, and 600 (not totally dissimilar to the barren time slices). But if you think about what happens at that point, you realize it now just becomes a crazy shield-hop to the finish line. That 2* team, provided he can find some nodes he can beat, can shield hop over those transitioning teams. Similarly the transitioning teams can shield hop over the 3* teams assuming they can beat those teams (which they probably can, especially in a boosted, shield hop setting). So now the 3* are going to have to shield hop as well if they want to maintain their top 5-25 ranking they're used to.

    So yeah, scores will be all closer together which will mean transitioning teams might have a greater chance to leap frog the 3* into better rewards. But do we really want to encourage shield hopping even more than we already do? Why not just let the whales have their fun and play the game the way they want to play it where it has fairly minimal effect on the rest of us (and the effect it does have is generally positive as points trickle down, allowing more people to obtain higher progression rewards)?
  • Phaserhawk
    Phaserhawk Posts: 2,676 Chairperson of the Boards
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    mohio wrote:
    The TL:DR "overall depression of scores creates a smaller margin from average to reward placement level, this smaller margin will allow more people to have a chance at top 25 placements"

    Hopefully this post won't make tooooooooo many people upset lol
    Why not just let the whales have their fun and play the game the way they want to play it where it has fairly minimal effect on the rest of us (and the effect it does have is generally positive as points trickle down, allowing more people to obtain higher progression rewards)?


    Becasue D3 doesnt want people getting the progression rewards, that's it, period.
  • Phaserhawk wrote:
    mohio wrote:
    The TL:DR "overall depression of scores creates a smaller margin from average to reward placement level, this smaller margin will allow more people to have a chance at top 25 placements"

    Hopefully this post won't make tooooooooo many people upset lol
    Why not just let the whales have their fun and play the game the way they want to play it where it has fairly minimal effect on the rest of us (and the effect it does have is generally positive as points trickle down, allowing more people to obtain higher progression rewards)?


    Becasue D3 doesnt want people getting the progression rewards, that's it, period.

    So your theory is that MPQ puts progressions up in PVP just for fun? So how do you explain that they adjusted the progressions in PVE that anyone that plays a reasonable amount can hit the top progression no problem?

    Furthermore, they could have raised the progressions higher at any point previous to now. Taking this into account along with all the conspiracty theorists that say shields are a money ploy, it seems the best way to make more money would be to raise the progressives and require more hopping (shield purchases) to do it.

    There are a lot of plausible explanations for why MPQ is making this change; however, I have seroius doubts that making the progressions unreachable (or even making more money off shields) is one of them.
  • MarvelMan
    MarvelMan Posts: 1,350
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    This feels like an effort to push their ideal schedule on me, which really doesnt work for the way I play the game. Kind of punishing the masses for the exploitation of a few. Im already taking the next season off (dropping from alliance) so I might not come back if the way I play doesnt fit their schedule.

    If I shield its either I use 2-3 of the three hour shields as it is closer to the way my life works, or I drop one because the event end is "near" and I dont want to get pulled down by the zombie horde. I typically play a bit (~45 min) after work but before dinner, then drop a 3 hour shield. I do dinner, dishes, spend time with kids, etc then play a bit more (2-5 matches) towards the end of my shield and put up another one to get me through their bedtime. With the cooldown I only end up with 2 shields for the same HP spend.
  • wymtime
    wymtime Posts: 3,757 Chairperson of the Boards
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    mohio wrote:
    wymtime wrote:
    So I want to say again I am happy D3 is doing something about shield hopping. It did make a PTW system, and if you had the right characters and were willing to spend the HP you could score whatever you want. D3 is implementing a CD system so each shield has an 8 hour CD. So if you want to shield hop from a 3 hr shield instead of spending 75 HP for another 3 hr you spend 150 for 8 hr, then you can go to 300 HP for 24 hr. This is to limit the amount of shield hopping which in turn will keep scores down. Right now in the game to achieve a score of 1300+ which reaches all the progression you need to shield hop 3-4 times. D3 now made the cost for 1300 progression a min of 525-600 HP instead of 225-300. Will this stop whales from hopping? Probably not as people have spent over 4k HP in one PVP. Right now if you are above 1000 and you go unshielded for 10 min you get hit. All D3 did was make it more expensive for people who shield hop. I generally do 1 to 2 hops to try and get above 1100 progression. This change will effect more F2P hoppers than PTW hoppers. Here is a couple of alternatives that I think would make the game more fair, and still allow people to have the opportunity to make the progressions.
    1) make it so when you break your shieild you cannot shield again for 30 min. Making the shield like a single health pack. D3 will also need to look at match making at high levels as you will be hit like crazy if you are above 1000 points.
    2) Everyone can only use 3 shields total. IF you want to use a 24hr shield, and 2 8 hour shields go ahead. If you want to use 3 3hr shields go ahead. By only alowing 3 shields with 0 cool down everyone is on the same playing field. PTW players cannot just out spend you to win. 1300 will still be possible and it will only cost a significant amount to shiled if you need to use a longer shield.
    3) only give 24 hours (could be less) worth of shields total. This will make PTW have an advantage in if they want to break shield and go they can. It still puts a level playing field but give people who are willing to spend an advantage.

    Overall I personally like options 2 and 3 more than a CD period or what D3 is doing with the 8 hr CD. I applaud them for taking this issue on as it is in the best interest of the game, but I think there are a couple better alternatives.
    I appreciate that you realize the dev's current solution does not do what they intend it to do and are offering alternative solutions. However I would like to ask those early pvpers out there (x-men, etc) if it is actually possible to reach 1300 on only 3 shields. My gut says no, since iirc they start shielding in the 800-900 range and can really only get 50-100 per hop if they're the event leaders. Sure it's easier for the guys who come along 2 days in and have all those high point scores to prop them up but if you only give people 3 shields then those scores won't be there (or if you're super optimistic, they'll simply be shielded) and it will be impossible to reach that score.

    Good point here by mohio that I did not think of as I was looking at it from my point of view.
    I think if you look at the heart of my idea of limiting the number of shields what ever number that is, would be the better way to limit shield hopping and socres in the 2000. The number can change and be perfected, or the dev's can adjust the progression rewards to meet the number of shields, so if 1100 or 1000 becomes the max level that someone can climb to with X number of shileds then that can become the top progression. Having Cool Down periods just makes hopping cost more, and changes how top players will have to hop.
  • simonsez
    simonsez Posts: 4,663 Chairperson of the Boards
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    So how do you explain that they adjusted the progressions in PVE that anyone that plays a reasonable amount can hit the top progression no problem?
    The top progressions in PvE are 3*, not 4* like in PvP
    I have seroius doubts that making the progressions unreachable (or even making more money off shields) is one of them.
    Then once again, they've solidified their status as masters of unintended consequences of which anyone seriously playing the game can foresee.
  • lukewin
    lukewin Posts: 1,356 Chairperson of the Boards
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    Dauthi wrote:
    lukewin wrote:
    I have to believe at this point that you are a troll. Since you are taking the time to address every post... I would say that you are more like arktos than phantron, except you are shilling for the devs/pubs, as opposed to against them.

    This is pretty rude and uncalled for. Yes, I do have a lot of time on my hands occasionally, and I enjoy spending it here sometimes when major events are taking place.
    lukewin wrote:
    I have to believe at this point that you are a troll. Since you are taking the time to address every post. That or you have plenty of free time and feel like responding/countering every post that you have conversed in. I don't mean to defame you by my belief, but that is my opinion. I would say that you are more like arktos than phantron, except you are shilling for the devs/pubs, as opposed to against them.

    Thank you for omitting what I have bolded in my original quote, which makes it seem like I am just calling you a troll to call you a troll. Since you have a life outside the forums, as you put it, and didn't get the Phantron reference ( I did not either ), maybe you don't know what I meant by troll. I have copied/pasted from Wikipedia and highlighted why I think you fall in this category.

    In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[4]
  • san
    san Posts: 421 Mover and Shaker
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    lukewin wrote:
    In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[4]

    I have no comments on the argument between you two, but it is a sad day indeed when someone quotes Wikipedia as a reputable source, even when it comes to definitions for internet slang.
  • "David wrote:
    Moore"]Greetings,

    Coming up soon after the introduction of R67 we are planning to make some changes to Shields.

    Shields may now have cooldowns depending on the Event. The cooldown is displayed below the amount of time the Shield lasts. Specifically, after you purchase a Shield, there's a cooldown period (in our testing, it's currently set to 8 hours) before you can buy another Shield of the same duration in the same Event.

    The plan is for this change to go live with the start of the Versus Event on Friday, Dec. 19, 2014.

    Some of the thinking behind this change:
      • "Shield hopping" is still possible but very limited. High-scoring is fun, but Shield hopping generally requires a large amount of out-of-game communication that not all players have access to. We asked ourselves this question:
    "Would you Shield hop if you didn't need to in order to reach a high score? If not, that's a sign that a change is probably needed."

    This change helps level the playing field. Players that don't have the Hero Points to spend on Shields, either through being in a top 100 Alliance or purchasing currency, will not need to worry about someone simply outspending them by using hundreds of Hero Points to Shield hop for a win.

    • Initially, we'll be keeping the scores needed to earn progression rewards the same while we test a few Versus Events and gather data. Over the last few months, we've seen a lot of variation in the number of players using lots of Shields in a single Event, and a lot of variation in the highest scores players reach, but very little variation in how much effort it takes to reach a particular progression reward. It's not clear at this point how much this change will affect the difficulty of earning progression rewards; it'll depend on what strategies people adopt in response to the change. We'll be watching how the difficulty changes and will make adjustments to the rewards after a few Events if necessary.

    Thanks for reading. Your feedback is welcomed.

    First red quote translates to - Would you rather get that high score/placement without shield hopping. - Does this mean you intend to make progression awards MORE accessible without shielding?

    Second red - the problem with the thought process is that this makes it HARDER for 2* teams to compete at all with 3* teams because now they're going to get hammered much more often if they can't shield hop their way into the top 25 etc.

    People scoring above 1300 are completely irrelevant in that they're just competing against one-another for season points and rarely the first place prize.

    They're always going to outspend the other people 10 to 1 and more because they have hp to burn and nothing else to burn it on.

    Limiting total shields in an event or changing the pricing scheme to increase for each shield used in an event would be a much better deterrent.

    Also the comments I've heard regarding closing the mmr gap is kind of nonsense. The mmr band can just be completely opened above a certain score so you can't hide from the player pool nor abuse the limited possible enemies. Say - once you get to 800 (like it seems to be currently) you can target anyone and everyone from 800 and up. This should be the same for the people at 1300 and 1500 and so on and it shouldn't select closest score first etc. For a game that has however many thousands of people playing, it's kind of ridiculous that the same 3 or 4 shield hoppers can bounce off each other knowing that they don't have to skip a lot to find each other and very few can even see them.

    Shield cool down durations is another thing widely discussed since this announcement. It's ridiculous, if we heard correctly, to have an 8 hour cool down on a 3 hour shield. I understand the idea is well then you can use an 8 hour or 24 hour shield afterwords. Nonsense unless the pricing for each will be the same after the change. IF they all cost 75 hp then sure it's fine - you can still shield every 3 hours if you want.

    How about implementing a free 'shield to end' option for every pvp?
    Another alternative many have mentioned is reducing point loss

    Pushing players to buy more expensive shields and then calling it 'evening the playing field for players who don't have much hp' is not right.

    More comments later
  • simonsez wrote:
    So how do you explain that they adjusted the progressions in PVE that anyone that plays a reasonable amount can hit the top progression no problem?
    The top progressions in PvE are 3*, not 4* like in PvP.

    So? If they did not want players to reach them in PvP they could just make them higher (or remove them altogether).
    simonsez wrote:
    I have seroius doubts that making the progressions unreachable (or even making more money off shields) is one of them.
    Then once again, they've solidified their status as masters of unintended consequences of which anyone seriously playing the game can foresee.
    [/quote]

    Sigh. Any change they make to shields is going to increase or decrease the amount of revenue from shields. This is an incidental feature of the change not a necessary one. We know this (and they are not trying to prevent progressions from being reached) again because if this was their goal they would raise the progressives and encourage more hopping not less. If they wanted to sell the more expensive shields, they could have just raised prices.

    I'm not saying the change is good or needed. I'm strongly against the change (see p. 3 of the thread). I'm simply saying from a logical and reasonable perspective, whatever the reason for the change, the reason is not money from shields.

    Moreover, if we want MPQ to listen to us (I mean really listen to us), we should focus on the real arguments of the why the change is bad for the game. Every time someone puts things like "also money" or so players cannot reach progressives (aka the developers hate us), it marginalizes our position as reasonable and rational customers/gamers that understand how the game mechanics work and our opinions are valid.
  • Unknown
    edited December 2014
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    Sigh. Any change they make to shields is going to increase or decrease the amount of revenue from shields. This is an incidental feature of the change not a necessary one. We know this (and they are not trying to prevent progressions from being reached) again because if this was their goal they would raise the progressives and encourage more hopping not less. If they wanted to sell the more expensive shields, they could have just raised prices.

    I'm not saying the change is good or needed. I'm strongly against the change (see p. 3 of the thread). I'm simply saying from a logical and reasonable perspective, whatever the reason for the change, the reason is not money from shields.

    Moreover, if we want MPQ to listen to us (I mean really listen to us), we should focus on the real arguments of the why the change is bad for the game. Every time someone puts things like "also money" or so players cannot reach progressives (aka the developers hate us), it marginalizes our position as reasonable and rational customers/gamers that understand how the game mechanics work and our opinions are valid.
    Businesses mask their ulterior motives all the time. Like a grocery store placing an expensive name brand item next to their own cheaper store brand. Or orienting the aisles such that it maximizes your time inside the grocery store and the likelihood of impulse buys. Do you think they'd get as much sales if they came out and stated their true intentions?

    Every business wants to make money. But notice how incredibly rare it is for a business to directly increase the price of something without at least a PR spin.
  • whitecat31
    whitecat31 Posts: 579 Critical Contributor
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    mohio wrote:
    I appreciate that you realize the dev's current solution does not do what they intend it to do and are offering alternative solutions. However I would like to ask those early pvpers out there (x-men, etc) if it is actually possible to reach 1300 on only 3 shields.

    In the past environment, where ton's of q's are available and there is good communication, the answer is on rare occasions yes. It is the exception and not the norm.
    This only occurs when there is an environment of very high points.
    That is the point of what D3 is doing. They want to limit the rewards.
    It will drastically drop the value of shielding and return everything into lightning round environments, where maximum threshold of points and achieving goals is more luck than skill.
  • lukewin
    lukewin Posts: 1,356 Chairperson of the Boards
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    To put it simply reckless I don't think it will make it easier. I think transitioning players will be attacked a lot more and not have a reasonable apvanue (spending 225 pts on 3 hops) to earn themselves an extra cover or 2 if extremely lucky. I just wanted some of the people posting it will be positive (which I don't think Spoit necessarily believes, instead I think he was just trying to give potential reasonings) to provide support for there beliefs. ...

    I do not believe d3s reasons given hold any real weight, and like many others feel this is an effort to prevent distribution of cheap 3 and 4 stars.

    I am with you. Transitioning players will be attacked more. The only way that we would be attacked less, is if we had 166 teams on defense, which is hard to do with all the viable characters being vaulted.

    It might be a way for the devs to get people to burn thru their HP reserves quicker than they can replenish them with the HP rewards they get from events. I think a lot of people sitting on HP reserves that play PVE/PVP usually come out of those events with a net gain in HP. I think there is a problem with the rich getting richer system, not the players. They have spent the time/money/effort to get their rosters up. They just happen to benefit from the system that rewards the higher rosters + effort with higher placement. I hope that all the people that recently partook in the HP sales and want refunds, get full refunds from Apple/Google, because this change will drastically change what the game was before this announcement.

    As a F2P player, I don't expect to compete with the Day 1 players or the players that have bought the covers/ISO to catch up to that point. They were there on the ground floor, got to benefit from the mistakes that the devs have since fixed, guaranteed 3* covers in packs, probably plenty more, etc. It was a right time, right place situation.
  • Until they put in some sort of limit on how many times per hour or something you can get hammered by other players, it seems on the surface that once you reach that 700-900 range PVP will just seem a lot like one step forward two steps back as you win a battle only to discover you've been drilled for a net loss of 25 or more points. Feels like it might become a very frustrating experience and will just lead to an even higher level of coordination than already exists by top teams like the X-Men so that they and other top teams can stay on the top.
  • woopie
    woopie Posts: 311 Mover and Shaker
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    whitecat31 wrote:
    mohio wrote:
    I appreciate that you realize the dev's current solution does not do what they intend it to do and are offering alternative solutions. However I would like to ask those early pvpers out there (x-men, etc) if it is actually possible to reach 1300 on only 3 shields.

    In the past environment, where ton's of q's are available and there is good communication, the answer is on rare occasions yes. It is the exception and not the norm.
    This only occurs when there is an environment of very high points.
    That is the point of what D3 is doing. They want to limit the rewards.
    It will drastically drop the value of shielding and return everything into lightning round environments, where maximum threshold of points and achieving goals is more luck than skill.

    Yeah as D3 releases more 4*s, they need to make sure the 4*s are harder to get. Can't have a bunch of people hitting the top progression reward every PVP otherwise they won't spend the 2,500 HP to get that cover. Since it'll become harder to get to 1300, they're only giving away maybe 2-3 4* covers (including #1 in the bracket) per tournament instead of 10-15 (depending on the bracket)

    Drop in shield spending to increase cover spending? Might just work.