Planned Updates To Shields - New Start Date

simonsez

stephen43084 wrote:

I'm simply saying from a logical and reasonable perspective, whatever the reason for the change, the reason is not money from shields.

I wasn't saying it is either, but since the logic expressed in the OP makes no sense, we're forced to either ponder the real reasons, or assume they don't understand the game. One thing we do know is that fewer people will reach 1300, and those that do will need to spend more doing it. Failing to understand this, or pretending it won't happen, whether it be from the OP or loyal trolls, serves no one.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

I'm simply saying from a logical and reasonable perspective, whatever the reason for the change, the reason is not money from shields.

I wasn't saying it is either, but since the logic expressed in the OP makes no sense, we're forced to either ponder the real reasons, or assume they don't understand the game. One thing we do know is that fewer people will reach 1300, and those that do will need to spend more doing it. Failing to understand this, or pretending it won't happen, whether it be from the OP or loyal trolls, serves no one.

I don't think a single person, including the OP or simonsez, has argued that this won't result in fewer players hitting 1300. Pretending they did serves no one.

esoxnepa

The more I think about this change, the more I believe it is going to make the top alliances be able to lock down the top scores with more certainty. Sure, the new scores will appear reachable, as they will be closer to the pack, but the ability to take 5 alliances coordinate an initial push, and then say 3-4 shield hops from there, and it will be hard to touch them.

I think what will happen is the alliances will have a few "runners." Say 5-6 people over the multiple alliances that everyone tries to queue. Then the alliances will push as far as they can without shield. The runners shield, a subset of the alliances retreat to them, pushing them as far above the general population as possible, and then have a shield hop cycle from 3hr->8hr->3hr->24hr->3hr->8hr. I don't know how many hops went on before, but 6 hops should still separate the top alliances from the general population. (Also, remember the shield hop time can be compressed at the cooldown of shields becomes available, so this could be many more than 6 hops, just expensive.)

It will take even more organization to pull off, but it just shifts the issue. With the much more limited number of unshielded times for the limited hops, it will be hard for anyone outside the main alliances to queue them.

simonsez

gamar wrote:

I don't think a single person has argued that this won't result in fewer players hitting 1300

From the OP, "It's not clear at this point how much this change will affect the difficulty of earning progression rewards". You can parse that however you want, but it would've been better if he just came out and said, "It's clear that earning progression rewards will be more diffcult, but we will adjust if this change was an over-correction".

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

gamar wrote:

I don't think a single person has argued that this won't result in fewer players hitting 1300

From the OP, "It's not clear at this point how much this change will affect the difficulty of earning progression rewards". You can parse that however you want, but it would've been better if he just came out and said, "It's clear that earning progression rewards will be more diffcult, but we will adjust if this change was an over-correction".

That IS what he came out and said:
" 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."

simonsez

gamar wrote:

That IS what he came out and said

Thanks for requoting, in case anyone missed it in the post above yours. Good day, sir.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

gamar wrote:

That IS what he came out and said

Thanks for requoting, in case anyone missed it in the post above yours. Good day, sir.

You omitted half of what he said which rendered your complaint invalid, and after this post I can only conclude you did it not out of overlooking it but with the intent to mislead

teknofyl

I was expecting the change to be that shielded characters can still show up in people's queue. That would have made a lot more sense and be win/win for everyone.

Reducing the number of points lost would have also been a great move if you want to reduce shield hopping.

This cooldown doesn't make a ton of sense to me. I don;t really see how it achieves their stated objectives or has the stated effects.

Baffling.

Unknown

Full disclosure: I haven't read the whole thread.

I can only assume that someone has already brought this up, but based on some of the reactions I got off the forum maybe no one has.

Shield Hopping is fun.

I am not an inveterate shield hopper. Many events I neglect to shield at all and just take top ten or 25 as it is available. But I do shield hop from time to time, and it's pretty fun and can be exhilarating. Coordinating your hits, lining up potential targets, watching for the people above you on the leaderboard to unshield; it's pretty fun. It seems silly to remove one of the fun parts of the game.

I suppose the idea is to make scores look more reasonable to new and transitioning players, so that they feel like they can achieve more rewards, but ultimately (as several have pointed out) the same people who hop now and drive up scores to huge heights will continue to do so, but will have to coordinate more and spend more to do it. Only those heights will just look a bit lower.

Frankly, I don't see what is wrong with this aspect of the game as it is. Since I think shield hopping is fun, why not make it available to a greater number of people so that transitioners can try it, too? Why not make iso more available so that they can level good hopping teams and feature covers for good hopping teams in places where they can earn them? It seems like bringing mid tier people up would be a better solution than dragging high tier players down.

Unknown

I think a 3 hour cooldown for a 3 hour shield would work better.

If, for example, there are 6 hours left, using 2 3 hour shields allows me one more opportunity to fight before being done for the same price as an 8 hour shield.

But overall, I like this change because there is nothing more disheartening then competing for a spot but then seeing someone slowly but surely shield hopping to catch up to you.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

Full disclosure: I haven't read the whole thread.

I can only assume that someone has already brought this up, but based on some of the reactions I got off the forum maybe no one has.

Shield Hopping is fun.

I am not an inveterate shield hopper. Many events I neglect to shield at all and just take top ten or 25 as it is available. But I do shield hop from time to time, and it's pretty fun and can be exhilarating. Coordinating your hits, lining up potential targets, watching for the people above you on the leaderboard to unshield; it's pretty fun. It seems silly to remove one of the fun parts of the game.

I suppose the idea is to make scores look more reasonable to new and transitioning players, so that they feel like they can achieve more rewards, but ultimately (as several have pointed out) the same people who hop now and drive up scores to huge heights will continue to do so, but will have to coordinate more and spend more to do it. Only those heights will just look a bit lower.

Frankly, I don't see what is wrong with this aspect of the game as it is. Since I think shield hopping is fun, why not make it available to a greater number of people so that transitioners can try it, too? Why not make iso more available so that they can level good hopping teams and feature covers for good hopping teams in places where they can earn them? It seems like bringing mid tier people up would be a better solution than dragging high tier players down.

YOU. You are the X in X-men. You should change your signature to the inventor of shield hopping. I'm not sure if that would be a point of pride or shame, but either way, I had not idea that was your brain child. The greatest of ironies a Django came up with it!

P.S. DjangoUnbuffed has one opening for someone with seven characters in their forum name and whose IGN is Magically Pigalicious.

Unknown

At least one point that seems to have been missed: ANY time spent unshielded with a decent score means that you will get destroyed. It doesn't matter how good your team is. From the Gauntlet PVEs, everyone should have learned that the best team for taking down high powered teams is two star Storm and Magneto, and any decent team can take down any other team with boosts, which are readily available to anyone. Anyone suggesting a '30 minute cooldown' before you can shield again either doesn't understand how PVP works, or just wants chaos to reign.

On a more personal note, this will move me one step closer to leaving this game. The amount of money I've given D3 is less than some, more than most, but I'm 100% sure that I can find another hobby to take my money which won't spit in my face by changing what that money is worth once a month, or whenever the whim strikes them.

evanbernstein

I have not read this thread. I only used my first shield every on Balance of Power (so now, I might have my first viable 3* character). While the shield worked, I kind of hated doing it because it was so expensive).

I any case, I'm sure there are a lot of people complaining, I just want to say a big thank you. I don't know that this is the right fix, but I'm glad you are trying to fix a broken game.

I'm no way near the high end problem that this is trying to fix, because I can still barely crack 500 points let a lone stay there.

I hope you continue to fix this issue and also try to fix the 2* > 3* problem.

Phaserhawk

stephen43084 wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

mohio wrote:

JoshBot3000 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.

Are you kidding? If they raised them the top would still get them and then give little to no chance for anyone. The problem is that the alliances and players abusing the SHIELD system were never bound by points, I mean they were scoring well past the 2K mark consistently. While I understand your arguement and logic, if you push the incentives out too far you lose the interest of the majority who deem it too difficult and expensive. Now since I am a firm beleiver you shouldn't criticize without offering a suggestion, and after reading many of the other posts I think there might be a better option.

-I think creating a fall back, like "Who wants to be a Millionare is a very good suggestion. If you hit a certain threshold you can't fall past it, this can however create some possible problems, not to mention if everyone shoots for 1300 then quits you would have lots of players tied at 1300 points.

-You could have shield's double in price if repurchased within 90% of their experation time. Example 3hr shield 75 hp, I wait an hour, push and go to buy another 3hr shield, now its 150 and a new countdown of 162 mintues starts, if I unshield and reshield again it's now 300, however again deep pockets still win

-Revamp the points lost and won. I do think a reduced rate of return on losses should be implemented, in addition I think attacking a team and losing should be a much bigger penalty vs being attacked. If I attack a 50 pt team and lose, I should lose 50 points, but if I was attacked I would only lose 25. A system where you cannot lose more than x amount of points after an unshield or certain time of inactivity on a clock.
Example. I play to 800, and call it quits for the night, lets ay the inactive clock is 6 hours. and I am inactive for 12 hours. I can only lose 100 points from attacks every 6 hours, so if I didn't shield I would come back 200 points down. If I shield at 800, take a 2 hr break and replay, after unshielding I am open to a new 100 pt 6hr window, so if my shield expires my 6 hour clock starts again. Obviously you could make this window 3 hours or 1 hr or 50 pts or 200 pts, I'm sure there's a balance somewhere. What if it was you could only lose 50 pts per hour, or after an unshield, or a win. Now if you win a match say after losing your 50 pts, you are also now open for another 50 pt retalation because you restarted the clock. You could still get knocked down, like if you attack a 35 pointer, you are opened up to -50 so you lost points, but if you stopped attacking you would have an hour window not to be attacked. If I attacked again and won I am now open to more losses. etc. etc.

I could come up with more but the one thing I see most often is that players do not like the win/loss setup as it is very high reward to attack a 50pt target knowing you would only lose 1 point, that being said I shouldn't being losing 50pts because someone can come at me all boosted. I'm not saying players shouldnt' get 50 pts for attacking, but I should be getting 50 points for losing, and if they lose to me, then they should be getting hit hard for doing so.

Unknown

evanbernstein wrote:

I have not read this thread. I only used my first shield every on Balance of Power (so now, I might have my first viable 3* character). While the shield worked, I kind of hated doing it because it was so expensive).

I any case, I'm sure there are a lot of people complaining, I just want to say a big thank you. I don't know that this is the right fix, but I'm glad you are trying to fix a broken game.

I'm no way near the high end problem that this is trying to fix, because I can still barely crack 500 points let a lone stay there.

I hope you continue to fix this issue and also try to fix the 2* > 3* problem.

Hyperbolic much, "Broken Game" this will do nothing to fix the 2*>3* issue. Now all that will happen is that without shield hopping everyone's scores will be more bunched together and people with higher 3* rosters will now be closer to you in rank thus leading them to kick the snot out of your roster for 25 points as opposed to face some guy with 3x166's for 25 points. As it is right now, you may feel you're being dummied by powerhouse teams, but a lot of them are choosing to ignore you because you only net them 2 or 3 points and aren't worth their time.

Moral

A couple posters asked about real motive:

This puts the brakes on "Death Brackets". I don't find it coincidental that this change gets announced the same week a player hit 3000 in a PVP.

I don't recall people being thrilled they squeaked out top 5 by scoring 1600 or needed 1100 to make top 25 for 2 covers.

Prior to this change, I considered the benefit of a high end roster was hitting most of the progression rewards that the transitioning 2* roster with a 5 cover XForce on his team had no shot at.

Much like the Ragnarok Nerf, I think D3 is far overshooting the mark here.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

YOU. You are the X in X-men. You should change your signature to the inventor of shield hopping. I'm not sure if that would be a point of pride or shame, but either way, I had not idea that was your brain child. The greatest of ironies a Django came up with it!

P.S. DjangoUnbuffed has one opening for someone with seven characters in their forum name and whose IGN is Magically Pigalicious.

I just showed him this post I made 10 months ago, pretty much immediately after alliances came to exist. This is what he's talking about.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3766

Spoit

Moral wrote:

A couple posters asked about real motive:

This puts the brakes on "Death Brackets". I don't find it coincidental that this change gets announced the same week a player hit 3000 in a PVP.

I don't recall people being thrilled they squeaked out top 5 by scoring 1600 or needed 1100 to make top 25 for 2 covers.

Prior to this change, I considered the benefit of a high end roster was hitting most of the progression rewards that the transitioning 2* roster with a 5 cover XForce on his team had no shot at.

Much like the Ragnarok Nerf, I think D3 is far overshooting the mark here.

I don't see how this helps death brackets? If anything, compressing the point range just makes it worse, and more luck based

NorthernPolarity

Spoit wrote:

Moral wrote:

A couple posters asked about real motive:

This puts the brakes on "Death Brackets". I don't find it coincidental that this change gets announced the same week a player hit 3000 in a PVP.

I don't recall people being thrilled they squeaked out top 5 by scoring 1600 or needed 1100 to make top 25 for 2 covers.

Prior to this change, I considered the benefit of a high end roster was hitting most of the progression rewards that the transitioning 2* roster with a 5 cover XForce on his team had no shot at.

Much like the Ragnarok Nerf, I think D3 is far overshooting the mark here.

I don't see how this helps death brackets? If anything, compressing the point range just makes it worse, and more luck based

I think people just think that an X-Men winning with 1.5k points and them being at 600 points is better than an X-Men winning at 3k points and them being at 700 points? The status quo is maintained in either case, but theres the illusion of progress in the first case even though practically speaking they don't stand a chance to anyone willing to shield hop and dunk 1k hp per PvP.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Dauthi wrote:

PVP is pretty important, and in order to do well you have to play an unfun and extremely stressful metagame called "shield hopping" that was in no way intended.

And you think trying to get to 1300 without shield-hopping is going to be fun and extremely stress-free? For crissakes...

Which s why Francky thought Phantron and Dauthi were related. Or married.