Planned Updates To Shields - New Start Date

mags1587

Thanks for the response, Will, it's appreciated. I admit I'm still confused about the reasoning behind the 8 hour cooldown on 3 hour shields. Yes, someone could play throughout the night every three hours, but is that really going to be common? And is discouraging that really worth inconveniencing the average player that plays for a bit then throws up a 3 hour shield to eat dinner and do family activities or to let healthpacks recharge? I don't think it is.

(I also find it odd that you want to discourage playing every 3 hours in PvP when you encourage it in PvE.)

Your goal seems to be to curb the excessive use of shields in PvP. Not a bad idea, but it seems like it would be better served by putting a limit on shields that players are able to purchase per PvP rather than a cooldown period.

sinnerjfl

Let me translate what the devs are saying:

"People are using too many shields to reach high scores in PvP. Now we're going to implement a system that will make you pay double for the same shield hops than before."

That's all it is, getting you to spend more HP. Enjoy.

Unknown

mags1587 wrote:

(I also find it odd that you want to discourage playing every 3 hours in PvP when you encourage it in PvE.)

I KNOW right?

zonatahunt

Will, thank you for such a detailed response and also for those at D3 that listened to our concerns about testing mid-season. This kind of response speaks volumes to our community that you hear and are willing to alter plans.

Unknown

I have to start by saying that I truly do appreciate the listening and attempts at communication, but I'm SO frustrated at the way d3 listens to Jimi, but can't HEAR Jimi. Here are my frustrated, though cool-headed responses to Will's message.

Demiurge_Will wrote:

* Some folks have asked why the cooldown on the 3 hour shield is 8 hours instead of 3 (or less). A cooldown that short would mean that the best way to get the most shields for the fewest Hero Points is to come back and play every 3 (or less) hours, through the night. That's not an ideal situation.

Overnight is what people use 8 hour shields for. Who's waking up every three hours for PvP?!? That's what PvE is for.

*...but we're aiming for things to be more about the strategy of when to break a shield, when to re-shield, and how long to stay vulnerable, instead of the top of the leaderboards being decided by the raw number of shields you're willing to use.*

But your changes do exactly the opposite. "cool down" makes it most beneficial to break a shield at the absolute last second, because doing so more often is just opening you up to hours of exposure. You literally PREVENT us from re-shielding when we want within 5 hours of the last shield expiration. And you FORCE us to stay vulnerable for for 5 hours on a 3 hour shield. The top of the bracket, at ANY shard level, can't stay exposed for 5 minutes without getting whacked down, much less 5 hours. Why is it good to add so much more frustration to reaching higher placement.

for other folks, it brings to mind the strategies that have let players break 3000 points, which do require coordination.

Oy, I knew that Operation Pay Harder was gonna backfire somehow.

All that number stuff

Sledgehammer to kill a fly. You want to curb the coordinating behavior of the top 10 alliances. This won't. It'll just make coordination more intense, perhaps harder, but we do the Line thing, and I promise X-Men, and Raiders, and Shi-ar, and IR will figure out ways to coordinate enough to be better than the rest. This doesn't kill the virus you're trying to kill. It just mutates it.

* To restate something that was in the announcement: the proportion of people reaching various progression rewards in Versus is about right currently, and if it's necessary to change the point at which rewards are given out to keep that the same (there are good odds it will be, but it's impossible to predict exactly how behavior will change as a result of cooldowns), we plan to do that.

If you know the odds are good that you'll have to being progressions down, isn't it better to bring them down now, even ultra-conservatively? . If your best guess is that the percentage of players that you want to reach top progression will land somewhere in the 1000-1100 point range, and the featured cover is at 850-950, why not throw your players a bone and make the top progressions 1100 and 950? If you're a little too low, you doled out what I can only imagine is a relatively insignificant amount of covers. If you're too high, it's no worse than having kept it at 1300?

Sword user

I don't know if it's been said, or not, but will the devs consider reducing the cost of the 8 and 24 hour shields with the fact that they will need to be more relied on now? 2-3 three hour shields may have done the job before, where now players will need 1 three hour, 1 eight hour, and maybe even close with a 24 hour.

Thank you for the consideration.

xKOBALTx

Demiurge_Will wrote:

* Some folks have asked why the cooldown on the 3 hour shield is 8 hours instead of 3 (or less). A cooldown that short would mean that the best way to get the most shields for the fewest Hero Points is to come back and play every 3 (or less) hours, through the night. That's not an ideal situation.

C'mon, Will. You're going to have to do better than that. It barely makes sense and, as others have already pointed out, you already encourage this exact same thing in PvE.

At this point you're basically saying, "We don't want you using 3-hour shields." Think about it. If someone has a score that they feel is worth protecting, how daft would they have to be to only protect it for those three hours, but be totally cool with getting destroyed for the five that follow? They've basically got three options: 1) use them only in the final three hours, 2) use an 8/24-hour shield instead or 3) use a 3-hour and immediately jump to an 8/24-hour. One is useful only once right at the end of an event and the other two cost more.

I'm not one of those that see a cash grab behind every change, but seriously realize that this is the appearance you're giving here. Your stated intentions aren't matching up with your proposed changes.

Unknown

Branching out a little from commenting on the changes; does anyone else notice there're gonna be "dead" periods where the guys with huge scores (like those in top 10 alliances) up their 8 hour shields?
Any ideas on what can be done to take nibbles off them if they're gonna be shielded that long?

When i was playing the trial by combat PVP i started about 14hours left, then:
1. Played til 700(ish) points where my health packs gave out. (all bloody 25 point matches too. )
2. Waited for about 2 hours for my health packs and characters to recover and pushed to 900+ followed by an 8 hour shield
3. Waited til it was just under 3 hours left and made a mad dash to 1050 points followed by a 3 hour shield which i did not break til the end of the PVP.

I see alot of people commenting that we should play 3 hour shield followed by 8 hours instead. I'm under the assumption that they do so so as to hit 1300 and up. Is there any other merit to this method?

Unknown

"David wrote:

Moore"]
...
* Some folks have asked why the cooldown on the 3 hour shield is 8 hours instead of 3 (or less). A cooldown that short would mean that the best way to get the most shields for the fewest Hero Points is to come back and play every 3 (or less) hours, through the night. That's not an ideal situation.
...

I hate to sound confrontational, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. I am confident that most people in the situation you describe would use an 8-hour shield and just sleep through the night.
Having an 8 hour cooldown on the 3 hour shield hamstrings it's viability and IMHO makes it suitable in only one case: There is less than 3 hours left until the end of the event, you make your final push and put down a 3-hour shield. And that's all it is good for, it is worthless in any other case.
If the cooldown was 3 hours or less, it becomes much more flexible. Case in point: you get back home from work/school in the afternoon, make a push and put up a 3-hour shield. 3 hours later when the shield expires and your have regenerated you make another push and put down another 3-hour shield and repeat the process (if your schedule permits) or use an 8-hour shield and sleep through the night.

Also, since the shield change will probably make the top progression rewards unreachable (not that I ever managed to reach more than 1000 points anyway ), I would like to request one of two things. Either:
a) Restructure the progression rewards and lower the requirements, or
b) Reduce the number of points lost on defeat (eg. the maximum loss is -20 or -25).

Thanks

EDIT: typos

mohio

Deadpooool wrote:

Branching out a little from commenting on the changes; does anyone else notice there're gonna be "dead" periods where the guys with huge scores (like those in top 10 alliances) up their 8 hour shields?
Any ideas on what can be done to take nibbles off them if they're gonna be shielded that long?

When i was playing the trial by combat PVP i started about 14hours left, then:
1. Played til 700(ish) points where my health packs gave out. (all bloody 25 point matches too. )
2. Waited for about 2 hours for my health packs and characters to recover and pushed to 900+ followed by an 8 hour shield
3. Waited til it was just under 3 hours left and made a mad dash to 1050 points followed by a 3 hour shield which i did not break til the end of the PVP.

I see alot of people commenting that we should play 3 hour shield followed by 8 hours instead. I'm under the assumption that they do so so as to hit 1300 and up. Is there any other merit to this method?

The dead period thing is precisely why people have been saying there is going to be even more out of game communication and coordination, since you're going to have as many people as possible hopping off each other. If you're an outsider or just don't feel like going to those lengths to put up high scores, you might have to just get lucky or check every hour or so by skipping around looking for opponents while shielded.

As for the 3 then 8 hour shield you're right it's purely for higher scores. If I'm forced to be shielded for 8 hours basically, I might as well get in a quick hop using the 3 hour shield before shielding with the 8 hour shield, and then repeat that 8 hours later. Otherwise you do your 8 hours, then do a 3->8 hop, and you're at a slightly lower score. Ultimately it probably doesn't really matter as long as you time everything right and plan it out to the end of the event.

As for your anecdote, here's mine, from the first avenger pvp. Keep in mind this is what they're trying to eliminate.

1) Started with about 25 hours left in the event or thereabouts. Climb to ~1000 or 980 or whatever. That takes about 2 hours. Throw up a 3-hour shield.
2) Wait 30 minutes, line up some 40-point matches in the meantime. Do 2 matches and throw another 3-hour shield. At about 1080.
3) wait 30 minutes, find more 40-pointers. Do 2 matches, reshield. Up to 1160.
4) repeat 3). Up to 1240.
5) repeat 3), getting up to 1320, this time shield for 24 hours cause I'm going to Disneyland for the rest of the day.

As you see I used something like 4 (it might have even been 5 since I think I was hit on one of my hops) 3-hour shields in the span of about 2 hours. This is the behavior they want to curb. I could have just kept going every 30 minutes and tried to get to 2000+ as some others do. Under the new system all those hops would have taken at least 16 hours unless I decided I really wanted to do it quicker and just throw more hp at it and use 24-hour shields as well, in which case I could make it in maybe 9 hours. The problem of course being that it's much less likely that I can even reach 1000 in the first place before shielding, and I doubt I'll even really be able to get 80 points per hop since I won't be finding such high point targets. If that increases the math by just 2 more hops, that's 8 more hours we have to add and 8 more for every 2 more hops past that. All of a sudden if I want to reach the progression I have to give myself well over 24 hours and I have to commit to being able to play every 7-8 hours from my first shield and I'll have to spend at least 1000 hp to get there. This may sound totally reasonable to you, and I'm not even saying it's not, but it's a HUGE change from the current status quo.

mohio

epick_fayle wrote:

"David wrote:

Moore"]
...
* Some folks have asked why the cooldown on the 3 hour shield is 8 hours instead of 3 (or less). A cooldown that short would mean that the best way to get the most shields for the fewest Hero Points is to come back and play every 3 (or less) hours, through the night. That's not an ideal situation.
...

I hate to sound confrontational, but this makes absolutely no sense to me. I am confident that most people in the situation you describe would use an 8-hour shield and just sleep through the night.
Having an 8 hour cooldown on the 3 hour shield hamstrings it's viability and IMHO makes it suitable in only one case: There is less than 3 hours left until the end of the event, you make your final push and put down a 3-hour shield. And that's all it is good for, it is worthless in any other case.
If the cooldown was 3 hours or less, it becomes much more flexible. Case in point: you get back home from work/school in the afternoon, make a push and put up a 3-hour shield. 3 hours later when the shield expires and your have regenerated you make another push and put down another 3-hour shield and repeat the process (if your schedule permits) or use an 8-hour shield and sleep through the night.

Also, since the shield change will probably make the top progression rewards unreachable (not that I ever managed to reach more than 1000 points anyway ), I would like to request one of two things. Either:
a) Restructure the progression rewards and lower the requirements, or
b) Reduce the number of points lost on defeat (eg. the maximum loss is -20 or -25).

Thanks

EDIT: typos

The 3-hour shield is in fact good for trading 75 hp for somewhere between 60 and 100 pvp points once every 8 hours. That and maybe saving 75 hp if your final shield is within the last 3 hours of the event ending.

Unknown

Do what you got to do devs, players will adapt and change to make the system work for them. But please don't frame it as anything other than a money grab.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

epick_fayle wrote:

...

The 3-hour shield is in fact good for trading 75 hp for somewhere between 60 and 100 pvp points once every 8 hours. That and maybe saving 75 hp if your final shield is within the last 3 hours of the event ending.

True, if you alternate 3-hour and 8-hour shields. Still, I fail to see what problem an 8-hour delay on the 3-hour shield solves that wouldn't be solved with a 3-hour delay.
3 hours is the ideal time to recover all . Let's say you are playing on a day off where you have all the time in the world. To me, it would make sense to be able to push while my last, drop a 3-hour shield for to regenerate and repeat. In theory, one should be able to do 5-6 pushes in a day if he so chose and had the to spend.

Shields were implemented as a mechanism to protect a player's score and progress. Putting an 8-hour delay on the 3-hour shield hampers that goal. A 3 hour delay would still help curb the rampant shield hopping and insane scoring without punishing a player who is trying to play by the rules of the game (i.e push, shield, wait for , repeat) without exploiting it.

I'm really tempted to put on my conspiracy hat and start shouting "CASH-GRAB" like I did with True Healing. Then again, in the end I came to like True Healing and admit that - in my opinion - it improved the game. Time will tell.

mohio

epick_fayle wrote:

mohio wrote:

epick_fayle wrote:

...

The 3-hour shield is in fact good for trading 75 hp for somewhere between 60 and 100 pvp points once every 8 hours. That and maybe saving 75 hp if your final shield is within the last 3 hours of the event ending.

True, if you alternate 3-hour and 8-hour shields. Still, I fail to see what problem an 8-hour delay on the 3-hour shield solves that wouldn't be solved with a 3-hour delay.
3 hours is the ideal time to recover all . Let's say you are playing on a day off where you have all the time in the world. To me, it would make sense to be able to push while my last, drop a 3-hour shield for to regenerate and repeat. In theory, one should be able to do 5-6 pushes in a day if he so chose and had the to spend.

Shields were implemented as a mechanism to protect a player's score and progress. Putting an 8-hour delay on the 3-hour shield hampers that goal. A 3 hour delay would still help curb the rampant shield hopping and insane scoring without punishing a player who is trying to play by the rules of the game (i.e push, shield, wait for , repeat) without exploiting it.

I'm really tempted to put on my conspiracy hat and start shouting "CASH-GRAB" like I did with True Healing. Then again, in the end I came to like True Healing and admit that - in my opinion - it improved the game. Time will tell.

Oh I totally agree with you, just stating what people's options will be under the new system, where as you point out the 3-hour shield is almost meaningless as any value outside of shield hopping or shielding out for the last 3 hours. Although I will point out that your scenario is still close to possible, only you'll have to drop a 8-hour shield the 2nd time and wait an extra 1-2 hours more than the 3-hour version before playing again.

Also I think your point at the end is exactly why the devs were planning (and still are, just at a different time) on going ahead with their plan despite a lot of claims that it won't do what they want it to do and will be less fun. They are willing to bet on their vision and see how it plays out before making any changes. Maybe everything we're saying will come to fruition, but maybe we'll be wrong. After all it's their game and they have the right to steer it in the direction they want it to go.

lokiagentofhotness

sinnerjfl wrote:

Let me translate what the devs are saying:

"People are using too many shields to reach high scores in PvP. Now we're going to implement a system that will make you pay double for the same shield hops than before."

That's all it is, getting you to spend more HP. Enjoy.

Don't forget they're going to look into changing the progression rewards...some time in the future. Maybe. In the meantime, enjoy that 4* char tantalizingly out of reach.

mytisbrewin

Demiurge_Will wrote:

* Some suggestions involve getting rid of shields or the reasons why they exist. Our aim isn't to get rid of shields - the experience of breaking a shield, biting your nails as you beat a fight as fast as you can, and deciding whether to dare go for another win or shield up is the source of the best adrenaline rush in MPQ for many folks.

Agreed, but there is one thing missing from that which is deciding when to break the shield. Having an 8 hour cooldown on shields removes that decision from the user.

Phaserhawk

what are the odds 4hor does not appear as a progression reward at 1300 for the remainder of the season?

Unknown

Adding to what others have said, the 8-hour cooldown for 3-hour shields is basically throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but managing to keep the bathwater. People can still do the exact behavior Will is describing, only it will cost them 525 hp instead of 225 hp. Rather than use 3 3-hour shields, they'll use one of each. So rather than eliminate it, they've allowed it for whales and no one else. A three-hour cooldown for 3-hour shields would allow people to shield at 9 hours from the end.

Something they need to realize: a lot of us aren't going to keep spending the extra hp, we're just going to shield less or not at all. And this incredibly indirect attempt to change behavior has never worked before, and probably won't work now. True healing didn't lead to roster diversity. I want you to take this next sentence, print it up on a big banner, and put it up somewhere in your office:

If you want to encourage or discourage specific behavior, reward or punish it directly.

This indirect stuff has never worked, isn't working, and will never work.

Vhailorx

"David wrote:

Moore"]**** Update ****

* Some folks have asked why the cooldown on the 3 hour shield is 8 hours instead of 3 (or less). A cooldown that short would mean that the best way to get the most shields for the fewest Hero Points is to come back and play every 3 (or less) hours, through the night. That's not an ideal situation.

Thank you to the devs for communicating with the player base, but I have to say that this explanation makes very little sense.

The fewest HP spent for any given amount of time shielded is always going to be achieved by the longer shields (24 hours of 3-hour shields is much more expensive than one 24 hour shield).

Conversely the highest number of shields will always be achieved by the shortest shields (8x3 hours for one day versus 1x24 hours).

So "the most shields for the fewest Hero Points" is an ambiguous statement.

I can only assume that your concern is that a 3-hour shield cooldown will lead to 3-hour shield hopping (i.e., whales will simply buy 3 hours shields every three hours all day long to build up their scores). I think this concern is valid insofar as some small number of people WILL buy shields as often as possible, but they will do so regardless of the cooldown length. And the real whales can still shield hop multiple times by purchasing shields on different lengths. This change will make shield hopping harder, but it won't actually STOP it from happening.

On the other hand, this change is a serious hindrance for a middle-class (i.e. 2*-3* transitional player) that used to buy a modest number of 3-hour shields in the last 8 hours of an event in order to secure a top 100 finish. That type of player never got the high scores that you are apparently trying to fix, so why punish them so harshly just to fix a problem that they are not creating? If you really want to limit people's ability to buy shields endlessly to grind higher scores, then put a hard cap on the number of shields that can be purchased per event.

Obviously you have better data than we players do, but for this discussion I will assume that there are really three types of pvp players: (1) the whales who pay significant amounts for lots of shields to achieve very high scores; (2) the middle class, who buy a small number of shields and score in the 500-900 range; and (3) the f2p players who score below 500, don't buy shields and aren't really relevant to this discussion. It is hard to ignore the fact that this change will both (1) somewhat curtail massively high scores in PVP, at least until the whales figure out another loophole, and (2) force the games middle class to pay a bit more for what I assume are "typical" playing patterns. By contrast, hard-capping the number of shields would completely solve (1) and have no effect whatsoever on (2).

Even if changing the shields to reduce PVP scores overall is intended to be friendly to the middle class (i.e. 2*-3* transition) players, this proposal seems very poorly designed to achieve that goal. I try not to be conspiratorial about monetization, but one side-effect of this new gaming world of micro-transactions is that gamers are asked to weigh the monetary value of absolutely every in-game activity. That leads to increased speculation about the monetary motives behind game changes. To me this seems like a plan designed to curtail high scoring while remaining revenue-neutral (or revenue-positive) by increasing the price of moderate shield use. And these vague explanations aren't doing much to alter that appearance.

kalex716

I don't really know how i feel about the shield changes yet...

I've been playing for a bit over a year now, rather casually, have a decently developed roster, but no playable 4 stars yet.

"Winning" in MPQ for me, has evolved into a sub mini-game of spending the LEAST amount of time actually playing it, but getting the maximum results. This means I join pvp's in the last hours, usually am only playing to get 1 or 2 covers at a rip, win packs in PVE sub events, place in top 100, always get a daily reward, and get out with my sanity.

I have to admit, the last time I've seen this many hardcores upset about something, I was really happy with the end results (healing changes).