shield cool down must go

Unknown

elvy75 wrote:

Also I am not sure if this would be better solution than cool down, but return shielding to what it was but allow only 3 skips, that way people will think twice before pressing the skip button.

Do you know what would have the same effect? Eliminating PVP entirely. It would be completely unplayable.

JVReal

I am not a big PVP person, I only ever stay in the 300-400 point range and I'm fine. I never use shields, but understand their benefits.

I am looking at this from the outside in, and I don't think that a shield cool down period should exceed the length of the shield. I think the intent was to stop people from shield hopping, and keeping shields for what they were intended for... holding your spot while you aren't playing. They never intended them to be used for hopping.

That being said, I see shield hopping as a player's fix for the problem with losing points in matches when you are defeated. I've never been a fan of losing points when someone beats me, especially when 3 people can target me while I'm playing a match. So I win 20 points, but lose 60 at the same time. When you play and your points go down of no fault of your own, there is no incentive to play. 1 step forward, 2 steps back.

I feel you should lose less than you earn. If you have matches that can only gain you 10 points, how is it justifiable that you can lose 35 to someone else who beat you with the AI playing your team?

I think they should have a loss be a set 10 points (arbitrary low number). Then fluctuate what you win to be higher than that. The difference in points come from D3, not all from the player defeated... after all, it was their AI that helped you lose after all, you had no say in the matter.

I also think there should be an option to go into Live play head to head mode, an indicator that you are active, so that you can actually play someone else turn by turn for higher points, or true points. Like a challenge is presented to the other player, and they can accept it and risk higher points in a live match, or deny it and let the AI play for you for less loss/gain. I don't know, it just popped in my head. If each movement takes longer than a certain time, the AI moves for you.

Thoughts?

Dartmaster01

You need an option for "already quit". I'm keeping my account but this game is just not fun anymore. I hung in there the past couple of months thinking they might change some things for the better after they came out with the gauntlet. It finally looked like someone at D3 had some sense but it amounts this:

-Time slots-good idea, poorly executed

-Sharding- terrible

-Character rebalance- Prob. the only step in the fight direction

-Shield cooldown-Well you know thier Moto "If it's not broke.......break it!"

So now pvp and pve not fun at all. I wish I could think of a way to correctly express my discontent with the current state of this game. Maybe insults, name calling or describing every move as a cash grab but none seem to fit, so color me confused. I'm done!

Unknown

I had just got into a position were I was about to make the transition from 3* to 4* and this was the season I was going to make a few carefully picked 1300s to make that happen, but I cant now they pulled the ladder up. The only way I can see it happening with the cooldown rule is by spending cash on 4 covers. So please devs, stop saying this will make it easier for the player, it wont, it will just cost me a lot more money to advance in the game.

wymtime

I would like to see an alternative to shield cool downs so people who want to spend the HP to shield hop can, but it is not to a crazy level. I think if they made it so you could get 4-5 shields per PVP top players who have the HP can hop which will increase scoring and allow placement, but it would not allow players to score 2000+ points, so people who were only going to use 2 shields could still place well in PVP. The cool down period also hurts the people who want to use 2 legitimate shields becuase it is now costing them min 225 HP instead of 150. if you were to use 5 shields in an event you should be able to get the 1300 progression if you want.

mags1587

The 8 hour cooldown on a 3 hour shield is ridiculous. It prevents me from playing on my schedule or forces me to spend more than I would on shields. I liked climbing to a decent score then pushing in the last day, throwing up 3 hour shields to let health packs regenerate, to eat dinner, to let retaliations die down, etc.

The developers have previously stated that cooldowns were 8 hours on a 3 hour shield because they didn't want to encourage people to play every three hours. If this is true I still seriously want an answer as to how they reconcile PvE refreshes with that statement.

jojeda654

mags1587 wrote:

The developers have previously stated that cooldowns were 8 hours on a 3 hour shield because they didn't want to encourage people to play every three hours. If this is true I still seriously want an answer as to how they reconcile PvE refreshes with that statement.

Careful now. They might remove the 3 hour shield completely.

Phaserhawk

esoxnepa wrote:

I'm looking to see how they adjust the progression rewards with the new shield cooldowns.

That action is going to tell you much more about why the cooldowns were added. If they bring the progression rewards down to more reachable values, without more than say 2-3 shields total, then good. Making the progression rewards more reachable for the general players and not just the shield hoppers is good for the game, and should also yield positive returns on their bottom line through player retention, slot sales, and other purchases through players enjoying the game more.

If the new progression thresholds are set very high and less reachable, then we know the change was simply because they did not like the top players earning the 4* covers. That the change was to end them getting what they see as a reduced price, and not for the general player.

Like many sports and hobbies, I know my level of skill. I enjoyed watching the top alliances and top players slug it out at the top. The 6k push was cool. I hate those guys/gals had to spend so much money/hp to do it, but it was like watching these guy free-climb the granite face of El Capitan. Painful, time consuming, expensive, but cool.

Spot on

Phaserhawk

Just from what I am seeing, the top progression needs to be around the 1000 pt mark maybe lower.

Professa D

I personally am liking the new system. I took 1st in Combined Arms and I hadn't won a PvP since before they introduced the time slices. The time slice system has made it easier to play without interfering with real life (which my wife definitely appreciates ), but you couldn't get fresh brackets as easily so the ONLY way to win or place t5 was to play the shield hopping game which burned too much HP for my tastes. Sure I loved those easy 1,300 covers thanks to the 50 point whales but assuming they lower the progression rewards (and I think they will), with enough effort one should still be able to hit the 4* progression cover (hopefully).

Now that scores are more compressed I feel that placement in PvP is determined by 3 main factors:

1. Roster Strength/Scarecrow Effect
2. Healthpack Management
3. Speed/Efficiency of Play

I personally like this mix of timing and strategy especially when you compare it to shieldhopping where it basically boiled down to the more you were willing to spend, the more points you ended up with. So in my opinion this makes the game LESS p2w which I like. Being able to place t10 or better on one shield means positive HP gain each PvP.

I agree that some of the mechanics like the 8hr shield/8hr cooldown could use a tweak so you don't have to time it perfectly but I'm sure they'll fix that soon enough. I'm also in favor of the more simple "shield limit" approach that was mentioned earlier in the thread. Something like 3-5 shields maximum with no cooldowns. If they did that they probably wouldn't have to adjust progression rewards at all and we wouldn't have the 2,000+ point people throwing off their bell curve.

One thing's for sure: every time they change the meta it's like a new race to figure out the optimal strategy in a game which otherwise can be rather repetitive - and that definitely keeps me interested!

SnowcaTT

In Avengers PVP I think it is apparent where the HP money went. People can't spend HP efficiently to shield - so how can they spend HP and shield at the same time?

Spend that HP on 4* Thor! She's boosted this event, so of course you see more of her. However, I've never seen so many fully-leveled Thor's before. Can't shield many times? Instead throw out a team of all 270's, that should fend off most of the teams.

I voted to keep it, shield cool down always seemed pay-to-win to me (I know, some say they have that much HP anyway...) But spending all that HP to get a 270 roster seems even more P2W. I'm fine with that! However, the reward structure needs to be put where everyone can get what they were getting again, and the MMR shouldn't be showing me 270 rosters in every node every skip.

spccrain

arktos1971 wrote:

The cooldown would be good IF the cooldown time was a bit less than the shield length time.

Like :

2h30 cooldown for a 3h00 shield
7h00 cooldown for an 8h00 shield
20h00 cooldown for a 24h shield

That right there is perfect! There's no world where an 8hr cool down for a 3hr shield makes any sense. Do the above and I'll actually break shield at some point. Until then I'll play the last 5-6 hrs, climb until I get hit around 7-900, and shield with < 3hrs left.

Phaserhawk

First and foremost they need to have a timer available to see what cooldowns are on your shields because if you forgot to write it down, you are flying blind, very, very poor execution on their end. This is one of those big changes that you can't go in half assed, you better put in the time and effort to get it as close to right as possible or wait until you can, See Rags nerf for further documentation.

Second, I really want to see the progression rewards shifted ASAP, its very clear 1300 is way too high

Third, start making 4*'s available at the 1-5 spots or more, because eventually we are going to have so many that progression rewards or top rewards won't matter it will be so diluted with the amount of characters they won't be able to keep up.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

I'm guessing his issue is one or more of the following....

1. You still cannot remain unshielded for any length of time if your score is above a certain threshold because you'll get battered to death. Adding an 8h CD on all shields just forces ppl to alternate 3h and 8h shields which costs more and severely limits how much you can play.
2. Shield hopping still means you win, just costs more HP so game has become MORE P2W.
3. Insanely harder to reach progression rewards. At 900 ish i'm lucky to find anyone over 10 points. Since I can't shield hop more than a couple of times every 8 hours, plus it costs a ton of HP, plus I can't remain unshielded for more than a few minutes without haemorrhaging points getting to 1100 as a normal player is not particularly feasible.
4. Once you realise ppl over a certain score can't remain unshielded AND you cannot hop very often locating higher score targets becomes really difficult/pot luck. The odds of getting to queue someone when they are only unshielded for less than 10 minutes a couple of times in 8 hours becomes very low. If only there was a way around that... hang on a sec.... OUT OF GAME COMMUNICATION. In a completely misguided attempt to reduce the impact in out of game communication they gave it an ENORMOUS buff. The impact of co-ordinated hopping now is SO MUCH BIGGER.


Basically this change was a total failure to meet ANY objectives they stated for it.

Meant to reduce the impact of out of game communication BUT they buffed it.
Meant to reduce the impact of shield hopping BUT they only made it more expensive and it still wins.
Meant to make the game more feasible for ppl who don't abuse shields BUT with hoppers being that much less visible because of how infrequently they hop anyone with a half decent score who is unshielded has an even BIGGER target on their backs.
Meant to make the game less P2W BUT by leaving hopping as the way to win in PvP and simply making it cost more they made the game MORE P2W.

All of this was pointed out in the thread before it was added and hey presto... there it is.
The only thing it does is give a FALSE impression of ppl doing better because, by reducing the scores people get from hopping other other people LOOK like they are closer to placing highly. They aren't though because they will never bridge that points gap without shield hopping and it costs a lot more AND requires you to arrange your life around time slots based on the 8h shield CDs.

I was going to come here to express the futility of having 3 hour shields with 8 hour cool downs, but this honestly states it better then I could have. 3 hour shields, when expired, should not cause the person to have to wait another 5 hours. 3 hour shield, 3 hour cooldown.

Phaserhawk

Sigh****

This was so poorly executed. My fault for not recording what times I shielded but I had to burn a 24 hr shield because I couldn't see how much time was left on my cool downs and was an idiot and didn't think to write it down.

Seriously Devs, if you are going to make serious changes at least have the decency to put out a good product. Your execution of this was terrible. Every time you guys take 1 step forward you move 2 back

Unknown

The very first PvP with the cool downs and I have already surpassed my all-time skip tax spend. Looks like this change will be here to stay boys!

killerkoala

we should merge this with the true healing discussion. cause as they have been quoted "this too shall pass"

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

Basically this change was a total failure to meet ANY objectives they stated for it.

Meant to reduce the impact of out of game communication BUT they buffed it.
Meant to reduce the impact of shield hopping BUT they only made it more expensive and it still wins.
Meant to make the game more feasible for ppl who don't abuse shields BUT with hoppers being that much less visible because of how infrequently they hop anyone with a half decent score who is unshielded has an even BIGGER target on their backs.
Meant to make the game less P2W BUT by leaving hopping as the way to win in PvP and simply making it cost more they made the game MORE P2W.

All of this was pointed out in the thread before it was added and hey presto... there it is.
The only thing it does is give a FALSE impression of ppl doing better because, by reducing the scores people get from hopping other other people LOOK like they are closer to placing highly. They aren't though because they will never bridge that points gap without shield hopping and it costs a lot more AND requires you to arrange your life around time slots based on the 8h shield CDs.

That's real. No reason to spend any money on HP if I can't use it to hop multiple times within a couple hours. I'm not gonna pour more money in to achieve lower scores, not get progression rewards and play the game much less. Right now I feel forced to not play PVP at all. Guess this will be a laid back Season. Give me a chance to spend money on Xbone games instead.

Unknown

The poll is a tad silly but I have to comment on that after pondering it a while.

The 8 hour cooldown on the 3 hour shields makes NO SENSE WHATSOVER. With this the only time you can use a 3 hour shield is during the last 3 hours of the event. You simply cant put up a 3 hour shield in the middle of the event. Because when it expires you will be forced to buy a 8 hour shield. So basically a 3 hour shield is at least a 3 hour shield + 8 hour shield commitment if not used during the final hours. I severely doubt this was thought through before being implemented.

Somebody has the right idea, 3 hour shields should have a 2,5 hours cooldown (or 2 hours) and 8 hour shields should have a 7 hour cooldown. You need to be able to chain shields without having to buy an expensive shield you dont need.

Again, I must reiterate because it is so important, the 3 hour shield is completely useless because you can't use it without combining it with another shield.

I am not a shieldhopper, I have never shieldhopped, but even I can see that it doesn't work right now.

Oh and you need to rework the progression rewards. It's borderline impossible to get to 1300 now.

Unknown

ayorico23 wrote:

Just wondering what people think

Lol. Judging by the thread title and poll choices, I think you're doing a little more than just wondering.