Shield cool down improvement

Pats0132

So when you are shielded you do not get access to see how long each shield needs to finish its cool down. I think this needs to be fixed so that people can plan there hops and not waste hp. For Instance If I an 8 hr and then 5 hours later I use a 3 hr. I should be able to see the exact time when the 8 hr shield is finished. This would allow me to use the 8 hr correctly instead of wasting hp on a 24 hour shield if not timed optimally.

mistical725

An 8 hr cooldown for a 3 hr shield is a bit much. Some people actually use the 3 hr shield to cover when they go to dinner or have a class or something. Perhaps a 4 hr cooldown would be better so once your shield goes down, you can play for an hour and reshield if so desired.

Unknown

I was just about to post this exact same thing. It doesn't make sense to not have this information available to you especially for students and parents who have to plan ahead for everything. You got my vote.

FaustianDeal

(Let's be honest; the goal of this change was to lower scores and reduce the frequency that the 1100 and 1300 progressions were reached because 'greed' not because 'more fun'. The word-smithing done to spin these changes as being beneficial to the players is become easier to see through with each iteration.)

It always seemed to me that the bigger issue was out-of-band communication and coordination of shield hops that was the problem. Coming up with a strategy to prevent guilds from laddering off teammates would have likely wound up having a similar downward pressure on scores in PVP without handicapping players that are students and parents.

It seems that more straightforward ways to have tried to address this issue would have been to start with the following 2 changes:
1 - do not load alliance team-mates in PVP. (this has a happy consequence of stopping unintended friendly fire.) This doesn't address guilds, but its a start. I cannot hit my own team; so start with a 19 person block list for my MMR.
2 - find a strategy to address guilds. One strategy might be to maintain a list of recent affiliations and extend the web by degrees of separation until the desired results are attained. If I have recently moved between 2 alliances (A and then my block list should include the current members of my new and old alliance. People on A should be blocked from hitting people on B (and vice versa) for some window of time. Starting with 1 degree of separation would start to block friendly fire using this strategy would have one of 2 effects (either seem slightly beneficial)
either we see the downward pressure on runaway scores that they claim was the desired impact, or we see alliances swap members less often in an attempt to restore their ability to use friendly fire ladders. Excessive member swaps seemed like a "gaming the game" strategy that was again allowing groups of teams to leverage out-of-band communication strategies to boost scores.

Extending the web of recent affiliations by too many degrees of separation, or by having too long a memory, would make matchmaking more difficult - especially if people move around too much... but if that meant they were constrained to drawing from a smaller pool of targets (possibly for lower points) then this seems like it might also reinforce a different behavior.

Cooldowns, to me, seem like they are going to further strengthen the value of leveraging coordinated laddering strategies to drive points higher. Overall scores will be lower, yes - but coordinated teams will likely wind up less negatively impacted than someone trying to go it alone.

Unknown

I like the cooldown, but I agree with OP about being able to see your cool down remaining.

simonsez

I've seen enough of how this works to decide I don't care what they do. I'm not playing this 3/8/3/24/3 nonsense until they change the progression award levels. And I'm not holding my breath.

JamieMadrox

FaustianDeal wrote:

(Let's be honest; the goal of this change was to lower scores and reduce the frequency that the 1100 and 1300 progressions were reached because 'greed' not because 'more fun'.

You're wrong. Well partially wrong. Yes the goal was to bring down scores, but not to prevent people from hitting progressions, but because the vast majority of players do not use these forums and thus do not know how people were able to reach 2000+ points in an event. This causes CS to get a lot of cheat reports based on those scores. Cool downs drop scores to a more reasonable level and makes the wider player base more at ease with event results. They've already said multiple times that progressions will be lowered to ensure they are paid out to players at the same rate as before. Based on the last few events, I can see the 1300 progression falling to 900 at the lowest, and likely to 1000 or 1100.

FaustianDeal wrote:

The word-smithing done to spin these changes as being beneficial to the players is become easier to see through with each iteration.)

Other than the progressions not being changed to match lower scores and the inability to see when my cool down is done, I've yet to find anything with this change that hurts players.

FaustianDeal wrote:

It always seemed to me that the bigger issue was out-of-band communication and coordination of shield hops that was the problem. Coming up with a strategy to prevent guilds from laddering off teammates would have likely wound up having a similar downward pressure on scores in PVP without handicapping players that are students and parents.

I'm a student, parent, husband, and work full time and I still have the time to play MPQ and watch way more TV than I should. Sure out of game communication allowed shield hopping to get out of hand, but I don't think there are any solutions to it that would be received any better than cool downs.

FaustianDeal wrote:

It seems that more straightforward ways to have tried to address this issue would have been to start with the following 2 changes:
1 - do not load alliance team-mates in PVP. (this has a happy consequence of stopping unintended friendly fire.) This doesn't address guilds, but its a start. I cannot hit my own team; so start with a 19 person block list for my MMR.

This won't fix anything. People will just hop off of other alliances. We've been doing that for months already and it's far more effective than hopping off of just the guys in your alliance.

FaustianDeal wrote:

2 - find a strategy to address guilds. One strategy might be to maintain a list of recent affiliations and extend the web by degrees of separation until the desired results are attained. If I have recently moved between 2 alliances (A and then my block list should include the current members of my new and old alliance. People on A should be blocked from hitting people on B (and vice versa) for some window of time. Starting with 1 degree of separation would start to block friendly fire using this strategy would have one of 2 effects (either seem slightly beneficial)
either we see the downward pressure on runaway scores that they claim was the desired impact, or we see alliances swap members less often in an attempt to restore their ability to use friendly fire ladders. Excessive member swaps seemed like a "gaming the game" strategy that was again allowing groups of teams to leverage out-of-band communication strategies to boost scores.

Extending the web of recent affiliations by too many degrees of separation, or by having too long a memory, would make matchmaking more difficult - especially if people move around too much... but if that meant they were constrained to drawing from a smaller pool of targets (possibly for lower points) then this seems like it might also reinforce a different behavior.

This is a terrible idea. A lot of players merc for other alliances for one or two events. Or help out a friend's alliance as a favour. What you're suggesting will kill a major social aspect of the game and make it detrimental to your own experience to help out anyone but yourself.

FaustianDeal wrote:

Cooldowns, to me, seem like they are going to further strengthen the value of leveraging coordinated laddering strategies to drive points higher. Overall scores will be lower, yes - but coordinated teams will likely wind up less negatively impacted than someone trying to go it alone.

Using the Hood PVP that's currently running as an example, I managed to go from low points to 900+ and top 5 (3rd) without any coordination with anyone else even though I have the option to do so. I was in slice 1 which has ended already, and while I finished in 6th (by 2 points) I could have very easily finished in the top 5 had I wanted to.

soapblaster

I don't care so much about having the payouts lowered. For me, I play the game a lot less than before, due to the shields. I hate the grind of PvE all day every day. The thrill of climbing near the end of an event (hopping) while trying to not get hit for more than I was earning was way more exciting than it is now. Now the climbing stalls around 700, because you get hammered faster than you can climb without shielf hopping.

I will quit playing the game soon, if I am forced to wait several hours for a shield, unless I use a crazy amount of Hero Points to get three hops in.

FaustianDeal

There was a lot in there, I'll leave the friendly-fire stuff behind and focus on these bits.

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Other than the progressions not being changed to match lower scores and the inability to see when my cool down is done, I've yet to find anything with this change that hurts players.

We've had 2 events with cool-downs so far. One where I only did the 3-hour closing shield and one where I tried to use a few shields and push. In both instances I achieved a final placement roughly in line with where I would have landed before cool-down. I don't perceive that the cool downs have had a meaningful impact on individual placement in an event. I do see them having a huge impact on progression rewards for events and season. I also think, due to slice-related scoring issues that alliance placements in event and season as well as individual season placements might move more than anticipated.

The impacts I have felt so far:
* the dramatically lower scores are causing a 'feeling' of dissatisfaction. this is a perceptual issue only, but it is one that could still exist even if prize tiers are adjusted. Perception is reality in a lot of contexts, so maybe this shouldn't be completely discounted.
* In the event where I shielded and tried to push for a progression prize - the event felt oddly rigid in terms of the required timing. The last day of the Hood PVP felt way more like a PVE event as a side-effect of the cooldowns. (and it is one of the least savory aspects of PVE that it appears to have adopted - the potential for rigidly structured timing.)
* The cost (in terms of HP and time) for making a legitimate attempt at a progression prize seem a lot higher than before; and they have a substantially lower probability of success. I list time here because you are probably going to be "on the clock" for a longer window of time now - even if you are "on break" (shielded); you are still clocked in and working that event.

I don't know if those are "hurts" to the player.. but it feels like the forum has a lot of dissatisfaction being demonstrated around these 3 issues. The last of those 3 is the one that seems like it will have the biggest potential to cause harm - everyone wants to feel like they are progressing, and an established 3* or a 3-4* transitioner's definition of "progress" will likely include language about their path to finishing new 4* characters. Prize tiers might help.

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Using the Hood PVP that's currently running as an example, I managed to go from low points to 900+ and top 5 (3rd) without any coordination with anyone else even though I have the option to do so. I was in slice 1 which has ended already, and while I finished in 6th (by 2 points) I could have very easily finished in the top 5 had I wanted to.

I finished top 5 (#4) in my bracket as well (I played slice 2). The top score in my bracket was only 1,024.. and only 4 people broke 1,000 in that bracket. I am not sure if starting earlier would have generated a higher score though; since were anemic throughout the event. Most of my points after 400 came in increments of 13-22. I would often go fishing for targets while my shields were up (preparing for the next run) and never found good targets. At that rate; the push from 700 --> 1,300 (in 15 point) increments would have taken ~40 matches, and also for the defensive side of the equation to be completely silent. The defensive side is never silent however; especially not when you are one of the only available targets with decent points attached. Every one of those fights I took for 13-22 points represented a non-zero chance of retaliation for loss. (Several of those potential risks were realized and turned into 30-40 point losses as I tried to make progress.) I wound up making two 8-3 shield cycles (dropping 450 on shields). I got a purple Doom, so not a total loss, but well short of the Blue Thor I might have also walked away with if I had dropped the same 450 on shields in an event with no cooldowns.

Some of this score suppression is probably a side effect of selecting Slice 2. There are scoring discrepancies between the slices; this is widely reported and understood.. but with cool-downs it seems like those scoring discrepancies are going to predispose certain slices to be ineligible for the higher progression prizes. This last point is probably a separate issue, but cool-downs seem to be exacerbating the problem.