Thank you to The Crewsaders

kensterr

for giving D3 the Starlord salute and showing them that time, money and dedication (to coordination outside the game) can still net you guys high points. Not as high as 6k, but over 2k is a great achievement with the shield nerf.

Unknown

Certainly a well earned achievement for them, but we'll see how it shakes out for the player base. They could just be convincing D3 that 1300 progressions are just fine or they could be brute forcing them into dealing with the core problem of potentially losing 100+ points because you're exposed for 5 minutes instead of 4. The pattern has been to just throw handicap on top of handicap on top tier players. It never works. I'm not sure if the Crewsaders' work will change that. Hopefully it will.

FaustianDeal

Looking through the top 10 teams I still only see ~20 people who are definitely holding the 1300 prize... granted all 5 slices are still open so that number might creep a little higher. As it stands right now though; 17 of the 20 people currently sitting over 1300 are all Crewsaders - that seems strongly suggestive of out-of-band communication and coordination.

I'll be curious to see how the numbers look at the close of the event, but my chief concern with this performance:

jralbino wrote:

They could just be convincing D3 that 1300 progressions are just fine

If no change is made to progression tiers, and 1300 remains unattainable by those not on a top10 team that will stink. Even worse; what if they decide shield cool downs are not long enough, or that maybe shields are too inexpensive?

Hopefully they have not angered the gods with this display... for the gods are vengeful and spiteful.

Unknown

Quite simply, if you're not in the slice with these guys then you probably have no chance at 1300. With effort that usually nets me 1300-1400 points I'm probably on for 1150 in the Punisher PvP despite starting my push much earlier than usual - and that's because I'm not in 'the' slice.

Shield cooldowns combined with 5 slices has made high scoring a highly painful process of micromanagement - especially if you're not in 'The' slice.

On top of that, the 4Thor / XF / Featured combo has pretty much made levelling any other characters redundant as anything that isn't these two screams 'ATTACK ME' in 60FT letters. I'm sure all this is OK for the casual player, but for me it's really sucked all the fun there was out of pvp.

tanis3303

Agreed doc. I don't even try for a high score anymore, what's the point? I just casually play a match here and there till I get to around 650 or so, then wait till about 3 hours till the end, play until I start getting hammered by attacks (usually around 850 or so) and just shield up and call it a day.

These guys are animals, no question. They've proved 2 things beyond a shadow of a doubt. 1:) these kind of scores are IMPOSSIBLE without extreme out of game coordination/communication, and 2:) 1300 is easily reachable if you're willing to pay to cycle your shields and coordinate your hops. Hopefully d3 pays more attention to #1 and realizes their supposed "fix" didn't work at all as intended, or the rest of us are tiny kittied.

Unknown

jralbino wrote:

Certainly a well earned achievement for them, but we'll see how it shakes out for the player base. They could just be convincing D3 that 1300 progressions are just fine or they could be brute forcing them into dealing with the core problem of potentially losing 100+ points because you're exposed for 5 minutes instead of 4. The pattern has been to just throw handicap on top of handicap on top tier players. It never works. I'm not sure if the Crewsaders' work will change that. Hopefully it will.

Right, they're gonna take a look at the score history of those guys and say "Oh, 3k+ in all past pvps, then 6k, now they're having trouble breaking 2k, and nobody else in the game did either. I say this is fine, leave as is"

JamieMadrox

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I think shields are great and I think limiting the shield hopping that results in 1500-3000 point scores is great. I actually like the idea of shield cool-downs, but I have little faith in how effective they will be. I know that you're just going to see the top shield spenders spending a little bit more and getting a smaller score over a longer period of time. In essence, you're going to be locking them in to that schedule that you said you don't want to lock people in to, but it's going to be a more precise schedule. Here's the scenario:

Whale1 starts the event right away and pushes as far as they can without shielding and then shields for either 8 hours. After 5 hours they break shield and push/hop and re-shield for 3 hours. When that shield expires they repeat the process until they shield for the night. The next day they do the same thing. And the next day until the event ends.

And all of the other X-Men, I mean whales, do the same thing.

Demiurge_Will wrote:

It sounds like I didn't explain the goals of the change well enough. Sorry for that. The scenario you outline is exactly what we expect the X-Men (for example) to do. But as a result of the changes, the size of the score gap between them and other players is much smaller, and successfully getting to the top requires more strategy than it used to. When other players learn how the X-Men got to 1500, it feels to them less like the X-Men are cheating, and more like they're playing harder & smarter, than it does now.

Our goal isn't to keep the top-scoring players from being the top-scoring players, or to make shields irrelevant - it's to make them more strategic and fair.

So above is excerpts of the pertinent portions of a conversation I had with Will back in the early part of last season when they announced the delay to the implementation of cool downs. Basically, the devs were expecting this and it wasn't a concern for them. I've also been told that progressions will be dropping so that the rewards are paid out in the same amount that they were before. So you could consistently hit the 1100 progression before shielding before, they'll be moving the 1100 progression reward down to about where that level is for you now. By my calculations that means that the 1300 progression should be dropping to 1000-1100.

That said, if progressions don't drop I fully endorse rioting, rage quitting, and mass hysteria.

Unknown

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

I think shields are great and I think limiting the shield hopping that results in 1500-3000 point scores is great. I actually like the idea of shield cool-downs, but I have little faith in how effective they will be. I know that you're just going to see the top shield spenders spending a little bit more and getting a smaller score over a longer period of time. In essence, you're going to be locking them in to that schedule that you said you don't want to lock people in to, but it's going to be a more precise schedule. Here's the scenario:

Whale1 starts the event right away and pushes as far as they can without shielding and then shields for either 8 hours. After 5 hours they break shield and push/hop and re-shield for 3 hours. When that shield expires they repeat the process until they shield for the night. The next day they do the same thing. And the next day until the event ends.

And all of the other X-Men, I mean whales, do the same thing.

Demiurge_Will wrote:

It sounds like I didn't explain the goals of the change well enough. Sorry for that. The scenario you outline is exactly what we expect the X-Men (for example) to do. But as a result of the changes, the size of the score gap between them and other players is much smaller, and successfully getting to the top requires more strategy than it used to. When other players learn how the X-Men got to 1500, it feels to them less like the X-Men are cheating, and more like they're playing harder & smarter, than it does now.

Our goal isn't to keep the top-scoring players from being the top-scoring players, or to make shields irrelevant - it's to make them more strategic and fair.[/url]
So above is excerpts of the pertinent portions of a conversation I had with Will back in the early part of last season when they announced the delay to the implementation of cool downs. Basically, the devs were expecting this and it wasn't a concern for them. I've also been told that progressions will be dropping so that the rewards are paid out in the same amount that they were before. So you could consistently hit the 1100 progression before shielding before, they'll be moving the 1100 progression reward down to about where that level is for you now. By my calculations that means that the 1300 progression should be dropping to 1000-1100.

That said, if progressions don't drop I fully endorse rioting, rage quitting, and mass hysteria.

It sounds like they want to truncate over-all scores so the gap might appear smaller than 1300 to 2500 but people will get used to the idea that 1600 is just stupid high and be happy with their 4* cover at 1000 or 1100 etc

D3 can only really do what their intent was by limiting total shield usage, which I don't see happening since it is a money sink even if they claim its a tiny portion of revenue.