A couple upcoming changes to PvP events

Demiurge_Will

Hi, all!

You can expect a couple of changes to the next few PvP events, starting with the second run of Ares and continuing with next week's tournaments.

The big issue we're addressing with these changes is that it was easier to stay on the top of the leaderboards than it was to gain traction at some spots in the middle. As the top players escaped the ranks where most of the players were fighting each other, they faced fewer opponents, and those were more likely to be shielded. More points were injected into the economy at the top, and they weren't trickling down. We had a number of brackets where many hundreds of points separated 1st and 2nd place.

We want it to be most competitive at the top of the leaderboard. Extra points if it's a touch less cutthroat in the middle of the pack. So we're making the following changes. As always, we'll watch how it goes and will be listening to your feedback, so let us know how it feels.

First, we changed the way we search for matches. Before, when taking event rating into account while matchmaking, we looked for opponents within a certain range above and below your event rating. Now, we still limit the amount below your rating that we look (so you don't get worthless matches), but you can now be matched with players that have event ratings any distance above yours. We rolled this out during the first run of the Ares tournament and it looks like it's having a positive effect so far.

The effect of this should be that it's more dangerous at the top, and players at the bottom can rise faster. We're adjusting the progression rewards to take this into account. The thresholds for the 175-500 progression rewards are higher, but our intent is that, for most players, it takes roughly the same amount of effort to earn a similar reward as it did before. A couple of rewards at around the 1000 point mark have also been reduced a touch since many more players are earning them.

We're also experimenting with doubling the price of shields in these events (as we experimented with halving them in the last set of lightning rounds). We want their use to be an interesting strategic choice, and some of us think the choice to throw one down is too obvious right now - top players easily have enough Hero Points to shield the whole time they're not playing, and it's exceptionally hard for others to catch up. We want the use of shields to remain within reach for lots of players, though, so we'll be watching how this affects shield usage closely.

One thing we've been concerned about is encouraging you to skip a zillion opponents before fighting one. We think most people have more fun fighting than skipping. We've added a feature to a future release that adds a small Iso-8 cost to skipping. Our hope is that it will add a little more strategy to deciding whether or not to skip a fight, and a side effect is that it should improve matchmaking (Rating players accurately is more difficult the greater control you have over exactly who to fight. We want you to have some of that control because it's an interesting choice, but infinite skips may be too much). This feature won't be in these next events - it'll be in an app update.

Hope you enjoy these changes, and I'm looking forward to hearing what you think.

DirigiblePilot

Ohhhhhhhhh my god please don't take away free skipping. Please please please. It is the only respite for newer players who need to choose their matches more carefully. The rest seems fine but I would be so sad if skipping had a cost

Spoit

We'll see how the MMR changes take effect once they have time to populate, but I'm pretty skeptical of charging ISO to skip when it frequently gets stuck on the same half-dozen people, who frequently are all lower than you in points.

Also, getting hit for more than a hundred in the time it takes to do one round is pretty asinine

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

We'll see how the MMR changes take effect once they have time to populate, but I'm pretty skeptical of charging ISO to skip when it frequently gets stuck on the same half-dozen people, who frequently are all lower than you in points.

Also, getting hit for more than a hundred in the time it takes to do one round is pretty asinine

Agreed. I will be optimistic of this change but hopefully the problems you mentioned aren't as big of a problem with the new system.

Unknown

*shakes his head*

Why not reward people and encourage them NOT to skip, instead of penalizing them for doing it?

I love you guys, but you insist on trying to punish people for playing the game in ways you don't want, rather than rewarding them for playing the way you want them to. Positive reinforcement is more effective than punishment.

PuceMoose

Agreed - I think charging ISO to skip matches is not going to make the fights more enjoyable. if you play smart and boost only when necessary you can actually gain a little bit of ISO during the tournaments, which is nice, because then you might have enough to level up whatever hero you're gunning for at the end. It especially would seem cruel to charge to skip players with very low points - obviously most players skip these matches not because they're looking for an easy fight, but because they don't want to get hammered by a nasty retaliation from players with much lower points.

Unknown

Very easy 50 points per match from lower rankings, ultra fast loss of 50 points when at the top. No way to defend except with shields, ai is stupid enough to not be a worthy defense on max level, let alone it gets destroyed without a chance at middle levels. This does not really mesh well with 2400 completition rewards and the possible shield cost increase.
Possible solutions:
make point loss half of the current one
make progression rewards cumulative (i.e. a separate count where points are only gained)
give some ways for the defense to use boosts
boost/nerf defense by +/- 30% depending on the point yeld (+0% for 25, -30% for 1, +30% for 50).

Sidenote:
getting to 2380 after an endless grind and being hit for -50 points twice by players 1k points below... is not really fun. Felt like working, with a heavy insult in the end.

Unknown

I'm fine with a skip tax, but there needs to be drastic improvements to matchmaking up and down the leaderboard before you implement.

Once I crossed 1800, I was stuck in a desert of 0-5 pt matches with 1 lone player up above 2000 with me that I could attack for 30. It would take me dozens of skips to find him again.

Before you start charging me iso, I want to know that a 25 pt match will be available within a skip or two.

P.S. Is there any possibility of an NCAA style bracket tournament where it's actual live player vs player as opposed to player vs AI. I think this would be insanely entertaining for all involved.

Unknown

Puce Moose wrote:

Agreed - I think charging ISO to skip matches is not going to make the fights more enjoyable. if you play smart and boost only when necessary you can actually gain a little bit of ISO during the tournaments, which is nice, because then you might have enough to level up whatever hero you're gunning for at the end. It especially would seem cruel to charge to skip players with very low points - obviously most players skip these matches not because they're looking for an easy fight, but because they don't want to get hammered by a nasty retaliation from players with much lower points.

Also a valid point. I hope the devs have already considered these points. I would absolutely hate to lose X amount of ISO because I skipped someone worth 5 points...

Demiurge_Will

Misguided wrote:

Why not reward people and encourage them NOT to skip, instead of penalizing them for doing it?

There's both. The base Iso-8 rewards are being increased at the same time, so folks that skip less will make more.

Unknown

I was just thinking of adding a cost to skipping. As long as it's low, say 1-3 ISO, it should make the game more interesting. Alternately make each skipped match be worth 1 point less than it normally would be.

Unknown

AsianInvasion wrote:

I'm fine with a skip tax, but there needs to be drastic improvements to matchmaking up and down the leaderboard before you implement.

Psykopathic wrote:

I would absolutely hate to lose X amount of ISO because I skipped someone worth 5 points...

I agree with both of these statements (I don't like the idea of a skip tax, but can certainly live with it, if it isn't costing iso because the match choices are god-awful).

Spoit

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Misguided wrote:

Why not reward people and encourage them NOT to skip, instead of penalizing them for doing it?

There's both. The base Iso-8 rewards are being increased at the same time, so folks that skip less will make more.

How many skips will it be balanced around? Because right now, you more or less break even by buying boosts every 3 matches

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Misguided wrote:

Why not reward people and encourage them NOT to skip, instead of penalizing them for doing it?

There's both. The base Iso-8 rewards are being increased at the same time, so folks that skip less will make more.

Guess you forgot to mention that in the OP. Haha. Thanks for the info. Any chance telling us what the rewards will now be?

mischiefmaker

Agree with everyone else on the changes to skipping. It definitely feels less fun -- instead of finding fights I want to play, I have to choose between grinding through all the fights (which aren't fun not because I can't win them but because the point reward is too low) and losing iso, which isn't really a fun strategic choice. Also, seems like this could be really bad for new players, who are pinched pretty hard on ISO early on. I feel like it would be nicer to allow some number of skips for free and then have a cost beyond that.

Shield costs increasing will probably trigger a fresh round of people griping about P2W and rich-getting-richer (which might now be legit, since those people can afford shields more easily if shield usage is no longer breakeven) and about how it feels bad to have to choose between ponying up close to the cost of a roster slot for a shield, or getting slammed for -200 points. I'm sure whoever proclaimed that shield prices will go up will tell us he called it. Not very excited about this, it doesn't feel more strategic to me, it just feels like I'm getting pinched harder on hero points, but that's just a kneejerk reaction, I'm open to seeing how it actually plays out.

Overall, not terribly excited about the changes, but we'll see. And, as always, two big thumbs up for clear, early, excellent communication on the upcoming changes and the rationale behind them! Always appreciated.

Unknown

What if I am away for some hours and come back to a screen of retaliation choices and all are 0 points for me? I am forced to pay to skip them? Give us full points back on retaliations and I will be fine with this system.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Misguided wrote:

Why not reward people and encourage them NOT to skip, instead of penalizing them for doing it?

There's both. The base Iso-8 rewards are being increased at the same time, so folks that skip less will make more.

Interesting, thank you for the response. Care to elaborate? What I was thinking was something along the lines of an increasing reward, that went up each time (possibly until some max) until you skipped, at which point it would reset. To me, that becomes a strategic choice if the reward is good enough. If I get a tough match I have to decide is it worth gutting out this fight in order to keep my iso bonus? That's the sort of thing I had in mind.

Unknown

Bucky76 wrote:

What if I am away for some hours and come back to a screen of retaliation choices and all are 0 points for me? I am forced to pay to skip them? Give us full points back on retaliations and I will be fine with this system.

At the very least, skipping retaliations should have no cost associated with it. Good point.

Unknown

My gut reaction says that this will promote more people to wait until the final hours of a tournament.

Why would someone play early just to have a high score, when all players now can hit you for 50 points each? It will cost you double to put up a shield, so to stay up at the top you'll need to keep battling the same eight opponents they have on loop for a minimal amount of points or else you are penalized to pay to skip the fights. You just won a battle for 20 points and got hit by five opponents for a net loss of 250 points. That doesn't sound fun or rewarding to me.

mischiefmaker

Misguided wrote:

What I was thinking was something along the lines of an increasing reward, that went up each time (possibly until some max) until you skipped, at which point it would reset. To me, that becomes a strategic choice if the reward is good enough. If I get a tough match I have to decide is it worth gutting out this fight in order to keep my iso bonus? That's the sort of thing I had in mind.

Now this is a cool change I'd be excited about. And it's basically the same thing as a skip tax, just presented differently.

Spoit

Yes, thanks for communicating about it ahead of time, that much is appreciated.

Any chance that you guys are could go back to look at how retaliations work again because of these changes? Because of the way point losses worked ever since the addition of shields and change to hood-round scoring, it was even more of a losing proposition to retaliate unless you walk away for an hour and wait for them to pass you. This is exacerbated even more with these new MMR changes, where they attack you for 50 and you'd get 0 points in retaliation (and let them hit you again).