A couple upcoming changes to PvP events

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Demiurge_Will wrote:

Ghast wrote:

So now I get to see the same 5 people in MMR hell AND I get to pay to skip them.

Is there some way my tablet could also administer a light electronic shock during the process? Let's go for a hat trick.

Light electronic shocks are in development, but no ETA.

I'm expecting that these changes and some others we've been making and that are planned will eliminate or seriously diminish the impact of 'MMR hell'.

So we have 9 pages of 95% of people complaining and giving constructive criticism, and You answer only to THIS post? nice way to handle things, really...

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zhadum wrote:

Kyosokun wrote:

zhadum wrote:

So the better you are at the game, the more you get screwed - because the better you play the game the further above your character power you drift - which makes you a juicy target - so you get hit by more people that are worthless to retaliate against - nothing like losing 50 points to be able to retaliate for 0 - and soon they will charge you iso for the privilege of skipping such a worthless fight.

I'm not defending the current system. It needs changing. Just, those changes have nothing to do with the AI.

Except that with a better AI, peoples MMR levels would be more closely related to the power levels of the characters that they have - and you would not see people being able to come out of nowhere for the 50-0 hits that we get now.

The only other thing I can think of that would help would be basing the points won/lost not on the number of points someone has in the tourney - but on their overall power ranking (just because someone has not started grinding in a tourney should not mean he has a major advantage over those who have been playing already)

Sure we would see those 50-0 hits. Particularly with boosts. Unless the AI is so good that the game becomes not fun.

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Nemek wrote:

Common wrote:

Unity wrote:

Not to be rude but . . paying to skip is perhaps the dumbest idea you guys have come up with yet. Get real. All these new things are just stupid.

What is the cost when you skip? Havent done it out of fear

There isn't one currently. People just like making conclusions about things before it ever happens.

Well of course it isn'tone YET. We play the game, no ones jumping to conclusions . Id rather spend that iso on leveling my characters and buying boost instead of trying to skip people.

Unknown

Really frustrating that the expanded hit list was added without any other changes to matchmaking.

So I can get whacked for 30-50 points by people 600 points lower than me, but I still see the same 5 people over and over and over and over.

Unknown

I was also prepared to suggest a smarter AI, but after playing for ~4 weeks, I am not sure I would like it as a new player. Now I have the option to boost my 2* heroes and get some points from a high level team. Also, winning is fun, losing to AI is not. If the AI played like a human and I knew I would lose 50% against an team of equal strength I would most likely avoid fighting them because the healing packs are limited and the strong teams would be untouchable. It has also nothing to do with skill or how good you are. The only thing that matters is which heroes you have and what level they are. Maybe the AI should a little smarter, but hopefully not too much. I assume that players who started early after the game was released had easier time getting good places in tournaments since the team levels should be close enough. As time passes and more get access to high level heroes, I expect new players will have a harder time in tournaments and placing in the top 50 will be increasingly more difficult. Even a dumb AI can be deadly when you play against a 3x3* at 100 level.

Some food for thought
1. Instead of changes to AI, it would perhaps even the odds if the players had the option to allow their team to equip boosts even while defending if the chosen boosts are still available in your collection. Of course players should be able to see if an opposing team has boosts equipped before the match starts. A 3x3* team with 2-3 boosters equipped would be a much more formidable opponent and I assume most would avoid them. I know I would. Of course this ends up being another scarecrow like a high health Hulk or pre-nerfed Ragnarok so I have no idea if the impact would be positive or negative. Then again, I am not paid to find out.

2. Instead of making the high ranked players a pinata for everyone to hit, it would be interesting a matching system where each day you can be the number of X attacks (max) where X = a fixed number (say 10) + your attacks that day. So if a player made 10 attacks in 1 day he can only be attacked 20 times. After that number is reached, you no longer pop up as a potential target. Retaliations should also count for that total X attacks. Whether this would work or not depends on if the system can remove a queued opponent when this number of attached is reached. Or maybe allow queued matches to happen but not show the player as potential target to others.

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If they actually improved AI like people said, people would come back and cry about it the moment they do.

Invisible Woman would literally pop up a box like 'you should surrender right now and don't waste your time here' the moment she has enough to do invisibility or force bubbles, because with any decent amount of optimization you can create a game where not only you can't win, but you can't even die very easily (because IW is not a strong offensive character) so you're forced to concede unless you want to spend the next 30 minutes doing 1 damage or hitting an invisible person.

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Demiurge_Will wrote:

Ghast wrote:

So now I get to see the same 5 people in MMR hell AND I get to pay to skip them.

Is there some way my tablet could also administer a light electronic shock during the process? Let's go for a hat trick.

Light electronic shocks are in development, but no ETA.

I'm expecting that these changes and some others we've been making and that are planned will eliminate or seriously diminish the impact of 'MMR hell'.

Yeah, by eliminating all the players willing to participate in this ****, as you it reads quite equivocally in this thread and some others.

How about experiencing on rats first as the scientists do?

If you have actual fix to MMR hell why on earth not put that in play first? Then when it is proven to work fine go ahead with other stuff. In a good moment players enjoy the game and violently agree on that skipping is so rare and unnecessary for them they can't care less if there's cost? When shields are not really necessary and can be left to some special lay cases, so again can cost whatever?

Sorry if I seriously doubt you have any real bullets at this point, as the how the game and announce progressed smells massive incompetency. If you prove me wrong, will come back first to apologize but that looks like snowball's chance in Hell.

Unknown

They might as well make these tourneys into Lightning Rounds. Honestly, can anyone think of a benefit or reason to competing early? Why would you start one or two days early just to be everyone's punching bag? I can rise up the ranks even faster if I start the end and achieve the same progression goals, while the dedicated early starter is beaten to a pulp and penalized both in time and money just to try to stay at the top.

Unknown

^This a million times. With increased shield cost, increased penalty for being too high (more people below you pulling you down), and decreased reward for being too high (not enough people above you giving you enough points) there's no incentive to start a tournament more than a few hours before the end of it. And if the tournament ends during sleep or work time...well you can just forget about the ranking rewards.

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Phantron wrote:

If they actually improved AI like people said, people would come back and cry about it the moment they do.

It's a matter of a coherent system. Sure people would complain if just the AI started to play like a good human. A level field would actually lead to a system where Elo points work, and your chance to win in a mirror match of heroes and same level of opponent is 50%. Meaning in 50% cases you lose and look at 3 downed characters and the other 50% you win and need to use 3 healing packs all the same, probably having just one guy standing and below half health. Or everyone is seriously wounded.

That would not put the game very far indeed.

But add a single trivial change: scrap healing packs just have all heroes at full health after battle -- and it is a deal again. You lose only time and rating -- maybe some of another resource but can start the next game, and having more brains or better team can shift to win more. Having fun, including the more frequent losses. Even have more fun if you're competent, as looking dumb AI moves takes away a lot.

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Nemek wrote:

Common wrote:

Unity wrote:

Not to be rude but . . paying to skip is perhaps the dumbest idea you guys have come up with yet. Get real. All these new things are just stupid.

What is the cost when you skip? Havent done it out of fear

There isn't one currently. People just like making conclusions about things before it ever happens.

Ah..thx nemek~

Unknown

Really bummed about the shield cost increase. I just barely missed top 5 in the last round (in the last 5 mintues I won two battles to push me from 6th to 5th but someone whomped me for 50pts in the last seconds dropping me back!) and that was because I was able to use about 3-4 shields throughout the tournmanet (even with shields I probably still lost 300+ commulative pts). That depleted my current stash to 375hp. So now I have two shiney new Wolverine covers and I can't afford to buy a new slot let alone new shields for round 2. All this has done is allow the top 5% of the players continue to be in the top 5%. There's no sense in even trying when I know I'm going to get smacked by low ranked players after spending hours upon hours working my way up to the top.

At the very least make the HP rewards higher so people can at least recoup some of their losses and actually use the covers they win.

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pasa_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

If they actually improved AI like people said, people would come back and cry about it the moment they do.

It's a matter of a coherent system. Sure people would complain if just the AI started to play like a good human. A level field would actually lead to a system where Elo points work, and your chance to win in a mirror match of heroes and same level of opponent is 50%. Meaning in 50% cases you lose and look at 3 downed characters and the other 50% you win and need to use 3 healing packs all the same, probably having just one guy standing and below half health. Or everyone is seriously wounded.

That would not put the game very far indeed.

But add a single trivial change: scrap healing packs just have all heroes at full health after battle -- and it is a deal again. You lose only time and rating -- maybe some of another resource but can start the next game, and having more brains or better team can shift to win more. Having fun, including the more frequent losses. Even have more fun if you're competent, as looking dumb AI moves takes away a lot.

A human player would lose far more than 50% of the time against someone equally strong due to the attacker always going first and that defender can never choose his targets (and this doesn't even consider boosts). Let's say your team is Spiderman/whoever/whoever and the defense is exactly the same. There's no reason for the attacker to not attacking the defending Spiderman first, while the defense has no choice on who to target. The only way you can get around is if defense can pick who they can target, but then you'd have important characters like OBW or Spiderman simply dying the moment the other side has enough APs and that wouldn't be very fun either.

Seriously, try to do the Ares tournament targetting a high level Ares first and see how well that works out. You probably won't lose but it's going to be way more painful than normal. That's what the AI has to put up with all the time. The 'defense cannot choose target' limitation is supposed to totally cripple the AI, because without it, your best lineup would just be 3 tank type characters, because every specialist is just going to die immediately when defense can actually choose who they can attack.

Spoit

pasa_ wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Ghast wrote:

So now I get to see the same 5 people in MMR hell AND I get to pay to skip them.

Is there some way my tablet could also administer a light electronic shock during the process? Let's go for a hat trick.

Light electronic shocks are in development, but no ETA.

I'm expecting that these changes and some others we've been making and that are planned will eliminate or seriously diminish the impact of 'MMR hell'.

Yeah, by eliminating all the players willing to participate in this ****, as you it reads quite equivocally in this thread and some others.

How about experiencing on rats first as the scientists do?

If you have actual fix to MMR hell why on earth not put that in play first? Then when it is proven to work fine go ahead with other stuff. In a good moment players enjoy the game and violently agree on that skipping is so rare and unnecessary for them they can't care less if there's cost? When shields are not really necessary and can be left to some special lay cases, so again can cost whatever?

Sorry if I seriously doubt you have any real bullets at this point, as the how the game and announce progressed smells massive incompetency. If you prove me wrong, will come back first to apologize but that looks like snowball's chance in Hell.

Because of the way MMR works, any changes will take time to populate the scores, so it'd take some time before the changes take effect

Unknown

Knock3r wrote:

They might as well make these tourneys into Lightning Rounds. Honestly, can anyone think of a benefit or reason to competing early? Why would you start one or two days early just to be everyone's punching bag? I can rise up the ranks even faster if I start the end and achieve the same progression goals, while the dedicated early starter is beaten to a pulp and penalized both in time and money just to try to stay at the top.

This exactly. I usually start immediately when a tourney starts because...well, it used to be somewhat fun. After trying for hours this morning, I've given up. I'll tune in at 1am on the final day and bash out as much progress as possible then. No point in grinding before then only to be whacked down 200 points in 2 hours. After all the work done this morning, I'm almost exactly halfway back to where I started. What's the point? This is indeed going the way of the Lightning Rounds. And I gave up on those long ago for different reasons.

What they don't seem to realize, although it's blatantly obvious, is it's the competitive aspect that keeps so many people playing. So go ahead, Demiurge, and make that competitive aspect even more of a chore or frustrating or infuriating than it already was. Remove the fun and you'll also remove the players. I really think this is the most disappointed and fed up I've been in 3 months of playing. I kept the faith that things would be improved and half the time it seems things actually get worse. Which means if you're moving forward 50% of the time and backsliding 50% of the time, we're in exactly the same place as before, just with different broken bits. Shields were like a cruel tease. "Hey, we're giving you a 25% pay increase! Yay! We're also cutting your hours in half!" I almost hope they get a wave of departures like they did after Ragnarok. It's deserved.

Spoit

200 points in 2 hours? Try 20 minutes. That's only 4 50 point attacks

Unknown

The current tournament structure is basically repeated Prisonner's Dilemma. The only way to win is by playing according to the rules, which would be:

1. Use shields.
2. Play a lot all the time.

#1 has a huge prioriity over #2, since #1 is responsible for generating the points from #2. Of course, #1 is also considerably more costly.

For those who aren't trying to play by the rules by playing late, you won't win, at all. What's going to happen is that a seemingly small lead (compared to cheaper shield era) is going to be even more insurmountable than that previous score of 2000 was. You'll simply see a guy shielded at #1 at say, 1200, and after playing for 2 hours at the end you'd still be no closer to 1200 than you were an hour ago.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The current tournament structure is basically repeated Prisonner's Dilemma. The only way to win is by playing according to the rules, which would be:

1. Use shields.
2. Play a lot all the time.

#1 has a huge prioriity over #2, since #1 is responsible for generating the points from #2. Of course, #1 is also considerably more costly.

For those who aren't trying to play by the rules by playing late, you won't win, at all. What's going to happen is that a seemingly small lead (compared to cheaper shield era) is going to be even more insurmountable than that previous score of 2000 was. You'll simply see a guy shielded at #1 at say, 1200, and after playing for 2 hours at the end you'd still be no closer to 1200 than you were an hour ago.

Just noting that your rules conflict. You can't play while shielded so playing "all the time" and shielding doesn't really sit right with me. Maybe I'm misinterpreting your statement but from what I see happening is #1, with the help from a lil hp, is aiding us in not having to comply with #2 or not necessarily having to be on during the final hours, if you choose to buy a longer operating shield that is.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

200 points in 2 hours? Try 20 minutes. That's only 4 50 point attacks

Yes, I also lost about 100 points in 15 minutes...by the same guy attacking me over and over! growr. I don't know how quickly the 200 points was lost. I left for 2 hours to live my life, came back to a screen full of lost points. The best feeling in the world.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

pasa_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

If they actually improved AI like people said, people would come back and cry about it the moment they do.

It's a matter of a coherent system. ...

A human player would lose far more than 50% of the time against someone equally strong due to the attacker always going first and that defender can never choose his targets ...

I was talking about a coherent system for that very reason -- not dumping one arbitrary change on the current one. The attacker privileges would be taken away likely, or balanced with something (like in MtG picked up the "play or draw" rule years in).

Just because good AI would ruin fun with the current system does not mean it would ruin any like. If I was put in charge I surely could design one that works and is balanced. Not in half hour on from the top of my head certainly. Not without some flaws either in the first iteration -- but am positive it can be made.

(OTOH note that I did not propose to go the strong AI way, just to remove some really dumb behavior. The system is IMO better fit for handicapped AI. But that ALSO shall fit in a coherent ruleset, i.e. it is not fit for a simulated PvP arrangement with Swiss or Elo-like matchmaking.)