A couple upcoming changes to PvP events

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.

If those are the "rules" why shielding has a cost? It should be provided for free then. Or for cheap. And definitely with ability to turn them on/off as for playing sessions.

How about your shielded guy at 1200, does he "play often" too? He turns off the shield and falls several hundreds of points immediately. As was promised by devs.

But then how he got there in the first place?

If people keep actually playing, it will be the same as we already experienced and are experiencing over and over in LR. A dragging-down contest based even more on luck of getting shown up.

Unknown

Psykopathic wrote:

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.

What I mean is you have the HP to shield, obviously you can just play to some highish points, shield, and then when shield breaks play a relatively few games quickly and shield again. This would allow you to get away with relatively few games and still get a decent score. Note that if things are so bad that the moment you break shield you end up losing points no matter how hard you play, then you can simply shield again and in such a cutthroat enviornment, you'll likely come out near top just from the fact that everyone else is being hammered.

Of course, that's hardly surprising since the guys using the shields are the one paying the HP, so they do have a rather large advantage. Now I can't afford to shield either, so the only thing I can do is play a lot constantly and hope I keep up. What is certain is that if you try to play only a bit at the end, there's no way that's going to keep up with how cutthroat everything is now.

Unknown

Ahh this is the reason I couldn't place near the top last time. I kept getting pegged by people with 300 rating, making it nearly impossibly to move my score the last two hours.

I guess the key is stay up late one night and shield. **** fix imho.

I had a tougher time finding guys offering me more than the 45+ points I was getting pegged for.

Unknown

I've been placing fairly well in the last few tourneys with my 85 wolvie, 77 OBW, and the required character. I feel like unless things are changed back I'll probably bow out of pvp. I relied on shields for when I was at work or asleep, and I don't have enough HP for the new prices. In the previous cost level, I'd end the tournament with a small lost in HP, but I'd end up with a bunch of covers I wanted. If I were to use the same strategy now I'd take a significant hit in HP.

These changes really reward those who spend a lot of money on the game. Even spending a lot of time is disheartening when you get hit for so many points.

Also, cost for skipping? I only play matches that give me more than 25 points. Otherwise, the retaliation will take more than you gained. And it takes 20-30 skips to get something like that. Unless the cost for skipping is 1 iso or something, it's no longer going to be worth it. There's too many low point matches given to you to make it worth it.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

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.)

I don't think most people will enjoy a system if you lose to computer half of the time. Even if you could build one, it seems like a wasted effort. In particular, in MPQ, you can't really let the AI choose who to target. If the AI could choose who to target, tank type characters like Hulk would be completely useless. Everyone knows you're not supposed to attack Hulk first. Likewise, any fragile characters that rely on others doing the tanking would also have their usefulness diminished (like OBW/Spiderman). Just lifting the 'defense cannot choose target' would pretty much force everyone to pick 3 characters that are essentially the same function (tank or DPS), because you can't build synergy with different roles when the computer can simply target the most vulnerable guy first. But if you don't let the AI choose who to target, you're obviously saddling it with a huge handicap and there's always no way it could put up a fair fight just on that alone.

Unknown

What would be awesome is if we could customize how our teams will attack when defending. Prioritize attack order--highest health, lowest health, characters with stuns, with heals, with AOE, with board clearing abilities? Prioritize which attacks we prefer to use. Right now it's whoever gets enough AP first uses their ability. I sometimes choose to leave an otherwise useful character off of my team because I know he'll usurp another character's AP for one specific attack. Sorry, I don't want IM40 to Recharge instead of Thor using Thunder Strike. Who will use their blue attack, CStorm or OBW? They both have the same AP requirement at base. (Just made up examples. I can't think up a real one off the top of my head.)

Off topic, sorry.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

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.

That doesn't make sense to me. Based on what?

Unknown

If you want everyone able to compete why not make a "sword" buff you can buy like the "shield" we currently have. It could provide like a 25-50% bonus in points you earn and limit it by amount of matches or time. This way you increase people spending their HP or buying more HP without the frustrating part of having someone with 400 points attacking people above 2k trying to get that last reward.

bahamut685

Having seen a few days of the point system change, the climb (point-wise) is much slower, so the lesser and farther apart progression prizes are even more insulting than I'd thought they were.

So, maybe BEFORE nerfing prizes and adding ways to charge players HP, work on improving the matchmaking, just a thought.

Unknown

cstar wrote:

If you want everyone able to compete why not make a "sword" buff you can buy like the "shield" we currently have. It could provide like a 25-50% bonus in points you earn and limit it by amount of matches or time. This way you increase people spending their HP or buying more HP without the frustrating part of having someone with 400 points attacking people above 2k trying to get that last reward.

Please don't encourage more items that we need to pay for! They will hear you! How bout they just revert back to the last update and not increase the cost for shields? In the current ares tournament I have 651 points. I've skipped at least 20 times and can't find anyone worth more than 15 points. The system doesn't work. Where are all these higher ranked people that I should be able to attack?

Unknown

This change has me seriously questioning if I even want to play anymore.

Unknown

Badman82 wrote:

cstar wrote:

If you want everyone able to compete why not make a "sword" buff you can buy like the "shield" we currently have. It could provide like a 25-50% bonus in points you earn and limit it by amount of matches or time. This way you increase people spending their HP or buying more HP without the frustrating part of having someone with 400 points attacking people above 2k trying to get that last reward.

Please don't encourage more items that we need to pay for! They will hear you! How bout they just revert back to the last update and not increase the cost for shields? In the current ares tournament I have 651 points. I've skipped at least 20 times and can't find anyone worth more than 15 points. The system doesn't work. Where are all these higher ranked people that I should be able to attack?

The high ranked people are still climbing to those point values where they become big points. I wouldn't be expecting many 50 point matches until the final 12-24 hours of the tourney.

Unknown

The final hour I don't know, I know that at 1k rank, unless ur team is seriously very end game, you will just shift around and wasting time. No one bother to shield, and everyone tried to repeat the same pattern. I am getting 3 attacks every minute at the moment. The top guy should make 2400, but the dedicated one cant make it now, Only if no one want to attack you ..

I'll probably try later when everyone care to shield. The system is so slow to update rating, I thought I am hitting shielded one, then get -45 from retaliation because their rating drop down......

Unknown

I'm relatively new, having played for a little over 3 weeks. I was happy to discover the game as I have always enjoyed 'match' games as a time waster and MPQ added the marvel universe and a level of depth that was very welcome. I've played it far more than I was expecting and here are a few of my observations during my experience as they relate to the upcoming changes.

As a new player with relatively weak characters, I don't expect to be very competitive with most. This is definitely true in the lightning rounds. It's clear I have no chance of climbing the ladder there and am lucky to get the recruit token at 100 points. Therefore, lightning Rounds are demotivating for me. I am fine with this as I was pleasantly surprised that I could compete decently in the tournaments. When I figured out how they worked, I was able to finish the first round of Ares in the top 75 (with a heavy investment of time because I simply enjoyed the game). The matchmaking for me was decent and generally 'in my league', but I had to make liberal use of skipping to continue plodding along. Multiple times, I'd retaliate with another repeatedly and we'd 'grow together'. In all, the time and effort was rewarded and I liked playing. That is motivating for a new player.

The second round of Ares is different and less enjoyable. I am now being matched with those I can't beat. I spend far more time skipping as maxed 2 and 3*'s and lv 50 powered-up Ares are clearly out of my league. Having to pay ISO to skip these matches essentially means PvP tournaments will become inaccessible to me. This wouldn't leave me with much to do in this game. PVE has already been exhausted and I just want to collect the covers, play to burn some time, and enjoy (all) the characters as they grow. Without the tournaments I have no viable source of ISO within the game. IOW, implementing a pay to skip BEFORE improving matchmaking would be counterproductive, increase complexity, and be demotivating for people like me.

If you accept the premise that this is a freemium game meant to appeal to the masses, then, on the subject of shields, they are inherently inequitable. As a matter of policy, if a shield is required to place in a tournament, the system is flawed. That doesn't mean they couldn't or shouldn't exist. A segment of players might welcome a higher stakes, no holds barred tournament/area where it might be viable. However, do not force this mechanic into the core game without an option to be pooled with other 'non augmented' players.

To the developers:
Please do not treat everyone like we're NBA caliber. There are leagues starting in JV thru high school, college, CBA that help players grow to get to the pros. Do not make a one size fits all tournament and expect all people to be motivated to play. A possible solution is to have [X]*s competing only with other [X]*s and let people register according to their skill level. Please make a deliberate attempt to create areas that appeal to those in all stages of development, including appropriate bracketing in tournaments.
Also, given the relatively few modes of play in this game, stabilize the core game that people are familiar with and run experimental changes (such as the proposed ones) in a different area. I'm certain you will have plenty of volunteers for testing in the wild. The changes between the 1st and 2nd round of Ares are off putting to me and, as I have mentioned before, I have no other game mode to turn to and train covers.

Unknown

kajoloco wrote:

I'm relatively new, having played for a little over 3 weeks. I was happy to discover the game as I have always enjoyed 'match' games as a time waster and MPQ added the marvel universe and a level of depth that was very welcome. I've played it far more than I was expecting and here are a few of my observations during my experience as they relate to the upcoming changes.

As a new player with relatively weak characters, I don't expect to be very competitive with most. This is definitely true in the lightning rounds. It's clear I have no chance of climbing the ladder there and am lucky to get the recruit token at 100 points. Therefore, lightning Rounds are demotivating for me. I am fine with this as I was pleasantly surprised that I could compete decently in the tournaments. When I figured out how they worked, I was able to finish the first round of Ares in the top 75 (with a heavy investment of time because I simply enjoyed the game). The matchmaking for me was decent and generally 'in my league', but I had to make liberal use of skipping to continue plodding along. Multiple times, I'd retaliate with another repeatedly and we'd 'grow together'. In all, the time and effort was rewarded and I liked playing. That is motivating for a new player.

The second round of Ares is different and less enjoyable. I am now being matched with those I can't beat. I spend far more time skipping as maxed 2 and 3*'s and lv 50 powered-up Ares are clearly out of my league. Having to pay ISO to skip these matches essentially means PvP tournaments will become inaccessible to me. This wouldn't leave me with much to do in this game. PVE has already been exhausted and I just want to collect the covers, play to burn some time, and enjoy (all) the characters as they grow. Without the tournaments I have no viable source of ISO within the game. IOW, implementing a pay to skip BEFORE improving matchmaking would be counterproductive, increase complexity, and be demotivating for people like me.

If you accept the premise that this is a freemium game meant to appeal to the masses, then, on the subject of shields, they are inherently inequitable. As a matter of policy, if a shield is required to place in a tournament, the system is flawed. That doesn't mean they couldn't or shouldn't exist. A segment of players might welcome a higher stakes, no holds barred tournament/area where it might be viable. However, do not force this mechanic into the core game without an option to be pooled with other 'non augmented' players.

To the developers:
Please do not treat everyone like we're NBA caliber. There are leagues starting in JV thru high school, college, CBA that help players grow to get to the pros. Do not make a one size fits all tournament and expect all people to be motivated to play. A possible solution is to have [X]*s competing only with other [X]*s and let people register according to their skill level. Please make a deliberate attempt to create areas that appeal to those in all stages of development, including appropriate bracketing in tournaments.
Also, given the relatively few modes of play in this game, stabilize the core game that people are familiar with and run experimental changes (such as the proposed ones) in a different area. I'm certain you will have plenty of volunteers for testing in the wild. The changes between the 1st and 2nd round of Ares are off putting to me and, as I have mentioned before, I have no other game mode to turn to and train covers.

Ares is not a good example because he's so overwhelming powerful in this tournament that his presence alone determines the strength of your team. If you're running say a level 40 Ares, level 85X2 other guys, and the opponen is a single level 85 Ares, you'll probably lose. The guys who aren't Ares almost don't matter. Level 140 anyone else is still on the verge of death after a regular Rampage. A Sunder pretty much instant kills one guy and the CD will almost kill a second guy if they're not a tank type character. I assume this is intentional to get people to pump up Ares. If you're talking about a more sane boost like Hulk, the high level teams are quite beatable there and there were plenty of ordinary looking teams with high rating there.

Unknown

Add insult to injury. I've gotten attacked a few times tonight and wasn't even given the option for retaliation. The little red icon just never appeared. Hurray!

Unknown

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'.

Hmm, not sure if I would have made any sort of joke there, but props on being more transparent in general!

kajoloco wrote:

I'm relatively new, having played for a little over 3 weeks. I was happy to discover the game as I have always enjoyed 'match' games as a time waster and MPQ added the marvel universe and a level of depth that was very welcome. I've played it far more than I was expecting and here are a few of my observations during my experience as they relate to the upcoming changes...

...The second round of Ares is different and less enjoyable. I am now being matched with those I can't beat. I spend far more time skipping as maxed 2 and 3*'s and lv 50 powered-up Ares are clearly out of my league. Having to pay ISO to skip these matches essentially means PvP tournaments will become inaccessible to me. This wouldn't leave me with much to do in this game. PVE has already been exhausted and I just want to collect the covers, play to burn some time, and enjoy (all) the characters as they grow. Without the tournaments I have no viable source of ISO within the game. IOW, implementing a pay to skip BEFORE improving matchmaking would be counterproductive, increase complexity, and be demotivating for people like me...

Welcome to the forums!

I share some of your concerns about the new system set in place. Overall, I feel that Demiurge is hoisting themselves with their own petard on this one. The originally stated goal of making progression awards was accomplished with shields, but with the prices now doubling, it would probably mean less people shielding, which also means less progression rewards in general if you factor in the new progression reward list set in place (people barely made 2400 by the skin of their teeth in my bracket, and they were only able to because they shielded before the system was changed. Even THINKING about creating a skip tax before fixing the matchmaking/retaliation system is like spreading the peanut butter and jelly onto your bread without realizing you didn't pull out the bread slices in the first place. It just leaves you with a messy kitchen counter-top and a messy game mode. Now, I have no idea when to jump into this tourney or if to even jump in at all.

Perhaps it would be great if shields were made so that it would be free to use them, but you have to pay in order to break them? The cost of breaking a shield would go down over time, eventually becoming free to break if you waited long enough. For those with more demanding schedules, this would be amazing, while giving those with a HP trust fund the same ability to use strategic shielding as before. As I've said before on these forums, I find it insulting that I have to use a premium currency (no matter how available it is) to make a core game mode work. It honestly feels like there's an entrance fee these days to play PVP. But if the developers insist on having this item in place, it would be much better utilized by this method.

But I do realize that not all of the evidence is in, yet. There's still about 30+ hours left in the tournament, and perhaps the system will work after all? So for now, I'll just play in the tourney for the Iso-8 and... dare I say it... fun?

Unknown

Oversoul 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'.

Hmm, not sure if I would have made any sort of joke there, but props on being more transparent in general!

kajoloco wrote:

I'm relatively new, having played for a little over 3 weeks. I was happy to discover the game as I have always enjoyed 'match' games as a time waster and MPQ added the marvel universe and a level of depth that was very welcome. I've played it far more than I was expecting and here are a few of my observations during my experience as they relate to the upcoming changes...

...The second round of Ares is different and less enjoyable. I am now being matched with those I can't beat. I spend far more time skipping as maxed 2 and 3*'s and lv 50 powered-up Ares are clearly out of my league. Having to pay ISO to skip these matches essentially means PvP tournaments will become inaccessible to me. This wouldn't leave me with much to do in this game. PVE has already been exhausted and I just want to collect the covers, play to burn some time, and enjoy (all) the characters as they grow. Without the tournaments I have no viable source of ISO within the game. IOW, implementing a pay to skip BEFORE improving matchmaking would be counterproductive, increase complexity, and be demotivating for people like me...

Welcome to the forums!

I share some of your concerns about the new system set in place. Overall, I feel that Demiurge is hoisting themselves with their own petard on this one. The originally stated goal of making progression awards was accomplished with shields, but with the prices now doubling, it would probably mean less people shielding, which also means less progression rewards in general if you factor in the new progression reward list set in place (people barely made 2400 by the skin of their teeth in my bracket, and they were only able to because they shielded before the system was changed. Even THINKING about creating a skip tax before fixing the matchmaking/retaliation system is like spreading the peanut butter and jelly onto your bread without realizing you didn't pull out the bread slices in the first place. It just leaves you with a messy kitchen counter-top and a messy game mode. Now, I have no idea when to jump into this tourney or if to even jump in at all.

Perhaps it would be great if shields were made so that it would be free to use them, but you have to pay in order to break them? The cost of breaking a shield would go down over time, eventually becoming free to break if you waited long enough. For those with more demanding schedules, this would be amazing, while giving those with a HP trust fund the same ability to use strategic shielding as before. As I've said before on these forums, I find it insulting that I have to use a premium currency (no matter how available it is) to make a core game mode work. It honestly feels like there's an entrance fee these days to play PVP.

But I do realize that not all of the evidence is in, yet. There's still about 30+ hours left in the tournament, and perhaps the system will work after all? So for now, I'll just play in the tourney for the Iso-8 and... dare I say it... fun?

That would be a great suggestion. Hopefully somebody down there in development realizes things have been rough for players and maybe they'd adhere to it.

Unknown

People really get the concept of shields wrong. The devs aren't kidding when they say it's some kind of community effort. Let's say there are around 100 guys you usually get matched with throughout a touranment and I'll use the word 'bracket' to cover this loose collection of these individuals. You can basically think of a community goal of X HP must be spent to appease the D3 gods before you can reach certain progression prizes. This is because no net points are ever created without the usage of shields, and each person who shields creates a number of points equal (amount of point he should've lost) / (number of players in the bracket). For example you hit 1000 and you put up a tank team and shield for 8 hours, you get hit 100 times and lost 50 points each time (but you're shielded), so you created 5000 points which brings up your bracket's score by an average of 50. However, this is a pretty incredible high amount of hits. I know people have horror stories about getting hit, but getting hit by 100 guys overnight would redefine horror stories. Note that prior to the matchmaking changes, the number of players in the bracket can be as few as 5 guys if you broke far ahead of the pack, so in this case it is easy to fatten everyone in your bracket of 5 up to the point where they all hit the progression awards. This approach is completely impossible now.

In fact, this example let us see why it must be a community effort. Even if you somehow managed to lose 5000 points in one night while shielded (this would mean you'd literally wake up with double digit points if you're not shielded), you still need 20 guys who also got hit as hard as you to to bring the overall bracket's score up by 1000 which would be needed to even contemplate hitting the 2400 reward tiers. This means the community needs to spend 200 * 20 = 4000 HP before anyone even has a shot at hitting the high progression rewards. That said, this amount is not as outrageous as it sounds since the 4 star covers are worth 2500 and the 3 star covers are worth 1250, not to mention getting the very first cover is worth considerably more than the the cost it takes to upgrade a cover.

The reason why it feels like shields don't do much is that most people are freeloaders or simply don't understand that you got to shield or at least hit the shielded guys as often as you can to help the community. I'm certainly not rich enough to afford shielding solely for the sake of the good of the community either, but I try to play as much as I can to maximize the chance I'll hit a shielded guy. If you're watching the progress of your bracket, you'll see that points steadily go up over time. This is because the points from shields eventually trickles down and it MUST trickle down first because the matchmaking changes makes it almost impossible to try to simply pull ahead of the pack. Now, I do not think the time of the tournament lasts long enough for anyone to have a shot at hitting the 2400 reward tier, so I do expect those to be adjusted downwards later. But I'm seeing guys with 1200 points and I imagine those guys are at least in striking range for the 1600 range stuff. I don't think the top tier of progression rewards need to be guaranteed to be achieveable.

Unknown

I just have to vent right now, sorry. 3.5 hours playing, only progressed 300 points. Got almost no reprieve from getting attacked that entire time. I finally gave up when I exited a two minute match worth 12 points only to find I'd been attacked by four guys at once and lost 100 points. And then I wasted a shield because I couldn't bear to have my hard earned points eaten away in 30 minutes, even though I know I no longer have any chance of placing even in the top 10. At 950 points, which is the highest I managed to get, I was getting whacked by guys with 250 points. How could the devs have thought for a second that this was a good idea?! It's not even worth retaliating because they'll just hit you back for twice what you gained. In the space of two hours I got hit more than 10 times by the same freaking guy. For a while, every time I came out of a match he had attacked me again. Seriously, how about you fix some stuff rather than making what was once a fun game into something that is beyond frustrating? I'm actually pissed off right now. By a game. That's supposed to be fun. Somewhere along the line somebody at Demiurge failed miserably in their brainstorming. /rant (probably not)