A couple upcoming changes to PvP events

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

If it's true that things aren't zero sum below 500, then the easier way to input points into the pool is to keep crushing people who are under 500. They'll lose 5 and you'll gain 10, for a net of +5. That said, I'm still pretty sure that you fight people outside your bracket, so you probably won't see much personal gain from doing this.

I think the non zero sum range is about 200 if even that. It is also only for the guy with the lower score, so when he retaliates you will lose the full 40 points or so. So even if this works you're doing this at great peril to your personal score.

Unknown

ApolloAndy wrote:

If it's true that things aren't zero sum below 500, then the easier way to input points into the pool is to keep crushing people who are under 500. They'll lose 5 and you'll gain 10, for a net of +5. That said, I'm still pretty sure that you fight people outside your bracket, so you probably won't see much personal gain from doing this.

Also, by the time you reach like 800, you no longer see anyone that low, and if you did, they probably wouldn't be worth any points. So, it will only inflate the system so much, which is not much.

Spoit

Kyosokun wrote:

ApolloAndy wrote:

If it's true that things aren't zero sum below 500, then the easier way to input points into the pool is to keep crushing people who are under 500. They'll lose 5 and you'll gain 10, for a net of +5. That said, I'm still pretty sure that you fight people outside your bracket, so you probably won't see much personal gain from doing this.

Also, by the time you reach like 800, you no longer see anyone that low, and if you did, they probably wouldn't be worth any points. So, it will only inflate the system so much, which is not much.

Yeah... 300 point gaps in matchmaking are still pretty common

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Kyosokun wrote:

ApolloAndy wrote:

If it's true that things aren't zero sum below 500, then the easier way to input points into the pool is to keep crushing people who are under 500. They'll lose 5 and you'll gain 10, for a net of +5. That said, I'm still pretty sure that you fight people outside your bracket, so you probably won't see much personal gain from doing this.

Also, by the time you reach like 800, you no longer see anyone that low, and if you did, they probably wouldn't be worth any points. So, it will only inflate the system so much, which is not much.

Yeah... 300 point gaps in matchmaking are still pretty common

I see them upwards, almost never downwards. Might just be the MMR Vs point totals I'm in though. *shrugs*

Unknown

While only D3 has the data, but the shielding changes only make sense as a community goal if the major support point is reachable by community. This is currently the rating of 1000, because you get 100 HP. It's obvious that people start being far more liberal about using shields after hitting that mark, because having 100 HP is like having house money to use shields. It's easy to tell yourself that once you hit 1000, you got your 100 HP, use that for the Punisher cover at 1200 and then take over the world tomorrow. While I'm sure people actually end up spending considerably more than 100 HP trying to reach these goals simply looking at the time the top of my bracket is shielded (certainly way more than 3 hours), you need to throw people a bone before they'll start dumping hundreds of HP into shields to try to get those high reward prizes. If it doesn't look like you can get to 1000, you wouldn't be inclined to use any shields at all since you certainly won't reach the 1200 Punisher reward, and 700 (Ares cover) is likely reachable without the need for shields. 800 and 900 award are Iso 8, and while they're more valuable than people give them credit for, it's certainly not something you'd drop 100 HP in a shield to try to obtain.

You don't even need better rewards. Simply shuffle the awards so that the 100 HP is lower. Right now there really isn't much a motive to go from 700-1000, or even 700 at all if you already have whatever 2 star cover they're handing out there.

Unknown

I definitely saw the way this tournament was going to be run, immediately went for the 700 point progression reward and then have let my account sit (though oddly I haven't been battered too badly, even after 24 hours of sitting on 700+ pts). I'm not sure if I'm going to even try for ranking rewards this time because the tournament ends during my work hours and I can't afford a shield. There was basically no motivation for me to play beyond 700 points because I wasn't going to get anywhere near 1000 points and without shields, the ranking rewards will be 95% determined by the last 2 or 3 hours.

Unknown

What a great new system! I hit 1200 earlier, come back within an hour to this:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218593085

And i'm sure they will keep coming. 40-50 points losses and then I go to retaliate against him?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218593675

1 point retaliation. he hits me for 49 points and I can retaliate for 1. are you **** kidding me!??! Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? Topped with the cost to skip and no shields? yeah, PVP is ****.

Unknown

Not even bothering to play PVP anymore.

Unknown

sms4002 wrote:

What a great new system! I hit 1200 earlier, come back within an hour to this:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218593085

And i'm sure they will keep coming. 40-50 points losses and then I go to retaliate against him?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218593675

1 point retaliation. he hits me for 49 points and I can retaliate for 1. are you tinykitty kidding me!??! Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? Topped with the cost to skip and no shields? yeah, PVP is ****.

Exactly as predicted on first read of announcement. Hope at least some of the devs are happy observing that everyone else is unhappy.

Unknown

I was unhappy about this as soon as I read about it, but the practice hasn't improved my view.

The #1 thing I hated most about PVP events was spending ages building a ranking, then losing 40 points because someone much much lower ranked (but, obviously, not with a lower powered team) got to be matched up with me. Setting up the matchmaking system to encourage that to happen more is crazy. Sure, you can get the first few hundred points more quickly as you get to hit the guys much higher ranked than you, but then it becomes an exercise in luck as you climb and desperately hope not to come out of a game having been hit twice for 40 points each.

The #2 thing I hated most about PVP events was being matched up with an endless stream of games for like 13-18 point (aka "games where the other player will totally retaliate and cost you more points than you gain for beating them") and having to spend a minute or two skipping just to be matched up with someone of approximately equal rank. I don't see how being charged ISO for the privilege is going to make this feel any better.

The matchmaking should be fixed up so it offers you mostly matches against people on similar numbers of points to you (say, matches between 21 and 29) and so if possible it doesn't offer up the same person to multiple people at a time (to avoid that thing where you come out of a match and have been hit 2, 3, 4 times within those couple of minutes). These changes are almost the complete opposite of that and I hope they are undone pronto (and that the iso-cost for skipping never happens).

Unknown

PVP is garbage now. D3 completely ruined it. I haven't complained about any other change they've made, but this is just straight up broken. I've said it in other threads, but I've had the same 8-10 available opponents for the last 12 hours. No matter if I'm at 700 points (which is where I've dropped down to) or 1200 points, I see the same people. Meanwhile, I get attacked by people with ~5-600 points less and lose a ton while I fight for **** 20 point fights because my MMR won't change.

Why would you roll out this stupid "be attacked by anybody" system WITHOUT fixing the MMR issues that have existed for weeks?

Unknown

jozier wrote:

PVP is garbage now. D3 completely ruined it. I haven't complained about any other change they've made, but this is just straight up broken. I've said it in other threads, but I've had the same 8-10 available opponents for the last 12 hours. No matter if I'm at 700 points (which is where I've dropped down to) or 1200 points, I see the same people. Meanwhile, I get attacked by people with ~5-600 points less and lose a ton while I fight for tinykitty 20 point fights because my MMR won't change.

Why would you roll out this stupid "be attacked by anybody" system WITHOUT fixing the MMR issues that have existed for weeks?

I stopped yesterday when all I could see was you and 3 others. I attacked one of them, yet all I could see was the same 4 names. So I slapped in a tank team and let my score go to nothing.

Unknown

Bucky76 wrote:

jozier wrote:

PVP is garbage now. D3 completely ruined it. I haven't complained about any other change they've made, but this is just straight up broken. I've said it in other threads, but I've had the same 8-10 available opponents for the last 12 hours. No matter if I'm at 700 points (which is where I've dropped down to) or 1200 points, I see the same people. Meanwhile, I get attacked by people with ~5-600 points less and lose a ton while I fight for tinykitty 20 point fights because my MMR won't change.

Why would you roll out this stupid "be attacked by anybody" system WITHOUT fixing the MMR issues that have existed for weeks?

I stopped yesterday when all I could see was you and 3 others. I attacked one of them, yet all I could see was the same 4 names. So I slapped in a tank team and let my score go to nothing.

I would tank but I want Patch.

Unknown

Lovely how the players can see the likely results of a change the moment it is announced, but the developers seem to be completely in the dark.

Unknown

zhadum wrote:

Lovely how the players can see the likely results of a change the moment it is announced, but the developers seem to be completely in the dark.

Hindsight bias? I think it was more along the lines of not wanting a pay2win or grindy system, not a broken one (broken as in they'll prolly fix it).

Unknown

I just experienced the most mind-boggling event that I have encountered so far in the game.

I'm currently in a rare position to place highly (only have a 2* team) as I won a full set of Ares covers from the Hunt and have leveled him almost to the 85 cap. Ran my team up to the 900s before taking a break.

I just received an attack notification from the Rage and Ruin event, no big deal there.

After logging in, I saw that I was attacked for one of these 50 point attacks. Ok... fine.

The kicker? Apparently, I successfully defended TWICE before the attacker finally won on the third attempt and still lost 12 points? Um... I'm not a rocket scientist, but I'm pretty sure I won 2 out of 3 there and that's not even considering that each round past the first was not a even fight as the game remembers damage inflicted on the defending team each round. So... as long as the attacker wins at any point during their three tries, the defender will always lose ranking?

Side note: I had a similar situation occur last night, but won +12 points when the attacker yielded to me after the second failed attack.

Therefore, is the only way for a defender to avoid point loss is for the attacker to voluntarily yield or fall all three attack tries?

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Therefore, is the only way for a defender to avoid point loss is for the attacker to voluntarily yield or fall all three attack tries?

Short answer: yup.

Longer answer: as long as they win eventually, they won, but their total points won (and your total points lost) halves with each attempt, so it's only a quarter of the points on the third try.

Unknown

Okay I'll admit I didn't read all 13 pages, so I hope someone mentioned that being able to be matched with someone ranked way above you and have to pay for skipping really has the potential to punish players with weaker teams. Pull two or three really high people, and take the loss, probably with scrubs (scrubs so you have a chance to play a fairly ranked match without having to wait or pay for medkits) and push them higher or pay to avoid the loss. Seems like you're system is more likely to hurt the players on the bottom than those on the top.

Cad

Unknown

sms4002 wrote:

What a great new system! I hit 1200 earlier, come back within an hour to this:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218593085

And i'm sure they will keep coming. 40-50 points losses and then I go to retaliate against him?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=218593675

1 point retaliation. he hits me for 49 points and I can retaliate for 1. are you tinykitty kidding me!??! Who in their right mind thought this was a good idea? Topped with the cost to skip and no shields? yeah, PVP is ****.

Pretty much what all of us are experiencing. The only people this change benefits are those who start in the last 4 hours. They can plow their way to the top by chewing up the people who actually spent time grinding and working for their rank. Good play. I'm actually moving backwards right now. I come out of every match about 20-30 points lower than when I went in. I gain 10 points and lose 35 while I'm in there. Really, really fed up at this point. I've been playing games for a couple decades now and I've seen some questionable game mechanics and crazy "fixes." The changes implemented here in the past few days are some of the most flabbergasting I've seen. I'm honestly stumped at who possibly thought these changes were a good idea, let alone actually put them in the game.

RockMonster wrote:

all the stress, helplessness, frustration and futility that turned me off tournies before has raced back in. I've had an absolutely miserable time just trying for a modest 1,000 points

Perfect descriptors and a very accurate summary of the way I've been feeling since these changes were implemented (in case you couldn't tell from my frequent posts).

Unknown

I really hope you guys rethink some of these changes.

For a couple of days there I was really enjoying these tournaments. It was a little grindy, but all in all I felt like where I placed was up to me. Now that I'm priced out of relying on shields and low value opponents are regularly nailing me for 40+ points, all the stress, helplessness, frustration and futility that turned me off tournies before has raced back in. I've had an absolutely miserable time just trying for a modest 1,000 points in round 2 of the Ares tournament (a goal I fell well short of after hitting at least 1800 in the last 3 tournies), and if this is to be expected in every tournament going forward, then for me it's just too much stress for too little reward.

It's a really fun game, and keep up the good work every where else, but the current tournament structure is awful and with a skip-penalty incoming it's only going to get worse.