A couple upcoming changes to PvP events

Unknown

Zhirrzh wrote:

ibontherun wrote:

Im not sure if the "making it more dangerous to be at the top" is working.

In my Divine tourney bracket the winner had over 2200, the next closest person was in the 900s. Just to give you an idea of the rest of the bracket, I finished top 45 with about 430ish. I kept getting the same guys over and over again. Retaliation cycle kept most people grouped together...except those 2 up top. Maybe that's what it was supposed to do though

mine similar. About a day and a few hours before the end, I got up to 498 (fighting through various hits) before coming out of the game that was meant to get me over 500 (and the HP reward) to discover I'd been hit by 3 people for a total of 70 points. I came back the next day with most of my points attacked away, this time successfully reached about 520 (at which point I think I was in 7th place) and put up the 8 hour shield to carry me through to the end. At the time the guy in first place in our bracket was shielded at 2320, and the 2nd place guy had maybe 800. It turned out I hung on to a spot in the 6-15 rewards with my gigantic 520 points, and this was a bracket which began pretty early in the piece. It seems that if you can break above a certain point, you're probably mostly hitting shielded high point people and not having to worry about retaliations, but you have to be lucky (or have an incredibly intimidating team) to get there without being knocked down faster than you can build up. Meanwhile, even skipping like crazy I was struggling to be matched with people even worth above 25 points.

Yes, there is a hurdle you have to clear and it seems to be around 600-800 range and again around 2000ish range where you get a cycle of the same guys to fight before it opens up again. I sat at 300-400 for the first days and a half and had no intention of going for 1st as someone made a run and was around 1300 while the rest struggled at 600. On final 3 hrs of tourney I got a ton of 40+ matchups and before I knew it I was only a few hundred pts away and ended ended taking 1st witb abt 2200 pts. If you have a lower level team, dont be discouraged. .you just have to attack it in waves preferably timed when people usually shield, take a break and try again and keep going when you get on a roll.

Unknown

I didn't read every post, so I probably will repeat some things, sorry about that.

I don't like the current way of finding opponents in the championships. It takes a LOT of skipping before I find someone who I can beat w/o severe damage to my team. I lot of the times I find only enemies who are much stronger and higher level than my team. Even if I can beat them by using buffs and having some luck, my team is out for 2 hours healing time (I sometimes try to play in the Prologue with the Spiderman NPC to heal my other characters, but it is tedious and not always working).

I have only a few high level characters, so I really have to watch who I attack. I have only 3 max level one star characters (levels 50, 40, 40), and only 1 character over level 50 from the 2 star ones (level 77 and can't go over this at the moment because I miss a skill).

My goal is (and the game should help me in this) is to play a lot and gather experience to level up my weaker characters and gain a few higher level characters/skills once in a while. Your current setup is against this and you intend to make it even worse.


How things are/planned:

Very strong opponents are offered --> Player is forced to use buffs --> buff prices are doubled --> less experience is left for improving the characters

Very strong opponents are offered --> frenetic skipping for finding an acceptable fight --> charge iso for skipping --> even less xp to improve the characters and no guarantee that the next opponent will be easier, see below.

Very strong opponents are offered --> guaranteed heavy damage even on win --> either using 1-2 medkits after each fight or long healing break --> long break means you don't gain position (again, less xp, less chance for new charters/skills), you might lose position and most importantly you don't play.

I'll do an experiment now, how much skips will give me a lower level enemy (i combine the teams level). [..] Ok I gave up after 50 skips, every opponent was higher level than me. There were some close ones, like 10 level higher than me, but I don't want to fight those either, because I'd get like 18 rank for a tough fight (if I can win). Skipping is kind of useless, so if it costs Iso-8, then it is a sure way to annoy and anger players, because this is a lose-lose situation.

All the above means, that a player like myself (and i guess I belong to the majority) have a hard time to advance the characters and sometimes I'm shut out of the game because I don't have any characters (because they are on sick leave) to fight with. (and yes, I usually fight when my characters are wounded)


How it should work:

The game should give opponents based only on my current rank. That way I would get all sorts of opponents, not only really strong ones who I can't beat my current characters, because I don't have a tank for example. A single level 80 enemy can pummel my 1600 hp characters to death with simple gem matches, w/o using any skills. Obviously I don't want to fight against opponents like that.

I'd like a way to gain Iso-8 in a regular way, play for 1-2 hours when I want, not just sit around and desperately skip every opponent. I'd like to build up my lineup and have fun fighting others. Let me decide if I want to fight strong opponents, don't force it on me.

I'd say you would need to revise the rank gain on the fights. The easy fight should net less rank, the hard ones should give more. You should devise a system to decide if a fight is easy or hard. I'd include in this factor (with various degree):

- the difference of the sum of the level of the teams
- the difference of the highest level of characters in the teams (for example the opponent has a 100,48,15, the player has 50,40,40, then the difference is 100-50=50)
- the difference of the sum of the learned skills
- the difference of the sum of the teams HP (so if the player goes into battle with wounded team, he may get some bonus reward for the risk)
- the number of stars of the characters. Obviously a 3 star character is stronger than 1 star one. (this might be included into the difference of skills)
- the difference of current ranks

The loser should lose as much rank points as the winner gets (this might be a bit harsh, but the devs said they want to keep the top together)

This ranking system would enable the players to choose their fights according to their current capabilities/wishes/play style. The weaker/beginner lineup player could still get plenty of action. They would end up low in the tournament, but they would still get plenty of experience points, so they could build up their team.

The stronger players could also find their battles as they want, if they want to take on high risk/high reward scenarios, they can do it.

The point is, everyone could play as much as they want, they are not forced to do things, as we are now.

To sum it up:

- skipping must stay free (opponent selection is up to the player)
- IMO devs should revise the rating system (encourage playing style)
- encourage continuous play. Let the players play as much as they want.
- never punish or force your players. Encourage risk taking with rewards.
- don't try to force players to buy Iso-8 or Hero points. Serious players will buy them anyway and the other players will become serious players only if they enjoy the game. You won't make them enjoy the game if you block the game for them with stupid rules. Also, if you make the Shield more expensive, then the players will use it less, because 1 euro for 3 hours of shield is a lot. This also discourages further Hero point purchases, basically you are working against yourself.

Anyway, I doubt anyone will read all this, so I might as well stop it here. I just felt the need to write it because the game is much less fun than when I started it and it seems it goes the wrong direction further still.

Peace,
Angus

PorkBelly

I just wanted to chime in as a "mid-tier" player (I can usually get in the top 100 of tournaments; sometimes I get lucky & score a bit higher in uncompetitive brackets).

I played my first post-R47 patch PvP- Army of One.

To say it was punishingly hard is an understatement.

I really only wanted the Full Clip token and maybe to get into the top 100 for some Thor covers.

I was able to do that but only by skipping LOTS of matches. It was very common for me to be getting teams with characters near 100 levels higher than me.

If D3 institutes the "paying ISO" for skipping with matchmaking the way it is, any rewards will definitely be out of my range.