Yet more shield suggestions

Unknown

One serious problem is abuse the system putting up bagman teams shielded. So how about shields that work like real ones or those in better balanced games: they just reduce/dampen the damage, not cancel it.

Simply put the damage would go to 1, 2 pts or say 1/20 of the natural value. Meaning still saving most of the pain, but discourage abuse: you're still interested to use your best team to avoid the most loss.

And the price should reflect that, being set below the original values (like half would be fair, and adding more spans that can cover the event completely.)

We could add a different variant too: armor. That allows fighting while on, reducing point loss significantly (say to 1/3). But bring in some drawback too, maybe reduced point gain, preventing some or all boost usage. Or simulating drain on stamina be usable for some limited amount of time during a tournament. This idea is pretty raw but I believe could flesh out into a great improvement on our current experience.

Unknown

The bagman tanking team is only a highlight of the underlying problem. Even if they have a legitmate team, once you realize they're shielded of course you'll just keep on attack them (no retaliations). But making it possible to lose points while shielded takes away the point of spending for them. There should be something like you can't hit the same shielded opponent (or maybe just any opponent period) more than once every 5 games, not counting retaliations of course. And if you found 5 shielded bagman teams, I can accept that you just hit the jackpot.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The bagman tanking team is only a highlight of the underlying problem. Even if they have a legitmate team, once you realize they're shielded of course you'll just keep on attack them (no retaliations). But making it possible to lose points while shielded takes away the point of spending for them. There should be something like you can't hit the same shielded opponent (or maybe just any opponent period) more than once every 5 games, not counting retaliations of course. And if you found 5 shielded bagman teams, I can accept that you just hit the jackpot.

This is a suggestion I can get behind. (I know it's been suggested multiple times in the forums too, once by myself even). Once you defeat someone, they can't reappear in your matches until you've PLAYED some number of fights. 3 or 5 seems to make the most sense. But helps alieviate the problem of those guys who will just beat the snot out of just one target cause they are easy and appear frequently as well.

Unknown

Except that finding a shielded opponent whom you can attack repeatedly might also mean multiple games wherein you earn more than 15 points per fight. I don't like being hit repeatedly by the same person, but if I'm the only target on that individual's radar worth any points at all, I totally understand. The actual underlying problem is the scarcity of quality targets. Single target mobbing is just one more symptom thereof.

Unknown

Oh, and putting up bagman teams is only abusive in that it creates more points in the tournament pool in general. I have no problem with this kind of "abuse," because it actually represents players making a concerted effort to boost other players. Putting up a bagman team under a shield is a nice thing to do.

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

Except that finding a shielded opponent whom you can attack repeatedly might also mean multiple games wherein you earn more than 15 points per fight. I don't like being hit repeatedly by the same person, but if I'm the only target on that individual's radar worth any points at all, I totally understand. The actual underlying problem is the scarcity of quality targets. Single target mobbing is just one more symptom thereof.

There's nothing wrong with not having any quality targets because if you always had quality targets that also means you're always someone else's quality target, and that completely cancels itself out. In fact a lot of time it'd be like I'm beating a guy repeatedly and then another guy would be beating me repeatedly and taking those points away just as fast as I'm earning them (and that guy is probably getting chain beatdown by yet another guy). If nobody have quality targets, at least you might get lucky and people just not see you for a while. Right now if someone has you in their sights, you're never losing them.

To offset the devastating retaliations for attacking low point target, there should be a chance that attacking a low point target does not yield a retaliation. It shouldn't make it preferable to attack low targets, but right now a low point target is literally "I dare you attack to me". For example right now say you attack someone that's worth 10 and he retaliates for 40. You have pretty much 100% chance of losing 30 points because that guy isn't going to pass this up. If it's only 50% chance the other guy can retaliate your expected outcome is -20. That's about half the loss compared to that guy simply seeing you and attacking you for 40. You shouldn't be encouraged to attack low point targets, but right now it pretty much is never correct to attack low point target.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The bagman tanking team is only a highlight of the underlying problem. Even if they have a legitmate team, once you realize they're shielded of course you'll just keep on attack them (no retaliations). But making it possible to lose points while shielded takes away the point of spending for them. There should be something like you can't hit the same shielded opponent (or maybe just any opponent period) more than once every 5 games, not counting retaliations of course. And if you found 5 shielded bagman teams, I can accept that you just hit the jackpot.

Sure, that ability to hit same person several times is nuts, and must be plugged ASAP, but I consider that a separate issue from this one. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that it was addressed in some sensible way, and each player pair can only play once in the tournament (or have a long cooldown period that effectively is the same).

IMO even one bagman is disrupting enough as he can be attacked by many people, but not necessarily all spot him, and it creates an undue drift. Also it is not in the spirit of the system -- if such phony fight worth the same as real fight intentionally why not dismiss the whole fight altogether and just grant the points from one shown up as opponent. O,O

Unknown

Moon 17 wrote:

Except that finding a shielded opponent whom you can attack repeatedly might also mean multiple games wherein you earn more than 15 points per fight. I don't like being hit repeatedly by the same person, but if I'm the only target on that individual's radar worth any points at all, I totally understand. The actual underlying problem is the scarcity of quality targets. Single target mobbing is just one more symptom thereof.

Yes, sure, but that is again a different issue in the matchmaking -- there should be an up-front filtering interface so one can get only high/low/level opponents.

I really don't get how the current thing passed by QA or designers, who expects people pick matches in a tournament for 0 or 1 point?

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The bagman tanking team is only a highlight of the underlying problem. Even if they have a legitmate team, once you realize they're shielded of course you'll just keep on attack them (no retaliations). But making it possible to lose points while shielded takes away the point of spending for them. There should be something like you can't hit the same shielded opponent (or maybe just any opponent period) more than once every 5 games, not counting retaliations of course. And if you found 5 shielded bagman teams, I can accept that you just hit the jackpot.

Sure, that ability to hit same person several times is nuts, and must be plugged ASAP, but I consider that a separate issue from this one. Let's assume for the sake of discussion that it was addressed in some sensible way, and each player pair can only play once in the tournament (or have a long cooldown period that effectively is the same).

IMO even one bagman is disrupting enough as he can be attacked by many people, but not necessarily all spot him, and it creates an undue drift. Also it is not in the spirit of the system -- if such phony fight worth the same as real fight intentionally why not dismiss the whole fight altogether and just grant the points from one shown up as opponent. O,O

I think the issue here is that those bagman teams tend to be well insulated from the rest of the population (because you obviously only do this when your points are high). That is, suppose you have to show up on at least 5 guy's matchup list, but at the high points level you might show up on the list of 3 guys who are shielded, so there's really not much of a risk there. Bagman or not, it's just way safer if you aren't being seen by guys who are actively playing. This has to be the case, otherwise people wouldn't be able to get away with not even shielding at high points.

What should happen is that any player needs to appear in the matchup list of at least X non-shielded players (say, 5). That way if you want to put bagman out, at least multiple guys can hit you. I really can't think of a clean way to totally stop people from putting up tank teams on purpose that wouldn't have other side effects. Also, the 'can't play same player' requirement should be greater for shielded teams. Let's say you can't hit the same team more than once every 5 games normally, on shielded that should be something like 15 games. That way, the shielded guys gets seem by a variety of players (because if you just play a shielded guy, you can no longer see him for 14 games so someone else that is not shielded has to be able to see him now). The point of shield, after all, is supposed to be propping up the overall scores. Right now, they do that but the gains is just concentrated on very few guys (easily verified by looking at the scoreboards).

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Moon 17 wrote:

Except that finding a shielded opponent whom you can attack repeatedly might also mean multiple games wherein you earn more than 15 points per fight. I don't like being hit repeatedly by the same person, but if I'm the only target on that individual's radar worth any points at all, I totally understand. The actual underlying problem is the scarcity of quality targets. Single target mobbing is just one more symptom thereof.

Yes, sure, but that is again a different issue in the matchmaking -- there should be an up-front filtering interface so one can get only high/low/level opponents.

I really don't get how the current thing passed by QA or designers, who expects people pick matches in a tournament for 0 or 1 point?

If everyone picked an opponent for a high point target it's really the same thing as nobody picking a high point target because you just lose the points you get as fast as you earn them.

There really shouldn't even be a choice on picking an opponent because currently everyone does pick the highest point target so you get 25 points only to lose 40 immediately from another guy doing exactly the same thing.