Upcoming Test: Powered-Up Characters in Versus

esoxnepa

Phantron wrote:

...
compared to how MPQ is actually played, why should anyone attempt to stay ahead in ranking via playing?

This is a persistent problem in MPQ which is why you'll see that the top PvP playing stuff always involved discussion of stuff that has nothing to do with playing the game, and the massive boosts now just lets a lot more people to join the excitement of not playing the game because it's impossible to get ahead by playing.

I will go further. That PvP in MPQ has little to do with enjoying playing the game.

They continue to try and patch fixes onto a system that needs to be broken into two parts.

There needs to be a high-level no holds barred event, that lets top players slug it out using all the resources available. True Healing, Shield Cooldowns, Over Nerfs are all symptoms of trying to force PvP to find a "balance" for the casual and hardcore player. Top level PvP should be allowed to be a slugfest. Ensure that there are multiple top level combinations of characters. To manage Top Level PvP, you would need to continually balance, with minor buffs or nerfs, the existing 4* lineup. Let each new 4*, say one every 3 months, shake up the meta, but not destroy it.

There also needs to be PvP inclusive of the general playerbase. This broader base is what pays the bills. PvP for them should be rewarded for playing. Sure, they may get destroyed, but if they are seeing progress as they climb and fall, and climb again, it would keep them engaged.

I still think, if you are going to force both these groups onto the same battlefield, that you need to split progression rewards from PvP placement and ranking. So when that 2* player gets crushed from the wall at 400 to 150 points, they don't give up. They would still have 400 progression points, and so climb again to 400, progression is now at 650. Then all of a sudden, that feeling of getting crushed, turns into the ability to climb to an exciting reward. They almost hope to get knocked down again, because one more climb and they'll hit that 3* they dream about!

Prizes can then be adjusted to make PvP at high levels even more cutthroat then it is now, while letting people that don't want to play at those levels, provide a target rich environment.

pony mad

I love the new power-up idea.

Yes, it takes the strength out of some ****, but they are not useless, they just get ***-equivalents.

+ more diversity in fights
+ more fun each pvp event
+ occasionally more chances for lower players
+ gives a reason to care about ***s again

- whales cry, because they are not so much stronger than everyone else once in a time

GrumpySmurf1002

esoxnepa wrote:

I still think, if you are going to force both these groups onto the same battlefield, that you need to split progression rewards from PvP placement and ranking. So when that 2* player gets crushed from the wall at 400 to 150 points, they don't give up. They would still have 400 progression points, and so climb again to 400, progression is now at 650. Then all of a sudden, that feeling of getting crushed, turns into the ability to climb to an exciting reward. They almost hope to get knocked down again, because one more climb and they'll hit that 3* they dream about!

Prizes can then be adjusted to make PvP at high levels even more cutthroat then it is now, while letting people that don't want to play at those levels, provide a target rich environment.

I'm not in love with this idea on the whole because the vets can and have run their way up the totem pole, purposely let themselves get crushed back, and climbed again (double iso events). It would make the current 1k trivial to hit for most people. Sure you can adjust the number, but there probably isn't a number that would keep people from getting there. I'm sure you'd have some people hitting the current seasonal progression (7500) during the first event.

Unknown

pony mad wrote:

I love the new power-up idea.

Yes, it takes the strength out of some ****, but they are not useless, they just get ***-equivalents.

+ more diversity in fights
+ more fun each pvp event
+ occasionally more chances for lower players
+ gives a reason to care about ***s again

- whales cry, because they are not so much stronger than everyone else once in a time

Yeah, tons of diversity. You can choose between Daken Loki Patch or Daken Hood Lthor, and literally nothing else. And because everyone has these at max level, every time you climb enough to be worth over 20 points 10 people hit you at the same time.

Great, a pvp where every second you're not shielded you're hammered down to the ~600 range instantly.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

pony mad wrote:

I love the new power-up idea.

Yes, it takes the strength out of some ****, but they are not useless, they just get ***-equivalents.

+ more diversity in fights
+ more fun each pvp event
+ occasionally more chances for lower players
+ gives a reason to care about ***s again

- whales cry, because they are not so much stronger than everyone else once in a time

Yeah, tons of diversity. You can choose between Daken Loki Patch or Daken Hood Lthor, and literally nothing else.

Even if this were true (it absolutely isn't) "only Daken Loki Patch this PvP, a different team next PvP" is more diverse than "GT and XForce, every PvP, forever"

Unknown

gamar wrote:

ark123 wrote:

pony mad wrote:

I love the new power-up idea.

Yes, it takes the strength out of some ****, but they are not useless, they just get ***-equivalents.

+ more diversity in fights
+ more fun each pvp event
+ occasionally more chances for lower players
+ gives a reason to care about ***s again

- whales cry, because they are not so much stronger than everyone else once in a time

Yeah, tons of diversity. You can choose between Daken Loki Patch or Daken Hood Lthor, and literally nothing else.

Even if this were true (it absolutely isn't) "only Daken Loki Patch this PvP, a different team next PvP" is more diverse than "GT and XForce, every PvP, forever"

Oh you can play with whatever you want until close to 800. Then people who put actual work into the game to get covers for good heroes have the bigger scores. I can't fathom why this would be a worse thing than "Just boost random 3*s past the power level of 4*s" being the end game. Oh and by the way, you want to see domination? Wait for the week when xforce is boosted. Lets see anyone without one make it past 600.

Unknown

I don't see why people should be rewarded for stuff that's not related to playing the game, but it's not like the same old tricks don't work well even in this boosted enviornment. If anything it probably works better because it is literally impossible to get ahead by playing so you do need all your tricks.

I do think when you're running say Daken + Hood + Thor and see 5 teams of Daken + Hood + Thor for 20 points it kind of kills the motivation for playing, since it shouldn't be hard to figure out what happens when you attack one of those teams so your best move is to not play at all. I don't agree with the previous solution where I get to use X Force and beat on some guy who doesn't have him is the correct way to solve this. There should be a way to distinguish players of comparable roster strength that involves playing the game. Currently such a method doesn't exist. Any method to get ahead of the situation described above involves something that has nothing to do with playing the game.

Pylgrim

I have to laugh at all people complaining about their "hard work" "building up their roster" (translation: they either have been playing long enough that they got a decent X-Force from all the times he's been given away/outright bought the covers) which is now apparently undone. That "hard work" was having X-Force early and started to cruise on a steamroll through PVP from the moment it was reworked, barely seeing any competition until around 900 points where they started seeing the other people with X-Force. Doing that repeatedly quickly got them 4hor's covers which multiplied the size of the steamroller and the ease of climbing. Now that 4hor's been nerfed and that other characters get buffed, they are starting to have to actually "work" again for their earnings which is, obviously, unconscionable from their fake superiority point of view.

No, people who've actually worked hard to build their rosters celebrate: they can now use to good effect those maxed Black Panthers, Psylockes, Colossuses and the such. GDecent, fun-to-play characters that had to languish in a dark corner simply because they were not powerful or fast enough to challenge X-Thorce's hegemony reliably. People who worked hard to build a wide roster and level them all up rejoice because each rotation of buffs they get to experiment new combinations and see new challenges and defeat those who don't have those characters well levelled because they focused on a few particular ones. And hell, even those entitled players will get their day in the sun when X-Force is buffed and they get a good taste of the steamrollin' again.

My only complaint is the choice of characters for this experiment. Thor and Patch are already top tier so there was not much of a shake-up in the party formation. Moreover, they are old-ish characters that have been rewarded tons of times and almost everybody have by now. Some less popular or powerful characters would have been a more interesting experimental outing.

Dragon_Nexus

ark123 wrote:

IMO this was the worst thing to ever happen to pvp. Worse than the "F U" matchmaking test. An entire week of Balance of Power. Thanks for making sure all my work on my roster means diddly squat.

Mine already meant diddly squat because I have no chance of getting in the top 5.
Those with a maxed out X-force and Thoress are set, pretty much. Just walk over the competition and fight amongst themselves in the top 5. Meanwhile my team of maxed out 3*s hasn't a hope.

All it means is the rich get richer while my only prospects of getting a 4* cover are either to spend money or get lucky with tokens. I can't get 1000 points in PvP and I can get to 1st place either.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

My only complaint is the choice of characters for this experiment. Thor and Patch are already top tier so there was not much of a shake-up in the party formation. Moreover, they are old-ish characters that have been rewarded tons of times and almost everybody have by now. Some less popular or powerful characters would have been a more interesting experimental outing.

They probably picked the powerhouse and widely available characters so that they can actually see if the team used change. For example if Iron Fist was one of the boosted characters, he's obviously more than a match for any 4* at 280 but not many people have him maxed so you won't necessarily see him around even though he'd be doing an 800/turn attack tile and his purple is going to do something like 7000 damage with 12 or more black.

I'm also pleasantly surprised to find that although I just defeated 10 teams that are exactly the same as my team, I didn't get hit back immediately so I guess the fact that all the teams have gobs of HP to go through slows down the retaliation. I have no doubt that all the guys I beat up will eventually come back for those points but if I cared about that stuff I'd put up a shield. I don't care too much about the shield hopping game, but I was afraid it's going to be like I hit someone with the same team for 20 and then 5 minutes later I lose 30 points. That'd be utterly unplayable, and so far it hasn't happened yet. Of course being unshielded for extended time isn't going to work but that's nothing new. So far it seems like I have enough time to decide to shield despite the seemingly unbelievable parity that'd suggest otherwise.

Unknown

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

ark123 wrote:

IMO this was the worst thing to ever happen to pvp. Worse than the "F U" matchmaking test. An entire week of Balance of Power. Thanks for making sure all my work on my roster means diddly squat.

Mine already meant diddly squat because I have no chance of getting in the top 5.
Those with a maxed out X-force and Thoress are set, pretty much. Just walk over the competition and fight amongst themselves in the top 5. Meanwhile my team of maxed out 3*s hasn't a hope.

All it means is the rich get richer while my only prospects of getting a 4* cover are either to spend money or get lucky with tokens. I can't get 1000 points in PvP and I can get to 1st place either.

****. I finished my xforce last pvp without Goddess, who was nerfed to hell. The goddess I got covers for using my 3*s and grinding heavily in pve.

Your assertion that what I did just last pvp is impossible is asinine. Learn how pvp works, learn how and when to shield right, how to hulk bomb, coordinate hops and stop crying about how the game is unfair. It's supposed to be hard to get fully covered 4*s because it's the end game. Once there, what you accomplished is supposed to actually mean something. I'm not supposed to be benching my newly completed xforce because patch and loki are boosted way past any 4* for an entire week.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

According to NorthernPolarity you're wrong and because everyone's matches are longer you shouldn't notice any difference in your shield hopping pattern.

Perhaps I'm wrong and perhaps the perception is anecdotal coincidence and has nothing to do with what daveomite mentioned. It's possible. This test has just started so I haven't had time to hop enough to collect a statistically testable data set (say > 40 samples) -- and I'm doubtful I will.

So let's call it a separate issue and an opinion: the experience of cycling through dozens and dozens 3 point nodes to find a decent fight in a dry slice, spending 5 mins fighting and 5-10x that time that searching for a decent node to fight, sucks.

daveomite

aesthetocyst wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The top of PvP has never been about actually playing the game and all the boosted character does is the equivalent of giving out X Force to a lot of people (since boosted Patch/Thor is more than a match for X Force). People seem to be really shocked to find that it was indeed only their X Force that kept PvP 'enjoyable', whatever that means, even though it was only enjoyable because you got to ran over people and build your fun off their expense. Now the guys you're used to oppressing can run you over and thus all the complaining.

As much as I hate to agree with Phantron....he's absolutely right. There's a lot of entitlement in this player base.

What entitlement do you think exists? And who are you saying is acting entitled? My post has nothing to do with any of that. But, look at the flip side, not just your own. Just like when people complained about "death brackets", they wanted things to not be so difficult as people were getting jammed up at 700-800 points, barely in top 100.

It's true, there are different mindsets in the game. It seems a great deal of people only play to certain progression points and stop, or don't play certain events because they don't want or need those rewards.

The alternate side of that are players, like me, who play each event regardless. Not to destroy anyone's hopes or dreams like you may think, but to help my alliance with overall point totals in season. I am more focused on the other members of my ream than I am my own personal needs in this game. And because I choose to do the best I can for them, you say things like that means I'm acting "entitled"?

The point is, for me to even maintain an average of 1k in pvps through the season, it costs more HP, more ISO and more time tied to the game than ever before. If I didn't care how I placed, or how many points I got, then I guess it wouldn't matter. I could be lazy, hit 300, and just stop, right?

That's not why I play this game. Not why others play this game. There is a more competitive side inside the player base, ones that want to be "king of the world", and those like me just trying to keep my team motivated and placing in the various events. The introduction of Seasons brought on most of that, they very things like higher scoring, massive shield hopping of old, etc, etc.

So just like you seem to think those with maxed XF or 4Thor are acting entitled, the same can be said about those not willing to do more for the rest of their teammates.

Unknown

This system is good (at least better than what we had), just boosts should be a little lower.

Stax the Foyer

camichan wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

According to NorthernPolarity you're wrong and because everyone's matches are longer you shouldn't notice any difference in your shield hopping pattern.

Perhaps I'm wrong and perhaps the perception is anecdotal coincidence and has nothing to do with what daveomite mentioned. It's possible. This test has just started so I haven't had time to hop enough to collect a statistically testable data set (say > 40 samples) -- and I'm doubtful I will.

So let's call it a separate issue and an opinion: the experience of cycling through dozens and dozens 3 point nodes to find a decent fight in a dry slice, spending 5 mins fighting and 5-10x that time that searching for a decent node to fight, sucks.

Plus, I think NorthernPolarity is wrong about the change to shield hopping. An increase in match length makes shield hopping riskier if you're doing more than one match per hop (which most people are probably trying to do, given the increased cost of shield hopping after cooldowns).

The amount of time it typically takes for you to be queued and have someone start a match against you shouldn't get any longer with increased match length. It might actually get shorter, if there's more competitive rosters queuing, but for the sake of this, consider it a constant value Q. When you increase the average length of matches M, the total time you're out on a double hop (2M) will increase faster with increased match length than the amount of time someone takes to queue you and play one match against you (M+Q), widening the window in which you'll lose points if someone queues you and beats you.

So longer matches mean it's easier to get sniped on double or triple hops, at the very least.

mohio

I feel like Daveomite and camichan really get me, so I don't have much to add that they haven't said or I haven't said elsewhere. (Of course that means long post incoming...) I'm mostly just going to add that I have personally been having way more fun just helping my alliance mates out with timely boosts than I was having before doing the play fast, shield, look for targets thing. Because of this play style I spend A LOT of time playing from 7-900 and back and forth, giving me quite a large sample size of at least the top tier in my own slice. Maybe it was because doing the boosting thing means I play more matches than most others, but I found myself playing against the same teams over and over and over. It was already tiresome and the HT event wasn't even close to over. I've been mostly dreading even starting the Daken event (despite having maxed Daken where my HT was only 135) since I know it'll just be more LT/Hood or Patch/Loki teams over 500, and despite twice the variety over the old xf/GT metagame it feels way less diverse. My reasoning for this is it's basically all you see from 500 to 1000+, LT/Hood, xf/Hood, Patch/Loki, LT/xf, that's all there was. In the old PvP system you saw way more variety in top teams. Some people could make it to 800+ using Patch/Loki, some used xf/hood, some xf/Loki, some LT/Hood, and of course the ubiquitous xf/GT was mostly all you saw over 900 or so (and there are many more teams out there I'm not mentioning, LC, BP, Iron Fist, Cage, Fury, Hulk all make their way into high level teams). Anyway my point is you would still see a variety of teams from 500-900 instead of now just seeing the same 2 teams (cmon, slight variations are basically the same thing, you play against them the same way so either way it doesn't matter) over and over and over.

Like I said, this is just my experience from Hotshot and only in slice 5. But I played A LOT of matches and played a good 3+ hours at the end of the event purely in the 700-950 range and experienced pretty much anything you could imagine in that time frame (getting awfully close to 1k and seeing nothing but 17 points or less matches, getting hit for probably 150+ points in the following 8-10 minutes, spending an hour trading wins and defensive losses 1 for 1 because for some reason getting hit for -44 at only 850 points is a reasonable thing in this game). Anyway, not gonna claim to be some expert with this new PvP but I have a much varied experience from playing this PvP from 24+ hours out, to 16-8 hours out, all the way to inside the 3-hour bloodbath zone, so I feel like I've seen just about all there is to it.

mohio

Stax the Foyer wrote:

camichan wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

According to NorthernPolarity you're wrong and because everyone's matches are longer you shouldn't notice any difference in your shield hopping pattern.

Perhaps I'm wrong and perhaps the perception is anecdotal coincidence and has nothing to do with what daveomite mentioned. It's possible. This test has just started so I haven't had time to hop enough to collect a statistically testable data set (say > 40 samples) -- and I'm doubtful I will.

So let's call it a separate issue and an opinion: the experience of cycling through dozens and dozens 3 point nodes to find a decent fight in a dry slice, spending 5 mins fighting and 5-10x that time that searching for a decent node to fight, sucks.

Plus, I think NorthernPolarity is wrong about the change to shield hopping. An increase in match length makes shield hopping riskier if you're doing more than one match per hop (which most people are probably trying to do, given the increased cost of shield hopping after cooldowns).

The amount of time it typically takes for you to be queued and have someone start a match against you shouldn't get any longer with increased match length. It might actually get shorter, if there's more competitive rosters queuing, but for the sake of this, consider it a constant value Q. When you increase the average length of matches M, the total time you're out on a double hop (2M) will increase faster with increased match length than the amount of time someone takes to queue you and play one match against you (M+Q), widening the window in which you'll lose points if someone queues you and beats you.

So longer matches mean it's easier to get sniped on double or triple hops, at the very least.

Another thing that a few in my alliance brought up is that a lot of the new "top tier" players (i.e. anyone with a maxed LT/Hood/Patch/etc. and a handful of motivation) are either new to placing highly and more aggressive in sniping/improving their chances at placing well, or simply aren't well-versed in the top alliances silent pact, or whatever you'd like to call it, in allowing a player time to complete their hop and reshield. If I can find a target, win a match against a different player, and then beat the original target before he/she has reshielded then that's on them and they are likely taking too long to finish their hop. A different player might not allow the extra 3-5 minutes that a lot of us allow each other to finish their hops, and it has made hopping a lot more dangerous. At least that's what my alliance noticed in our scoreboard watching over the last 8+ hours of the Hotshot event.

edit: meant to add that I agree with you Stax, double match shield hopping is much riskier under this new system unless you are gifted a juicy board and can win your first match in 2 minutes or less. There are way too many players at 650+ that can now see ANYONE unshielded at high points and hit them for a big loss.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

Stax the Foyer wrote:

camichan wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

According to NorthernPolarity you're wrong and because everyone's matches are longer you shouldn't notice any difference in your shield hopping pattern.

Perhaps I'm wrong and perhaps the perception is anecdotal coincidence and has nothing to do with what daveomite mentioned. It's possible. This test has just started so I haven't had time to hop enough to collect a statistically testable data set (say > 40 samples) -- and I'm doubtful I will.

So let's call it a separate issue and an opinion: the experience of cycling through dozens and dozens 3 point nodes to find a decent fight in a dry slice, spending 5 mins fighting and 5-10x that time that searching for a decent node to fight, sucks.

Plus, I think NorthernPolarity is wrong about the change to shield hopping. An increase in match length makes shield hopping riskier if you're doing more than one match per hop (which most people are probably trying to do, given the increased cost of shield hopping after cooldowns).

The amount of time it typically takes for you to be queued and have someone start a match against you shouldn't get any longer with increased match length. It might actually get shorter, if there's more competitive rosters queuing, but for the sake of this, consider it a constant value Q. When you increase the average length of matches M, the total time you're out on a double hop (2M) will increase faster with increased match length than the amount of time someone takes to queue you and play one match against you (M+Q), widening the window in which you'll lose points if someone queues you and beats you.

So longer matches mean it's easier to get sniped on double or triple hops, at the very least.

Another thing that a few in my alliance brought up is that a lot of the new "top tier" players (i.e. anyone with a maxed LT/Hood/Patch/etc. and a handful of motivation) are either new to placing highly and more aggressive in sniping/improving their chances at placing well, or simply aren't well-versed in the top alliances silent pact, or whatever you'd like to call it, in allowing a player time to complete their hop and reshield. If I can find a target, win a match against a different player, and then beat the original target before he/she has reshielded then that's on them and they are likely taking too long to finish their hop. A different player might not allow the extra 3-5 minutes that a lot of us allow each other to finish their hops, and it has made hopping a lot more dangerous. At least that's what my alliance noticed in our scoreboard watching over the last 8+ hours of the Hotshot event.

edit: meant to add that I agree with you Stax, double match shield hopping is much riskier under this new system unless you are gifted a juicy board and can win your first match in 2 minutes or less. There are way too many players at 650+ that can now see ANYONE unshielded at high points and hit them for a big loss.

Its not really a silent pact, its something born out of understanding the game's mechanics. We can hit each other trading points until we both run out of health packs in the 600 range, or you can wait a little with a guy queued and not get an instant retaliation.

So now that a ton of people who have never been to 800+ land suddenly have the capacity to do so, we're all dumped back into "nobody knows how to do this" territory. To those used to playing the game, it's like being forced to play the beginning stages of pvp again, and that's pretty frustrating when you've been working for months to not be forced to do exactly this.

Do we really want to be forced to hulk bomb/xfist using every shield available from 2 days on to the end just to make 1k? Is that fun?

Unknown

This is getting out of hand. I like the idea of maybe a handful of characters being related to eachother in some form being overpowered but having this many random characters overboosted is overkill. The PvP has now turned into something else entirely. First the complete dismantling of 4* Thor to further weaken the Legendary characters (does anybody use Invisible Woman yet? Lmao). Now we have people who have not put forth the time and effort to obtain and level up their 3* and 4* rewards with 2* covers boosted so high I can't even distinguish their strength of play from a 4* or 3* cover. So if we are playing for these 3* and 4* covers as the reward yet the 2* covers are just as dominant, can someone explain to me why I should waste time trying to acquire the better rewards? Very interesting choice with this. I really hope this doesn't last or I feel myself losing interest in this game long term. There can be a All-new format aside from PvE and PvP where its about using powered up groups in something like lightning rounds. This can be a way for the players without superior covers and levels to play against tougher opponents on a more even playing field, but taking over Versus with this is just simply a bad idea.

With Respect, Whytephoenix (Hoarders Inc.)

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

Its not really a silent pact, its something born out of understanding the game's mechanics. We can hit each other trading points until we both run out of health packs in the 600 range, or you can wait a little with a guy queued and not get an instant retaliation.

aesthetocyst wrote:

That's over-dramatizing. Like you're in a special club.

Not to get too philosophical here, but...

If you watch the movie Harrison Ford movie Mosquito Coast somewhere in the beginning of the movie he mentions something interesting: about how there is some long unspoken pact between strangers traveling the wilderness, and how you always help out one in need because you never know when you're going to be the one in need. I thought that was really interesting. Historical accounts like Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America noted how native Americans followed this practice always offering food and shelter to traveler's passing by.

Not to get even more philosophical, but ....

A lot of people repeat Herbert Spencer's theory of Social Darwinism, the "survival of the fittest", "tooth and claw" and all that. Yeah, that's a theory he published in 1864. Fine. What you don't hear repeated is that there was a response and counter argument to this theory, particularly by Peter Kropotkin shortly afterward, eventually published as "Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution" that argued the exact opposite. "That cooperation and mutual aid are the most important factors in the evolution of species and the ability to survive." (wikipedia: Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution). These are both theories, and neither has been proved, but there is a counter-argument (and this cooperative element to evolution is still being actively studied with positive interest). [And there is also a reason you never hear about it but that's another long story totally unrelated to MPQ.]

So........, yeah, it may sound a little strange to hear someone like ark123 say there is a silent pact between seasoned players when it comes to shield hopping and not going out of your way sans provocation to let them finish their hop, but in my opinion it's not strange, and I don't think it's over-dramatization. On the contrary, I think it fits right in with many historical examples of expressions of mutual aid that develop in various dimensions of human interaction and remains an evolved, intelligent important factor in survival.