Bigger PVP Problem- You CAN'T PLAY

thbrown81

I wanted to be excited about the rotating PVP buffs. I wholeheartedly agree that games like this are more fun when you bring more of your roster to bear. There are a lot of cool characters in this game that are fun to use. They do different things, there are a multitude of interesting combos. And, as a player with a 553 XForce, this character does not discourage me from using other characters. Particularly if climbing with other characters save XForce health for bigger opponents. And I have a deep enough roster that I could push for a long time from 500 points until everyone ran out of health.

The biggest problem in PVP is the dreaded WALL. And I don't mean the "All my opponents are maxed 166 or 270 XForce/ 4hor wall. That wall doesn't intimidate me. My XForce is only L225, and I have three L150 3*- Doom, Thor, Cap. So with those and +2 G/B and (P/B or R/Y) and a +2 all, there isn't a single roster in the game that I can't take down. Now, I may lose occasionally due to an unlucky cascade, but more often than not I will win.

But, once I cross about 750-800 points, it doesn't matter how many characters I have, it doesn't matter how much money I'm willing to spend on HP. I have to shield and stop playing. If I don't, every attack I win will be lost to 4-5 attacks from others that occurred while I was winning a match. And some of these will be to rosters vastly inferior to mine. Which is fine. If I can take down 249/270/270, it seems reasonable that someone weaker than me could beat me.

Anyway, once I hit that first shield, then the of matches that I will play for the rest of the PVP is approx. 1.65(# of shields I can fit in in the time remaining). If I win my first match quickly, I can probably squeeze in a second attack. But otherwise I run the risk of getting hit for more points than I win in the 2nd match. And god forbid I try a third time. I'll be looking at a-50 at least, and could easily lose over 100 points. I imagine this is the same for even the strongest rosters, just that it begins 100 points or so higher. But basically, once you reach a certain point in PVP, continuing to play, even if you have the characters and HP to do so, is completely counterproductive.

And I don't see buffing additional characters making this any better. Again, I'm COMPLETELY in favor of anything that encourages me to use more of my roster, and that rewards me for astutely combining characters with good synergy. But, buffs simply broadens the base of players who will be able to pointrape me once I hit a certain threshold. As long as attack input a player receives exceeds the attack output one can produce, then playing more than two matches off of a shield hop is a losing proposition.

I'm not sure how to fix this, but here are some ideas:

1) Buffer between when you become visible and when you start losing points. Currently, there's roughly a 5-10 minute lag between when I break shields and when I can be attacked. Mainly because it takes that time for me to move to the top of an opponent queue, and for the attack chatrooms to find me and tell everyone to look for me. But, let's say that after I break shields, my points are still protected for either a certain time period (an extra 15 min, or something related to the price of the shield) or, even better, a certain # of matches, say 5.

2) A timer that allows you to attack for a short time after you shield. So, let's say I shield at 850. Instead of not being able to attack at all, it starts a countdown where I have five minutes/10/15 minutes to attack without breaking my shield.

3) Shielding banks points. Once I shield, the points at which I shielded are protected. I can still be attacked and produce points for others, but my points won't drop below this point. So, if I shield at 876, I don't have to worry about falling out of range of the 3* cover because I can never drop below that point.

4) Choosing defensive rosters. Some characters are nearly useless in PVP because they are either highly ineffective at attacking, but great on defense. Characters that are a defensive liability don't really matter, because defense is almost irrelevant in PVP anyway. But, if I could set a defensive roster where you were going to have to go through Loki, Falcon, or even a Falcon/ Spidey combo (spamming defense tiles, yellow healing AND boosting them, cheap stuns right when you get enough to fire SS). Rage of Bahamut had a system where you set 3 defensive rosters, and one would be randomly selected when you were attacked. This would REALLY encourage roster depth. Even if characters have a XForce or 4hor, they either have to split them up defensively or there is a 2/3 chance that you see neither.

Anyway, these are just some ideas. I'm sure each has potential problems, but subjection to dialectic may refine them or spark some other idea. I would just like to see some middle ground between the soul crushing grind of PVE and not being able to play much in PVP after a certain point.

Unknown

Bwahahaha definitely true, I didn't even read all of it but I agree 100%. This has always been brought up and is another big elephant in the room that seems to be ignored because there just may not be a viable solution that isn't either exploitable or impractical technically since everything would need to be redone. I often wonder as well why it's beneficial in a video game to not actually play the game. Shield hopping is trivially stupid...I get it that its a revenue stream but seeing as they implemented cooldowns I don't think its really that important to d3 in collecting hp from it. So yes I don't know what the solution is, I would believe that limiting attacks to within your own bracket may help but if you are at the top you are gonna struggle to find any worthwhile points which would lead to a revamp of the scoring system as well. But yeah, players versus rest of pvp player base is quite difficult to defeat.

Phumade

After 800 pts, the game isn't really about match 3 or rosters depth or diversity.

It really shifts into a meta game about alliance coordination and communication. Solo lone wolf players will never succeed for the simple reason that they don't coordinate their actions or receive support from teammates. Case in point.

1. Without alliance coordination, your ability to find 20+ plus matches full depends on getting lucky and catching other high level players mid hop. In high level alliances, there is no luck to finding 30+ pt matches, they explicitly tell you when they hop and re shield with the expectation that you will respect the hop and do the same.

2. The elite alliances will go even further and will snipe your bracket competition to help protect your position on a leader board. Lone wolves receive no such support.

3. Alliances have already worked out informal truces to respect various shards and you don't really see elite alliances dog piling into time convenient shard with the idea that it blood bath free for all.

those 3 points alone, should tell you that once your past the pvp's equilibrium point, MPQ ceases to be about your char's abilities or levels and more about your social networking and support skills.

As an aside, it should be immediately obvious that people who resource share via facebook have a huge advantage over those who don't. Alliances provide similar types of strategic advantages via point communication and coordination.

Lastly, just because you join an alliance doesn't mean you reap the true benefits of the alliance. You need to find an alliance that actively works together to help support their members success. In the beginning people thought alliances was only about expanded rewards. That naivety died out with rise of S.H.I.E.L.D and the alliance wars of season 1-5.

If you not into playing MPQ at that level and depth your basically saying that you want to be a 800-900 point player who can occasional rise to 1K awards vs, the 1200 point player who competes in the top ten with the ability to win a bracket outright.

SnowcaTT

Phumade wrote:

those 3 points alone, should tell you that once your past the pvp's equilibrium point, MPQ ceases to be about your char's abilities or levels and more about your social networking and support skills.

True, and stupid. It isn't how good is your networking - it's how can you game the system: and the only (best?) way is to make massive time-sinks with coordination. This isn't promoting alliances (if they cared about alliances they'd stop easy mercing and T50 events) - it's just hurting anyone who doesn't have the time to do this.

The reason people state for them not releasing MMR rules is people would game the system. True enough: but everyone could game it equally, rather than only those in the bit alliances.

If you not into playing MPQ at that level and depth your basically saying that you want to be a 800-900 point player who can occasional rise to 1K awards vs, the 1200 point player who competes in the top ten with the ability to win a bracket outright.

That's indeed what I've decided I must do. T100, continuing covers, slow and steady. No 4*'s though....

This quote shows again the rich getting richer - it means there is very little chance of those not in the coordinated alliances getting to the 4* covers. The problem I have isn't that only those who spend the most time or money win. The problem I have is that there is no way to advance into 4* land without being the 1% willing to spend that time and money - there needs to be another path to 4* land other than 1K or winner rewards. DPD like once a week for 4* would be a very nice addition, if the number of 4*'s is going to continue to grow.

sinnerjfl

Phumade wrote:

After 800 pts, the game isn't really about match 3 or rosters depth or diversity.

It really shifts into a meta game about alliance coordination and communication. Solo lone wolf players will never succeed for the simple reason that they don't coordinate their actions or receive support from teammates. Case in point.

1. Without alliance coordination, your ability to find 20+ plus matches full depends on getting lucky and catching other high level players mid hop. In high level alliances, there is no luck to finding 30+ pt matches, they explicitly tell you when they hop and re shield with the expectation that you will respect the hop and do the same.

2. The elite alliances will go even further and will snipe your bracket competition to help protect your position on a leader board. Lone wolves receive no such support.

3. Alliances have already worked out informal truces to respect various shards and you don't really see elite alliances dog piling into time convenient shard with the idea that it blood bath free for all.

You don't have to do any to this tinykitty to hit 1000 in PVP, just need to plan your shields and hop at the right times. Above 1000 then yes, I agree.

Arimis_Thorn

Even at lower levels I find myself running into the issue of not being able to play (if I want optimal results). By 8 AM, I had finished my DPD, hit every PVE node, and I'm at least 24 hours away from being able to really jump into Mind Games. I could run the Simulator, but I've already hit my 10 pack reward, so the competition is pretty stiff.

I've said it elsewhere, but I'm just baffled by a game design that actually punishes players for playing.

thbrown81

sinnerjfl wrote:

You don't have to do any to this tinykitty to hit 1000 in PVP, just need to plan your shields and hop at the right times. Above 1000 then yes, I agree.

True, but you accomplish it by spending coins and playing in tiny microincrements.

Spend gold to Shield hop route to 1000: Pay to not lose by not playing.

Spend gold on health pack route to 1000 and beyond: Pay to win by playing.

Of course, it's all absurd because we are chasing 4* covers that are intentionally limited in utility. But I digress.

sinnerjfl

thbrown81 wrote:

sinnerjfl wrote:

True, but you accomplish it by spending coins and playing in tiny microincrements.

Spend gold to Shield hop route to 1000: Pay to not lose by not playing.

Spend gold on health pack route to 1000 and beyond: Pay to win by playing.

Of course, it's all absurd because we are chasing 4* covers that are intentionally limited in utility. But I digress.

I don't like the shield system either but heh, on the bright side it only matters when you hit 800 and above. It's what we're stuck with, if you don't shield you get hit for -100, it keeps you playing that way?

A total re-vamp of PVP scoring would be needed to fix these problems. A seperate score for placement and a separate scoring for progression rewards? As in, you would not lose or lose less points towards your progression score.

puppychow

Generally good points by all the posters in this thread. Personally, I hit between 800-1000 points per event, and I have never done the alliance coordination thing to go higher. I agree that it puts lone wolves like myself at a huge disadvantage, but to me it's a secondary issue compared to the whales putting in ungodly amounts of $$$ into their roster. Perfect case in point is the ppl w/ 270 Prof X right now (buffed to 405). I don't care how much coordination players have w/ their alliances, if you don't have a a 405 buffed prof X for Mind Games, at the end of the day you'll be hard pressed to place high in your bracket.

so while I understand and agree that people coordinate with each other on Line/FB/etc to bounce off each other while shielded to score high, you also need to pour in a boatload of cash into your roster to be in a position to score high as well.

KrazyKeylime

i think when you get hit, if the amount of points that gets taken away is reduce to 1/5 -1/10 rounded up would improve this situation greatly, 5 hits in 10 mins still making progress. i think it might be the most impact fix with the littlest amount of work, however the average score will likely increase as well and prizes may need to be adjusted, but i wouldn't adjust most of them that 3* is too high in my opinion, the 4* can be adjust to fit the new top 15%

Unknown

Even with coordination and stuff, it's not like you're hitting 1300 with one shield. After all you have to be shielded each time for any coordination efforts to be successful (otherwise you'd just quickly lose those points). At the 1000+ point it you're talking about spending on an average of close to 2500 HP to place first (because there's no guaranteed you're the only person doing this so you can easily fail) and in fact the expected cost goes up higher the more people are doing this because your individual chance of success is lower. I really doubt the whole shield meta game brings much in terms fo revenue but it's not like they have anything to replace it and some money is better than no money. It doesn't bother me very much other than wondering what's the point of a competitive game that has literally nothing to do with how good you're at the game at the high level. It'd be like if you're competing for swimming and some people get to rent out rocket powered water jet packs that lets them move twice as fast as Michael Phelps even if they don't even know how to swim.

That said although it'd be pretty trivial to remove the coordination gaming aspect (make all matches blind, problem mostly solved) it doesn't address the fact that as long as you've boosts there's very little to do with strategy or depth when you start with up to 2 matches worth of AP ready to go. But a system where you have no boosts and blind matching might be too tedious, or at least it'd be a very different game compared to now.

Unknown

puppychow wrote:

Generally good points by all the posters in this thread. Personally, I hit between 800-1000 points per event, and I have never done the alliance coordination thing to go higher. I agree that it puts lone wolves like myself at a huge disadvantage, but to me it's a secondary issue compared to the whales putting in ungodly amounts of $$$ into their roster. Perfect case in point is the ppl w/ 270 Prof X right now (buffed to 405). I don't care how much coordination players have w/ their alliances, if you don't have a a 405 buffed prof X for Mind Games, at the end of the day you'll be hard pressed to place high in your bracket.

so while I understand and agree that people coordinate with each other on Line/FB/etc to bounce off each other while shielded to score high, you also need to pour in a boatload of cash into your roster to be in a position to score high as well.

Roster has almost nothing to do with coordination. A lot of the high scorers are hilariously weak in terms of roster strength. An XMen once only had Sentry as the only playable top tier character (everyone else on his roster was junk), and while Sentry was pretty broken back then, that guy didn't even have the right pieces go with him (Daken/The Hood) but as long as you shield at the right times and have the right guys feeding you targets, it doesn't matter. That's why PvP is pointless because for all the money you could spend on your roster it's nowhere as effective as begging people to let you win.

Unknown

It was nice being able to actually play pvp this past 2 months.

Now that 4thor is about to be overnerfed, I'll be going back to nothing. GG MPQ.

Digitalman959

Totally agree with OP. The idea of other powered up characters on PvP is a welcome addition, but I also agree that it's not taking care of other serious issues of PvP play. The amount of points you loose while trying to win a match is a way bigger issue for me too. I'm a transition player, I don't have a high level XF and my higher leveled three's are at 110. After 300 I start seeing high level matchups and I have to skip a lot to find a match I can take. Near 500 it's not rare to win a match for twenty something points and find out that I lost over the same amount while at it. The idea of having to climb the scoreboard playing against teams higher leveled than mine doesn't bother me but having to use my wit and resources available to win only to find out I made one step forward but I'm really two steps back is what really bugs me. Someone said once that you shouldn't loose point for defensive losses and I agree. First, your best offensive team my not be your best defensive team, second it's not us playing, it's the AI, and we all know this will never be the same. I have broken a shield on the last five minutes of an event because I'm 20 something points out of the T100 and when I make everything in power to get that much needed win I face the harsh reality that I was attacked and lost more than I won.

Scoregasms

sinnerjfl wrote:

A seperate score for placement and a separate scoring for progression rewards? As in, you would not lose or lose less points towards your progression score.

I like this idea, I'd tweak it and say we already have a seperate points bucket to decrement losses from, the Season Total. There still needs to be some penalty I guess and this still makes shields important to use every event. But those not in competitive PVP alliances can focus on individual event progression rewards at the potential cost of total season points. These can be made up somewhat by shield sim.

The other caveat I'd put in is that once you go past the 1k progression mark, you lose points in the event now. No reason to hamper placement rewards too.

This wouldn't apply to Off Season events and would operate normally.

chaos01

I just looked at the top 10 in my PVP pool and 8 spots are filled with people from X-Men II. Must be awesome to be in an alliance that would communicate like that.

Kelbris

Just got to 1k from 600 in less than an hour without a single 4Thor or Prof X cover, after not playing for like 6 months.

I really don't see the issue. Was beating 270 teams with a 175 XForce and maxed Fat Thor.

Git gud

Mawtful

If there's a classification lower than casual, that's what sort of alliance I'm in.

Recently, I've actually started increasing my PvP focus since PvE is certainly not worth the effort. I managed to pick up the 1k progression reward in the last two events (Purple PX from PX event and Red Thor from Punisher, I think). I've got a healthy roster (with a L270 5/5/3 XF and a L70 1/1/1 Thor), but it's certainly possible for a lone wolf to hit 1k. Getting #1? Well, that's a bit harder. Those 1k+ points where enough for top 10 in PX and top 25 in Punisher.

Shields are good for preserving your points, but retaliations are great for climbing.