Bonus points suggestion

over_clocked

tl;dr: add bonus event points for a) beating a team with significantly higher hitpoints, and b) for being skipped in PvP.

Likely has been suggested in some form or another, especially with regards to a). If so, feel free to point it out.

If you are competitive at all, and even if you really aren't, the game often feels like a job (that you don't get paid for), a non-stop grind. That's bad even if self-induced. Sometimes there are silver linings that keep us playing. Alliances, new mechanics, beloved characters being introduced, token luck, et cetera. Wouldn't we all agree that getting defensive wins, beating tough matchups, and in general being obviously rewarded for skill, progress and hard work feels excellent? Top players already receive more ISO and HP for their efforts (although some of them also often spend more ISO/HP/time than it's worth it for everyone else). But it would also be nice to raise our morale while not leading to revenue decreases for the studio.

What I propose is to also introduce bonus points (in PvP, largely) for all levels of players.
a) If a weaker team beats a much stronger team, based on total health, they get bonus points (not taken out from anyone's score). Starting at a decent percentage, maybe like 115-120% of the total hitpoints minimum. So if you beat a team that has 150, 200% of your hitpoints, you get that much higher of a bonus that is determined as soon as you win and added to your event score immediately. Thus developing rosters can hit higher than they usually do in PvP, leaping over walls, all it would take would be willing to take on challenging matchups. This rewards all the fragile but potent teams out there, starting with classic Storm/Magneto MN, but not to the point of becoming unbearable to stronger rosters, after all, those can only push as long as their tiny hitpoints and 5 healthpacks allow, compared to tireless Patch, Daken, X-Force, 4or, Rocket and Groot, lazy Thor, etc. (Btw Luke Cage is their best buddy, and Spider-Man/Colossus too.)
Health is just an easily measured criterion of 'difficulty', and PvP demands speed, so more health usually does mean more challenging.
Not sure if this should be applied to PvE as well.

b) The above works for all players and all teams, but the more developed a roster is, the harder it is for them to find anyone equal or challenging (meaning PvP, of course). How would developed rosters get their share of bonus points? Well, they could get them every time their team is being skipped (for example, 0,1 points for 1 skip, or 1 point for every 10 skips. If this is too low or too high, can be tinkered with. Not as important to help maxed out rosters with PvP, but still a nice touch). Outside of MMR being wonky and offering low score matchups, players only skip teams that they don't want to deal with. Refusing to accept a challenge unless it's well worth a risk. This way maxed out optimal teams for a given event could rack up points quickly when doing their climbs and inviting more and more teams to queue them and either attempt to beat, sometimes ending up in defensive victories, or skip upon finding easier matchups. I think the queueing algorithm could still use some work, though, so as to preferably always offer highest points available, whatever the defending team. MMR hell exists and it's not a nice place.
There should be no extra notifications, however, or only one notification per event, when your score pulsates upon receiving the first 10 (x) skips, updates with a +1, and you get a flash message explaining what just happened, then it never appears until the next event or never at all (add a checkmark please please!).

The players don't have to know the actual math and formulae since they can figure details out anyway on their own eventually, but it could be announced in-game that beating scary teams or being successful at being scary yourself would now be rewarded with more event points, and add the process to the existing scoring mechanisms, in essense regarding skips as mini-defensive victories (which they are! But it's not acknowledged in any way that is obvious to players) and regarding beating bigger teams as an actual achievement, which it also is. I'd hope that on the whole, adding something minor (major?) like this wouldn't lead to disappointment if implemented well, but only encourage players to play PvP (because many feel that PvP is too punishing for lower level rosters), take on challenges, improve their rosters. In short, not detracting from Demiurge's revenue but possibly helping it. Which I recognize as being very important; as soon as the game can't make money, there's no game for any of us.

Feel free to offer critique. I'm not sure myself how easily anything of the sort could be implemented. It has been pointed out to me that it could be a lot of coding work, where many things could go wrong. But I feel it's worth throwing out here.

FaustianDeal

The definition of a fight 'up' might need to be based on something more robust than health, but the character balance is so off attempting to use other metrics would be difficult. Still a system that doesn't reward bonus points for beating up big green pinata and fat thor using hood and torch seems called for. what about some needlessly complicated algorithm based on stars/covers/levels - probably combined in an baroque way? These aren't critiques meant to shoot down the ideas. There has been a long-running debate that the risk/reward trade-off in the game is not properly weighted. They are constantly trying to tweak the risk, to only offer the same reward; that feels wrong. Maybe instead of awarding additional event points the 'bonus ISO' you get at the end of the fight could be adjusted according to this 'relative team strength metric'?

Can the bonus points for being skipped be abused to inflate scores? Instead of having to retreat to a teammate, can we just skip him? By virtue of having a large coalition of players with a 'no friendly fire' clause, aren't you also providing a small bump to those players just by being a good sport and following the rules of your alliance coalition?

over_clocked

FaustianDeal wrote:

The definition of a fight 'up' might need to be based on something more robust than health, but the character balance is so off attempting to use other metrics would be difficult. Still a system that doesn't reward bonus points for beating up big green pinata and fat Thor...ess? using Dormy'sPawn and torch seems called for. what about some needlessly complicated algorithm based on stars/covers/levels - probably combined in an baroque way? These aren't critiques meant to shoot down the ideas. There has been a long-running debate that the risk/reward trade-off in the game is not properly weighted. They are constantly trying to tweak the risk, to only offer the same reward; that feels wrong. Maybe instead of awarding additional event points the 'bonus ISO' you get at the end of the fight could be adjusted according to this 'relative team strength metric'?

Can the bonus points for being skipped be abused to inflate scores? Instead of having to retreat to a teammate, can we just skip him? By virtue of having a large coalition of players with a 'no friendly fire' clause, aren't you also providing a small bump to those players just by being a good sport and following the rules of your alliance coalition?

I thought about the latter a bit and I think it would be too time demanding for players to boost teammates in such a manner. There are many more non-aligned players that are able to see your team than your alliance mates, and if your team is any good, it often encourages mad skipping even from equal teams! Wish we knew the numbers, heh.

As for being rewarded ISO for beating bigger teams, fine with me as well, what with being always ISO-starved (100k is nothing when you have 4*s well-covered!). But I am positively sure lower level rosters need help with scoring outside of relying on other players, "outside communication" (hehe), the like. ISO, they can't even spend since they don't have the covers to level.

Unknown

I kinda like the idea of "giving" someone a point to skip them, but it would be a nightmare at the top end to try to find people to fight without eroding your own score down.

Maybe spend 10 iso OR give the team you are skipping 1 point? That way you can maximize for iso gain on the climb but not sacrifice any points once up high if you are trying for 1k+

over_clocked

Cryptobrancus wrote:

I kinda like the idea of "giving" someone a point to skip them, but it would be a nightmare at the top end to try to find people to fight without eroding your own score down.

Maybe spend 10 iso OR give the team you are skipping 1 point? That way you can maximize for iso gain on the climb but not sacrifice any points once up high if you are trying for 1k+

Oh no, I definitely meant the 'skip' bonus points also to be generated out of thin air and not be taken out of anyone's actual score.

Unknown

I didn't