PvP Gameplay Updates

Demiurge_Will

Tannen wrote:

Here's an idea, to promote people shielding less and retaliating more, allow a LOSING, high ranked, player to lose no more points than they would get if they chose to retaliate.

Currently if someone much lower than you sees you unshielded they'll attack for 50 points, which you lose from your total, if you choose to retaliate, you will gain somewhere between 0-5 points. More telling, you allow them to retaliate against you for an additional 50 points. This behaviour encourages people to get to a "high" score and then shield until the end of the event. It also serves to actively discourage people retaliating anyone below them (why give someone a free shot at your points). It doesn't solve the "people joining late need a boost" because everyone that could give those players points are shielded to avoid point loss -- and are thus removed from the pool of players that the lower ones can attack. In the last hour of tournaments it actively discourages the top few from playing, even if they get passed by someone, because the risk far outweighs the gain. (ie I can unshield and hit a few people to try to gain that spot back, or I can just take whatever my current reward tier is and not risk dropping 30 ranks to two attacks)

What I'm suggesting is that in the case where a high level player is attacked by a lower one, the point loss for the hight player be restricted to the amount that they can gain back in a retaliation -- no change made to the attacker's gain. So in the first example, while the lower player still gains 50 points, the higher player loses only the 0-5 points that they can regain upon retaliation. It also means that people will be more willing to break shields later in the tournaments as losses at that point to people much lower won't drop you all the way out of the running.

One potential issue is that people could game the system to power boost a lower, colluding, player to a much higher spot quicker (eg constantly retaliating between players) as the lower player gains ~45 to each point neutral loss that the higher player takes. You could fix this issue by making each additional hit within X minutes worth 50% less until they're not worth attacking (just like the current pve logic). As a side note this also prevents people from farming the same person over and over.

Thanks for the thoughtful suggestion, Tannen.

One of the constraints that we've learned the PvP scoring system has to satisfy is that, above a certain point in the rankings, a very limited number of new points can be created without them being taken from someone else. Otherwise we wind up with a huge points gap between players who play the most and everyone else, making it very difficult to create a reward structure that's interesting and fair to everyone.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Tannen wrote:

Here's an idea, to promote people shielding less and retaliating more, allow a LOSING, high ranked, player to lose no more points than they would get if they chose to retaliate.

Currently if someone much lower than you sees you unshielded they'll attack for 50 points, which you lose from your total, if you choose to retaliate, you will gain somewhere between 0-5 points. More telling, you allow them to retaliate against you for an additional 50 points. This behaviour encourages people to get to a "high" score and then shield until the end of the event. It also serves to actively discourage people retaliating anyone below them (why give someone a free shot at your points). It doesn't solve the "people joining late need a boost" because everyone that could give those players points are shielded to avoid point loss -- and are thus removed from the pool of players that the lower ones can attack. In the last hour of tournaments it actively discourages the top few from playing, even if they get passed by someone, because the risk far outweighs the gain. (ie I can unshield and hit a few people to try to gain that spot back, or I can just take whatever my current reward tier is and not risk dropping 30 ranks to two attacks)

What I'm suggesting is that in the case where a high level player is attacked by a lower one, the point loss for the hight player be restricted to the amount that they can gain back in a retaliation -- no change made to the attacker's gain. So in the first example, while the lower player still gains 50 points, the higher player loses only the 0-5 points that they can regain upon retaliation. It also means that people will be more willing to break shields later in the tournaments as losses at that point to people much lower won't drop you all the way out of the running.

One potential issue is that people could game the system to power boost a lower, colluding, player to a much higher spot quicker (eg constantly retaliating between players) as the lower player gains ~45 to each point neutral loss that the higher player takes. You could fix this issue by making each additional hit within X minutes worth 50% less until they're not worth attacking (just like the current pve logic). As a side note this also prevents people from farming the same person over and over.

Thanks for the thoughtful suggestion, Tannen.

One of the constraints that we've learned the PvP scoring system has to satisfy is that, above a certain point in the rankings, a very limited number of new points can be created without them being taken from someone else. Otherwise we wind up with a huge points gap between players who play the most and everyone else, making it very difficult to create a reward structure that's interesting and fair to everyone.

Doesn't that sort of take care of itself? I've got a huge lead in the Wolvie tournament, and I can't find a single opponent worth more than 10 points. My progress is slowed to a crawl, while anyone making a push behind me has way more points available to them. Balanced, without the soul crushing feeling of watching my score go backwards.

Nemek

(I'm obviously speculating on all of this, but this is how I kind of see them thinking about things....)

He's basically saying that their test run of trickle down economics didn't work out very well...a lesson we all could have learned from Rove.

So they introduced shields, and then saw scoreboards look like:

1. 2401
2. 2400
3. 2400
4. 632

And so they were like "Oh ****!"

So they then made it so that low point people could see high point people, hoping to even that out again (trickle down points.)

Then they saw points that looked like:

1. 2401
2. 705
3. 702

...which didn't look any better, but pissed a whole lot of people off.

And now they are all "Screw it, it can't be done!"

So, they took away the ability to find shielded people, which brings us to how tournaments look like now:

1. 900
2. 850
3. 845

...or whatever.

And now the numbers look a lot better, but everybody is still annoyed with it. They don't want to give up shields...because, well, it would cause ANOTHER uproar in the community and they spent so long developing it.

They know that points inflation will tend to look like the first leaderboard above, which they don't really want.

I'd guess ideally, a leaderboard would look like:

1. 2401
2. 2400
3. 2200
4. 1952
.
.
.

Given previous statements about wanting scores to be close-ish, but progression rewards attainable, they are experimenting with different things each time to see what works. It's hard to figure it out internally, because it's difficult to simulate the mindsets of tens of thousands of people, especially when there are two very distinct sets of people: the ones that will go for 2400 like crazy (or whatever the highest prog reward is), and the people who don't have the time to do such things.

So, they don't want scores to inflate, because that looks ugly with massive differentials in scores, they want to keep the concept of shields, and they want people to overall be happy. Combining all of those together is a tough task. I know a lot of people have thrown suggestions out there, but I think the main driver on not implementing most of those ideas is the score inflation.

Unknown

To me, the easiest fix would be to remove the highest level progression rewards (three and four star covers). Outside of a small window in time, 99.8 percent of the players weren't reaching them anyways.

Let people attack shielded people and have the highest rewards hand out 100 HP and 2000 ISO. That's still a big enough carrot on a stick to get most people to play for. Not to mention ranking the highest in their bracket.

Frustration levels would reduce greatly.

Spoit

Honestly, All these 'fixes' from the shields on, just made match making worse than it was before. Now we're seeing the same ~800 max points, but you have to spend HP to maintain it

Tannen

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Tannen wrote:

Here's an idea, to promote people shielding less and retaliating more, allow a LOSING, high ranked, player to lose no more points than they would get if they chose to retaliate.

Thanks for the thoughtful suggestion, Tannen.

One of the constraints that we've learned the PvP scoring system has to satisfy is that, above a certain point in the rankings, a very limited number of new points can be created without them being taken from someone else. Otherwise we wind up with a huge points gap between players who play the most and everyone else, making it very difficult to create a reward structure that's interesting and fair to everyone.

Thanks for reading it and giving it consideration

The way I look at it, you're not creating points at the top of the leaderboard, you're creating them at the bottom, where they're needed most, and those points will then "trickle up" and be available to the higher players. Shielded players are still shielded, they're still untargettable while shielded (unless you queued them while they were unshielded). Players still only lose points when they lose while unshielded, I'm just trying to encourage people to stay unshielded a little longer at the top levels of the leaderboard by making those losses smoother if the player that beat you is waaaay below you. (You always look really tasty to the lower players when you're that high up)

In my previous example, if the higher player started by attacking the lower one (instead of the other way around) he would only gain the 0-5 points that he would normally get, if the lower player then retaliated, the lower player would gain ~50 and the higher one would only lose 0-5 (whatever points he'd get from retaliating the attack). As the lower player climbed up, the top player would gain more benefit from attacking him (because the lower would be worth more overall) and the lower would eventually get closer to point neutral (ie he'd start to lose x% of his points for hitting the same high player, and would be getting closer to the score of the high players anyway). The higher player cannot gain from this game as long as he's retaliating, he can only stay neutral. He only has a point gain if the lower player doesn't retaliate. To continue his move up, he'd have to hit multiple people that aren't shielded and that don't retaliate (for whatever reason)...

Anyway, possible benefits
- encourages high players to attack other players (either high or low) as they should ultimately end up with more points.
- encourages low players to attack and retaliate against high players.
- smooths the punishment higher players take from lower players, without punishing those lower players.
- should mean that higher players are willing to attack lower players, as the most points you'll lose will be available to you when you retaliate.
- hopefully allows people to remain unshielded while they sleep without feeling like they're about to be rofl-stomped because they can't afford a shield.
- encourages high players to break shields and actually play the game, as if they don't other high players will pass them.
- this in turn gives lower people access to even more points. (as there should be more unshielded high players, thus more people in pool to attack)
- allows late entrants the ability to quickly catch up to the higher scores (although that initial acceleration slows as they near the higher players)
- as more low people approach the top of the board, there's more points around for higher players to "share" around.
- lowers the self-punishment for retaliation if you're above the person that you're retaliating against.
- discourages farming of a particular person.
- doesn't discourage grinding if that's what you're into, but doesn't explicitly reward it either. (top level grinders are in the same situation, possibly with more players available)

*shrugs* Possibly only have it come into effect if the lower player would gain from 30+ points... or some other arbitrary value. That way the lower player can feel awesome when they find a higher player and beat them, the higher player doesn't immediately rage quit when they get knocked down 50 points, and it still allows the interplay between people of around the same level.

BTW, I have no idea what would happen on a larger scale if this were implemented, I'm just thinking about what I'd like to see happen in the tournaments.

Have a good one.

Unknown

The Avenger Elite tournament provides perfect data on the amount of points you can expect to generate with the current shield system. Sure, there are less people in it, but you're not going to find any tournament that comes close to the number of shields generated. The points are generated almost solely from attacking shielded guys, so the fact that the Avenger Elite likely has the highest usage of shields out of any tournament shows that points simply cannot get very high in the current system.

I think the current point spread is reasonable. You can still build a considerable early lead and hit like 800 and it's awfully hard for someone who is slacking to catch up, but if this strategy is consistently reliable then everyone would do it and then it would no longer be reliable. The progression rewards need to be reworked to fit in this scheme. I suspect you won't see very many 800s in The Best There Is tournament because the ability to attack continously has been seriously curtailed last patch, and further now that the defense actually has a relatively good chance of winning, you can bet people will start putting teams that give significant problems on defense instead of focusing solely on offense, which further hampers the ability to gain massive amount of points.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The Avenger Elite tournament provides perfect data on the amount of points you can expect to generate with the current shield system. Sure, there are less people in it, but you're not going to find any tournament that comes close to the number of shields generated. The points are generated almost solely from attacking shielded guys, so the fact that the Avenger Elite likely has the highest usage of shields out of any tournament shows that points simply cannot get very high in the current system.

I think the current point spread is reasonable. You can still build a considerable early lead and hit like 800 and it's awfully hard for someone who is slacking to catch up, but if this strategy is consistently reliable then everyone would do it and then it would no longer be reliable. The progression rewards need to be reworked to fit in this scheme. I suspect you won't see very many 800s in The Best There Is tournament because the ability to attack continously has been seriously curtailed last patch, and further now that the defense actually has a relatively good chance of winning, you can bet people will start putting teams that give significant problems on defense instead of focusing solely on offense, which further hampers the ability to gain massive amount of points.

The 4**** covers need to be at 1100-1200 points with the current system. This is what the rewards should look like for progression:

25 - iso (70)
50 - standard token
75- ISO (140)
100- ISO (250)
150- standard token
250-2**token
350- hp (50)
500- ISO (500)
600- ISO (1000)
700- hp (50-100)
800- ISO (2000)
900-2** token
1000-3*** token (like they did with ironman)
1100 (or 1200) 4**** cover


Why? Up to 250 is basically participation rewards. A 2** token and 2 standard to get the new players to have a taste of the rng endorphins and a little ISO to mitigate a little of the boost usage if they had to use boosts to get there. @350 you hit some hp so ppl will start using shields. 150 pt jump, in part because ppl can shield now but its only a mild amount of ISO as now you are progressing into top 45 territory so the real reward is in your placement. @600 more ISO for the same reason except now you are getting top 10s depending on the bracket. @700 you get more hp..why? Because you probably are either good for your placement in the event or want to go for progress rewards. If its the former then you still won't cover yourself for the while event but it gives you enough to maybe warrant using your own hp for a shield as well. @800 we are now in progression reward territory, but if you want ppl.to splurge on shields you make this just something to help them.in paying for boosting. 900 is about has high as you can conceivably push in one go (not really..too high..but just go with it). A 2** is trivial but it has a chance for something good and makes the gap between 700 and 1000 less brutal. 1000 is the first REAL aim for progress reward prize and its a 3*** pack, so any color of a single 3*** character based on rgn. To get here you probably have spent a few hundred hp as well as time and effort. PLUS you force other players to use shields in order to get top placements as now the top scores are needing closer to 1000 to win as opposed to 600-800 as it is right now. Finally, 1100 (or 1200) required probably about 8-15 shields to obtain if you aren't trying to be risky. That's 750 hp if they are 50 and 1500 if they are 100. While a 4**** is 2500 the point is that effort allows you to mitigate some.of the hp.cost, plus it feels more rewarding. That is how it should be built.

Unknown

I agree everyone should be able to see everyone regardless of rank but retaliation points should be worth at least 75% of what you were hit for.

Skip tax is fine but should get cheaper if you dont skip matches to reward your gameplay. Alternatively, skip tax could start free and go up by 1 to max 10 for each skip.

Unknown

Madjam wrote:

I agree everyone should be able to see everyone regardless of rank but retaliation points should be worth at least 75% of what you were hit for.

Skip tax is fine but should get cheaper if you dont skip matches to reward your gameplay. Alternatively, skip tax could start free and go up by 1 to max 10 for each skip.

This is a good suggestion. Taking 10 iso every skip because you guys won't fix your damn system is insulting. Especially when ISO is so damn hard to come by as it is these days. Open your **** eyes and stop being so greedy. ****.

Unknown

Tannen wrote:

*shrugs* Possibly only have it come into effect if the lower player would gain from 30+ points... or some other arbitrary value. That way the lower player can feel awesome when they find a higher player and beat them, the higher player doesn't immediately rage quit when they get knocked down 50 points, and it still allows the interplay between people of around the same level.

So have they said before why they don't just remove point loss entirely (as opposed to just making it a small loss amount)? Tile-matching games aren't exactly about skill or dominance and since gameplay is one-sided (player vs. AI) it makes no sense to me at least why you should penalize someone who is playing the game as hard as they can.

Demiurge_Will wrote that they don't want a gap b/w players who play the most and everyone else, but isn't that pretty much what we have anyway? People who play the most have the best characters (barring the idea that this game is pay to win - that's a separate concern).

Unknown

I used to play the game a lot but after they took out the nerf bat I'm basically signing in to get my daily resupply and screwing off again. It used to be that I could sit for hours playing non-stop and be having fun. Now I can't buy boosts because they got greedy, so my guys are usually done in 1/2 hour or so and this discourages me from coming back until the next day. I should also note that even when I was playing a lot, I still wasn't winning every tournament, I still don't have all 141 level 3*s. What they've done is made it so it's harder for you to win without paying. There was a sort of balance before with a tradeoff between money or time spent playing, now it's simply pay us or you're wasting your time.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

Thanks for the thoughtful suggestion, Tannen.

One of the constraints that we've learned the PvP scoring system has to satisfy is that, above a certain point in the rankings, a very limited number of new points can be created without them being taken from someone else. Otherwise we wind up with a huge points gap between players who play the most and everyone else, making it very difficult to create a reward structure that's interesting and fair to everyone.

While this sounds like socialism, I don't want to argue about that. I do want to say that given people are put into brackets based on when they start, why have people lose points at all. Progression rewards only make sense if you continue to progress. They make sense in PvE. Why not make PvP the same? With the inability to actively defend yourself, it seems strange to have defense affect your score. Who enjoys getting attacked and losing points? I think the correct acronym here is K.I.S.S. No, not the band. It means Keep It Simple Stupid. We use it in rock-climbing when secure anchors become insecure when they are needlessly complicated. I suggest a more Laissez faire tournament structure. (yea, I brought it around. I couldn't help it.)

Unknown

Chimaera wrote:

Tax is always the wrong thing, it punishes players for trying play the game or forcing them to stop because they cannot compete.

What needs to happen is having a compounding reward for not skipping the opponent. Like +20 ISO for each consecutive win capping out to like +200. At least you are getting a good chunk of ISO then for your constant point losses.

That's PERFECT! A Streak Bonus! Reward players who take on greater risk with greater reward - now where have I seen that before.... ...oh yeah, EVERY WELL-DESIGNED GAME EVER!

Unknown

I just needed to say... I took a nap and woke up 2 hours later to find I'd been attacked five times. Three of which I won! I only lost 7 points! I didn't even lose rank. What has happened with the world? Tell me now. Should I go buy a lotto ticket?

EDIT: Knew it was too good to be true. Just lost 100 points in 10 minutes while sitting here eating tater tots...

Unknown

I've come back today, and dipped my toe into the Wolverine tournament. Matchmaking is supposed to be more stable, but I'm having to skip 6 or more times to find someone I have a chance of beating.

Not a chance to "defeat while taking minimal damage" but to defeat at all without using three boosts.

I can only think that the "play style" they are trying to discourage is "winning without paying". You can either pay out to beat an opponent (via skip tax ISO or burning stockpile boosts) or you can close the application.

I don't mean to be hyperbolic, but this is rapidly becoming an uncomfortable situation where "pay to win" isn't being muttered by the discontented; its unashamedly on the table. No, the new elephant in the room is "pay to participate".

Unknown

Chimaera wrote:

Tax is always the wrong thing, it punishes players for trying play the game or forcing them to stop because they cannot compete.

What needs to happen is having a compounding reward for not skipping the opponent. Like +20 ISO for each consecutive win capping out to like +200. At least you are getting a good chunk of ISO then for your constant point losses.

One of the best ideas I have ever read on here

I've seen countless games that just kept swinging the nerf bat (i.e. Diablo 3) which grew the players more and more discontent.
At least some of the developers realized that player don't like to be punished, but rather be rewarded.

Players want to have fun and be rewarded if they take a risk, not punished. Of course with raising the ISO rewards, the players that don't skip are somewhat rewarded, but still it feels like negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement would be much more appreciated and I think the community would've taken this a lot better while the end result would be the same (i.e. leaving the ISO rewards as they were, but reward players that don't skip).

It's a game that is played for enjoyment after all. Of course people who put more time into it, should have an advantage over the players that play less, but it never should feel like work.

Also the main problem isn't that players skip a lot, but rather that the matchmaking still isn't working like it should be. It's never a good idea to try to fight the symptoms, but not the actual root of the problem.

Unknown

Demiurge_Will wrote:

One of the constraints that we've learned the PvP scoring system has to satisfy is that, above a certain point in the rankings, a very limited number of new points can be created without them being taken from someone else. Otherwise we wind up with a huge points gap between players who play the most and everyone else, making it very difficult to create a reward structure that's interesting and fair to everyone.

And that is bad because? Other than people can get progression rewards instead of just looking at them?

Your constraint is to blame for most of the frustration of the PvP and that it lost all the fun -- that points are just shuffled round and round between people without anyone making any progress whatsoever.

Except certainly if he spends on shielding when got a temporary lead that nullifies the retals and extra attacks arriving in minutes to pull him back where he started or even lower.

We used to say "please understand how bad experience it is and it turns fun to sour", but obviously you know it well enough just not give a damn. As fun pvp is not the aim here just some number targets to reach on excel sheets.

the only hope for change is that people tired of the pirhana-fest stops complaining and begging and rather just quit playing this ****.

A player who wins most would win a tournament? What a completely ridiculous idea it is indeed.

Unknown

Skip tax hurts two kinds of people: newer players who can't fight every team they come up against and so must choose their battles carefully, and established players going for higher rewards who don't want to engage in fights that are worth less than 25 points. To my mind, there is also a third type of player who isn't affected by a skip tax: the kind that doesn't engage in PVP.

Why on earth does zero sum math kick in so early in PVP? Once you're above around 300 points, retaliations start to cost more than they're worth and fighting opponents at all can be an exercise in futility. This has given us situations where the majority of players can't break out of the 500-700 point range. What would happen if that zero sum point were moved further out? Would the pack not advance to a new bottleneck point where things might not seem so futile? Skip taxing and shielding might seem more prudent and reasonable if you're striving for a decent 1000 point reward instead of a 2* cover that's been insultingly placed at the 600 progression mark.

And wasn't there talk, like a million years ago, about making progression rewards more attainable? Why has every PVP change instituted since then done the opposite? There was a one-week period after shielding was introduced where progression rewards were easily attainable (maybe too easily, but whatever). After that, every move from development seems to have been designed to make even mid-range rewards less and less attainable.

I am skeptical that encouraging us to fight everyone will improve our scores overall. Hopefully I will be proven wrong.

DD-The-Mighty

Do you have a pvp plan to address when you get into a bracket were the highest the point leaders get to is 700/2000?

If there is a 2* cover that i want @600, i will never get it because I will never beat the max 2* and 3* holders locking up the top 25 spots because they only want 3* covers and up. That last tournament was hell just getting to 400, (i have a 30-40 tier 2* heroes and no max 1* storm or IM35). Your progression system is chancey at best. busted at worse. Got any plans to address that? because funbalancing the **** out of the only 2 damage dealers in the sub 3* character roster sure didn't help.