What's going on with the PVP difficulty!?

Unknown

Not really sure what to focus on at this point.

PvE is all but gone for me atm. The original node enemy levels, community scaling, increased enemy health, looong recovery times, and the enemy T-U use have not only taken most of the fun out of it, they've made it virtually impossible. I just attempted one of my essentials, marked as "trivial," and wiped out my whole team, with all three opponents still standing.

I used to aim for T150. I'm now aiming for T300, a 7 day commitment for a 2* card or a token that will in all likelihood award me with a 2* character that I don't need.

My recent experience in PvP hasn't been much better (all pretty much captured by posters in this and other threads), but aside from the DDQ, I'm quickly running out of reasons to open the game. I hate complaining, but I really wish more of this game was fun, as opposed to feeling so much like work...

DBC

DrNitroman

Personnally I found that PvP keep going harder and less fun.

Initially I was not a great fan of PvP, but with the help of this forum, I understood how it works and began to score modestly. When I settled my 3* roster I became skilled enough to score 800 on a regular basis without shield (and without real problem). I never really enjoy shield-hopping so I scored 900 and above only sometimes and 1100 only once (August 2014, I took a screenshot, it was for a yellow Falcon ).

Since then, my average score kept decreasing. To be honest, it's partly due to a partial loss of dedication (472 days player). But it's mostly due to the recent changes to MMR. Before changes, I was cruising from start to 500 against 2* teams. It might be unbalanced, but now I face 3* developped teams since the start. Now I'm transitioning to 4* so I could face such teams but from the start it's kind of tough.

Currently I tend to aim to 575 and often call it a day after 300. The fights are longer (health changes), tougher (weekly buffs) since the start (MMR changes). As a result, it's not possible to do lot of matches so you can't afford to lose:
Consequently I spend lot of iso to skip unwanted teams and to buy AP boost to reach 300-500!

I hope the devs are still thinking to do some tweaks that could bring some fun back, currently I play PvP mostly as an habit, to enter top 100 and contribute to top 250 ranking of my alliance... but I could lose this habit

TL;DR: the current level of difficulty means less fun for me, yes.

Vohnkar

With the recent changes I'm finding more dificult to rank top100 too. I tried She-Hulk event, and after 7 characters deads and 0 Health Packs left I had around 75-100 points. I've been unable to put myself to that pain again, even having some 140+ I find some matches really hard to win.

I've been hitting 4k every season with quite ease, with one or 2 events to be able to not play, but this season I'm not sure if I'll get to 3k.

PvE is just a no Go for me, I just can't play PvE, too much commitment, 7 days of clearing every 8 hours to get decent rewards, with insane scaling... A shame, cause I love the game, but as we progress it seems like we are punished all the time and is our second job, I work too many hours (and at least I'm getting paid), to get home a "work" some more.

I was pretty casual, but now I just play DDQ and litle more until they change things.

I usually pay 17€ to get some roster slots every 2-3 months, for now neither I or my father are planning to do so, we can't touch 4*s and play less every day (forced by the game).

Hoping for a change soon

Unknown

Here's what I still see as the single biggest problem with PVP:

You're 10 points below a progression reward. You queue up a 25 point match, win, and come out of it having been hit for 20 points. Now you're five points below. You queue up another 25 point match, come out of it, you're hit twice for 40 points. You keep doing this, run out of health packs, and you never cross that progression point.

In a game with a well-designed PVP system, you'd get the progression reward and then get knocked down. Losses would factor in after it resolved your current match.

This is a game with a terrible PVP system. Things can make it less bad, but PVP will not be fun unless they fundamentally rework the system. It's a terrible design for a gameplay mode, in part because how you do in PVP is only about 50% - at most - up to you, and the rest up to chance and other players. If it was a side mode that would be fine, but that's how most of the covers are distributed now.

They need to fundamentally rethink PVP. It needs to be unrecognizable. It's just an awful, awful thing right now.

Unknown

Ben Grimm wrote:

Here's what I still see as the single biggest problem with PVP:

You're 10 points below a progression reward. You queue up a 25 point match, win, and come out of it having been hit for 20 points. Now you're five points below. You queue up another 25 point match, come out of it, you're hit twice for 40 points. You keep doing this, run out of health packs, and you never cross that progression point.

In a game with a well-designed PVP system, you'd get the progression reward and then get knocked down. Losses would factor in after it resolved your current match.

This is a game with a terrible PVP system. Things can make it less bad, but PVP will not be fun unless they fundamentally rework the system. It's a terrible design for a gameplay mode, in part because how you do in PVP is only about 50% - at most - up to you, and the rest up to chance and other players. If it was a side mode that would be fine, but that's how most of the covers are distributed now.

They need to fundamentally rethink PVP. It needs to be unrecognizable. It's just an awful, awful thing right now.

We've been making this suggestion practically since the game started, and they still haven't implemented it. The only rational I can think of for not doing as you, I, and just about everyone else, has suggested time and again is because of either complex coding issues or they want to make it harder to get rewards, which IMO is pretty stupid. Getting rewards / lucky pulls is one of the primary draws about this game that keeps you playing. When you're artificially hindered from getting them, it makes you frustrated and if it happens frequently enough or on a regular basis, eventually you just quit.

SnowcaTT

theHappyDance wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

Here's what I still see as the single biggest problem with PVP:

You're 10 points below a progression reward. You queue up a 25 point match, win, and come out of it having been hit for 20 points. Now you're five points below. You queue up another 25 point match, come out of it, you're hit twice for 40 points. You keep doing this, run out of health packs, and you never cross that progression point.

In a game with a well-designed PVP system, you'd get the progression reward and then get knocked down. Losses would factor in after it resolved your current match.

This is a game with a terrible PVP system. Things can make it less bad, but PVP will not be fun unless they fundamentally rework the system. It's a terrible design for a gameplay mode, in part because how you do in PVP is only about 50% - at most - up to you, and the rest up to chance and other players. If it was a side mode that would be fine, but that's how most of the covers are distributed now.

They need to fundamentally rethink PVP. It needs to be unrecognizable. It's just an awful, awful thing right now.

We've been making this suggestion practically since the game started, and they still haven't implemented it. The only rational I can think of for not doing as you, I, and just about everyone else, has suggested time and again is because of either complex coding issues or they want to make it harder to get rewards, which IMO is pretty stupid. Getting rewards / lucky pulls is one of the primary draws about this game that keeps you playing. When you're artificially hindered from getting them, it makes you frustrated and if it happens frequently enough or on a regular basis, eventually you just quit.

It would be pretty easy for them to code in "defensive losses don't take away points, period". Lots have suggested that as well - of course it costs them in shields I suppose.

This would really benefit grinders and hit those that time it out just right. They would have to adjust progressions (probably up a bit) after awhile - but right now they need to adjust progressions down a bit, and they haven't done so after having enough data to show where they should go.

ballingbees

Hitting the top rewards is always going to be difficult, whichever way the system is changed. Because they have stated they always monitor the proportion of players hitting each reward tier, the points to reach each tier will be shifted if necessary to maintain this proportion. You'll always have to be better or play harder than 95% of the rest to earn the top 5% rewards.

Without defensive losses, PVP essentially becomes a grindfest royalrumble. And since without points losses, everyone will be posting high scores, so the progression rewards will have to be shifted up accordingly, because of the reason above. Wait.. that sounds awfully identical to the PVE system, just that your targets now are not based on refresh timers, but at the mercy of MMR. I just don't see anything to look forward to in such a system, which was why I quit competitive PVE in the first place.

I'm ok with the shield system for now. What appears to be a glitch is I seem to still be able to be queued up even after shielding. I would shield, then get notified later of being attacked by the same player 3 times. If his first attack is already blocked in time by my shield, how was it possible that he still get to queue me up for his second and third attacks?

Mawtful

Can we get a quarantine forum for cognitive bias threads?
I just played a match where I killed a max XFW + max IF + featured Vision (maybe he was just a loaner, I don't recall) in my first turn due to match-5's and cascades. I was able to kill XFW without using a single power against him (well, I guess the bonus damage from my own Vision blue was factored in). The game is not out to get you.

puppychow

theHappyDance wrote:

We've been making this suggestion practically since the game started, and they still haven't implemented it. The only rational I can think of for not doing as you, I, and just about everyone else, has suggested time and again is because of either complex coding issues or they want to make it harder to get rewards, which IMO is pretty stupid. Getting rewards / lucky pulls is one of the primary draws about this game that keeps you playing. When you're artificially hindered from getting them, it makes you frustrated and if it happens frequently enough or on a regular basis, eventually you just quit.

I agree that the order of point gain versus losses need to be changed, but I doubt D3 will implement such a change. Most of the recent changes have been geared lengthening pvp matches, so that the chance of being hit and losing points will increase. Look at the health boost to many characters, the drop in AP boost from 6 to 4, and most importantly the drop in point banding and allowing a zero point value player to target someone with 500+ points and grab 49 points. The point of these changes is to sell more health packs and shields, not for the sake of improving pvp game play.

puppychow

ballingbees wrote:

I'm ok with the shield system for now. What appears to be a glitch is I seem to still be able to be queued up even after shielding. I would shield, then get notified later of being attacked by the same player 3 times. If his first attack is already blocked in time by my shield, how was it possible that he still get to queue me up for his second and third attacks?

I believe there's a 5 minute time lag between a player shielding and being removed from possible matchup queues.
In your example, if an attacker can finish the first 2 matches in 2 minutes each, he could line you up a third time and hit you still.

Unknown

PvP isn't worth my time or energy anymore. I tried again; joined whatever event ended Sunday 8am est. I fought 2 matches, ranked 81st. Progression awards are useless. It's an even worse grind than it was months ago. Fighting buffed up characters or fighting with buffed up characters doesn't enforce any roster diversity. Roster diversity is when you CHOOSE to use different teams.

Konman

Someone needs to do something pseudo-scientific. Keep track of AI cascades per match as compared to your own. Perhaps only "unearned" cascades, not derived from special abilities, but from a normal match and the resulting "random" drops. Just have a plus/minus system of how many matches in a given PVP event where the player or the AI has more "unearned" cascades. Would be interesting to see what the results might be.

Unknown

MikeHock wrote:

PvP isn't worth my time or energy anymore. I tried again; joined whatever event ended Sunday 8am est. I fought 2 matches, ranked 81st. Progression awards are useless. It's an even worse grind than it was months ago. Fighting buffed up characters or fighting with buffed up characters doesn't enforce any roster diversity. Roster diversity is when you CHOOSE to use different teams.

I agree. I've stated numerous times that the only way they'll ever fix PvP is to shift over to making all the covers progression rewards (i.e. 3x 2*'s, 3*'s and 2x 4*'s in sequence), and basically having people compete for extra HP / ISO instead. Get rid of boosts. Get rid of health buff nerfs. Get rid of shields. GET RID OF POINT LOSS ON DEFENSIVE MATCHES. The only way you encourage roster diversity is if you make it so that people can complete PvP for progression rewards on their own time rather than bum rushing, and making it so there's no penalty for experimenting with novel match-ups (beyond the obvious being down a character or two / needing to wait a little before you continue playing before continue). Get rid of the game's tendency to match people with identical teams, and increase the number of nodes so there're more options for each match, like in SHIELD SIM, but have all of them refresh after each match instead of just 1. Make the matchups people see dependent on their point level (rather than their roster strength), and make the point value based on the strength of the enemy team (rather than the point value of the enemy team) crossed against the player's current point value.

There's really no good reason in either PvP or PvE to enforce competitive rewards, as it's just an artificial constraint to try and push extra health pack sales, shields, and cover purchases.

Put a cap on roster slot prices at something reasonable (like $5 in game currency), and make everything else reasonably obtainable through progression, and I think a lot more people will pony up cash since there'll be a much better perception of value for their money. Roster slots are permanent. Sure it'll alienate some of the F2P players, but it would be far, far better for the health of the game. I'm currently at 71 roster slots, so assuming I'd bought all of them outright at that price, it'd have cost me $185 in-game currency. I've spent maybe a little more than that, but not much more, over the course of my playtime here, but I think it's far more reasonable to have a modest fee like that to keep playing (make people pay if they want to keep collecting characters), but remove the monetization from the rest of the game experience so people don't feel like they're being nickel-and-dimed and that it's just a money-grab.

At a certain point it's not reasonable to expect the people who are willing to spend some modest amounts of money to shoulder the entire financial burden of the game. Make it so that roster slots are the only thing you really have to spend money on and the game becomes no longer P2W and instead become pay to keep collecting new characters, which in my mind would be a far more enjoyable gameplay experience for everyone involved. People who still wanted to compete for top placement could get some nice ISO and HP bonuses, but otherwise wouldn't prevent anyone else from being able to progress. If you were short HP and needed space for characters, it would be trivial to buy more roster space, instead of enforced artificial scarcity.

Unknown

I think they could make PVP a lot more enticing with one small change - if they didn't count defensive results for progression points (with placement rewards as is). It would give a lot of people incentive to play PVP. This way you can play for your own progression prizes even if you get hammered on defense and your placement sucks.

Unknown

bustapup wrote:

OK so I have a pretty good, powerful roster that includes maxed out xforce, Elektra and invis woman on about 165. I have over 10 maxed out 3* including Cyclops, scarlet witch, mystique, black panther, psylocke, hulk, GSBW etc so its by NO means a shabby line up.

I much prefer playing PVP and used to get up to the 1k mark almost every time but NOW I am struggling to get over 600 without REALLY hammering my health packs and HP to buy more and using almost every member of my line up.

what the hell is going on?
The AI is getting cascades that are so ridiculous I just end up quitting early on because I know there's no way I'm ever going to win and every board seems biased to them. I played against blade and mystique today and the board was FULL of pink and reds when incidentally I needed blacks and greens and blues really. Mystique ended up doing shapeshift about 3 times and each time the tile was in a location impossible for me to reach and the same can be said for blades keep your enemies closer. When I do those abilities however they're usually dispatched off the board 2 turns later.

Surely this cant just be me experiencing this but I am quickly losing patience with it as I just don't enjoy playing when I'm losing 5 matches straight against teams I really should be beating.

You are certainly not alone in this. The last week has been a nightmare for me. Matches that were easy in the past, suddenly, cost me 1-2 health packs out of nowhere, mostly because of the AI cascades. Crazy cascades used to happen once every 4-5 matches; now it's several times in each game. It has also happened to me to get a board with nothing to match, and my choice creates a 4-match for the AI. Once the cascades stop I am left again with nothing except Team-Up matches. Next turn, the same thing. It gets so ridiculous I rage quit quite a lot these days.

Unknown

People call PvP progression but they're really not that. Although various mechanism inject points into the system, they're still basically a % ranking. Your rating of 775 corresponds to being say the top 15% percentile as a function of your playing time/roster/skill, and fact that you're not getting to 800 is because 800 is the top 10% percentile which you do not belong in which is why you always get knocked down before you hit 800. The PvP progression rewards are really more like additional placement awards, since placement award would be top 0.2%, 1%, 2%, etc and your PvP rating is also an indicator of which tier you fall in. Sure, there's some wiggle room but you'll quickly find out that it's not nearly as much as you think.

So the first question to ask D3 is that are those progression rewards really progression or are they always intended to be something extra for those who place well.

Malcrof

Just something i wanted to share. I joined the last time spot for the Colossus PVP, still 2 days to go.. started rank 28 when i joined.. no team i could beat.. so i just left it alone, didn't fight anyone.. had already hit my 10 pack for the season, so really was only planning on going for the token..

Checked it again many hours later.. i am now rank 476, and those big teams have been replaced by seed teams!!! I didn't skip anyone, hadn't fought anyone.. but they just appeared!

Bman66

The problem I have with the new way of the pvp is having 10 buffed characters at all times.... D3 this makes the game stupid.. Every single pvp I play in I start of having to fight through a sea of level 350 /240 characters. Stop trying to soak up our money on health packs and make the game fun for people again. Not very many changes they have made in this game have made anyone actually happy.

Mawtful

puppychow wrote:

ballingbees wrote:

I'm ok with the shield system for now. What appears to be a glitch is I seem to still be able to be queued up even after shielding. I would shield, then get notified later of being attacked by the same player 3 times. If his first attack is already blocked in time by my shield, how was it possible that he still get to queue me up for his second and third attacks?

I believe there's a 5 minute time lag between a player shielding and being removed from possible matchup queues.
In your example, if an attacker can finish the first 2 matches in 2 minutes each, he could line you up a third time and hit you still.

I've been getting hit multiple times throughout the duration of all shield types - even during the last 5 minutes before the shield is due to expire - and often by the same person hitting me not just 3 times but 5 or 6 times. Other times, I'll put up a shield and not get hit once, or even not shield at all over a long duration - such as overnight - and also not get hit at all. I think there's a good chance that visibility is based more on points than anything else. Shields will prevent point loss, but perhaps only block your visibility to other players within a similar point range. Players outside that range will still be able to find you (eventually).

Unknown

I agree that pvp and the game in general is just getting no fun. The current setup really encourages people to game the system cause if you play the way it's intended you progress at a snails pace or not at all. If they want to go the way of longer matches and diversity then I totally agree pvp needs to be totally revamped. I feel something is wrong when you have all the people on this thread pretty much in agreement on the frustration of pvp but top alliances have 17/20 people over 1k and 5-7 over 1.5k kudos to them for finding a successful way to game the system but I feel it just points to how it's broken.