Changes To Scoring In Versus Events

Buret0

ArkPrime wrote:

You remind me of every bad player in every multiplayer game I've ever played. In Magic guys like you called people who did well "netdeckers" because they used optimized decklists. In MOBAs you're like the guys that get crushed and complain that people in the game are nerds with no life, and that you're feeding because you don't have 8 hours to play the game every day like all the losers you're playing with. In counter strike you'd be the one calling people "no lifers", telling them to get laid before ragequitting.

In Call of Duty, you would be the one using a tactical insertion to respawn feed your buddy on the other team.

"I'm not cheating, I'm just using a tactical insertion to intentionally come back in the same place over and over to feed my buddy and let the other team win, all the while giving my buddy a huge killstreak and upping his KDR."

Can you do it? Yes.
Does it make you a tinykitty
? Yes.
Should that kind of gameplay get you banned? Yes.

tanis3303

ArkPrime wrote:

No. People were still finishing around what they always finished.

Agreed. Remember, 95% of players that participated in the boosting parties DID NOT KEEP THE POINTS. They sat unshielded after receiving the 1K cover and allowed those points to be distributed throughout the slice to anyone that saw them. Then they'd climb back to an equilibrium point of usually around 800 from cleaning up the retal nodes and hop to what ever score we desired from there.

sc0ville

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

It's not about where people finish. It's about how many hit the progressives.

Also, the beneficial part of this change has not even commenced yet.

Can we go ahead and throw quotation marks around the word beneficial in that sentence?

"potentially less negative" is about as much credit as I'm willing to give it until we see it in action or get a more in depth explanation from the devs.

Unknown

Buret0 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

You remind me of every bad player in every multiplayer game I've ever played. In Magic guys like you called people who did well "netdeckers" because they used optimized decklists. In MOBAs you're like the guys that get crushed and complain that people in the game are nerds with no life, and that you're feeding because you don't have 8 hours to play the game every day like all the losers you're playing with. In counter strike you'd be the one calling people "no lifers", telling them to get laid before ragequitting.

In Call of Duty, you would be the one using a tactical insertion to respawn feed your buddy on the other team.

"I'm not cheating, I'm just using a tactical insertion to intentionally come back in the same place over and over to feed my buddy and let the other team win, all the while giving my buddy a huge killstreak and upping his KDR."

Can you do it? Yes.
Does it make you a ****? Yes.
Should that kind of gameplay get you banned? Yes.

In almost any other game, they'd have just banned everyone who was against this change for being a win trader and the forum reaction would be "Look at those noobs who didn't even cover up their tracks engaging in an activity that'd get you banned in virtually any competitive game in the world".

People should at least pretend to cover their tracks first.

Wonko33

tanis3303 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

No. People were still finishing around what they always finished.

Agreed. Remember, 95% of players that participated in the boosting parties DID NOT KEEP THE POINTS. They sat unshielded after receiving the 1K cover and allowed those points to be distributed throughout the slice to anyone that saw them. Then they'd climb back to an equilibrium point of usually around 800 from cleaning up the retal nodes and hop to what ever score we desired from there.

LIKE ROBIN HOOD!! neat!

aesthetocyst

sc0ville wrote:

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

It's not about where people finish. It's about how many hit the progressives.

Also, the beneficial part of this change has not even commenced yet.

Can we go ahead and throw quotation marks around the word beneficial in that sentence?

"potentially less negative" is about as much credit as I'm willing to give it until we see it in action or get a more in depth explanation from the devs.

Combined with the sliding discount on defensive losses, the increase in pts won (assuming cap is 75) will be beneficially awesome at 0, meh by 500, gone at 800, and outright harmful at 1k. Past 1k? Well-selected 1-fight hops.

If it's a good slice, these ranges would slide upwards. Would also slide upwards if the playerbase would collectively relax and take a more leisurely approach, q and hit 15min later, rather than playing as if life and limb depended on setting a speed record.

whitecat31

Buret0 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

You remind me of every bad player in every multiplayer game I've ever played. In Magic guys like you called people who did well "netdeckers" because they used optimized decklists. In MOBAs you're like the guys that get crushed and complain that people in the game are nerds with no life, and that you're feeding because you don't have 8 hours to play the game every day like all the losers you're playing with. In counter strike you'd be the one calling people "no lifers", telling them to get laid before ragequitting.

In Call of Duty, you would be the one using a tactical insertion to respawn feed your buddy on the other team.

"I'm not cheating, I'm just using a tactical insertion to intentionally come back in the same place over and over to feed my buddy and let the other team win, all the while giving my buddy a huge killstreak and upping his KDR."

Can you do it? Yes.
Does it make you a ****? Yes.
Should that kind of gameplay get you banned? Yes.

Talk about hostile.

In my opinion, this post is basically an "Ad Hominem" attack with a straw man argument. In the past I would have down voted this for how offensive it is, and the nature of the discussion. We don't need analogies that insult people nor fallacies to bolster our points.
I would ask where the volunteer moderators are, but I have a sneaky feeling some of the volunteer moderators were "VETS" who play(ed) this game and might be moving on, because the game is not as fun for them.
At least nobody is breaking Godwin's Law.

sc0ville

whitecat31 wrote:

Buret0 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

You remind me of every bad player in every multiplayer game I've ever played. In Magic guys like you called people who did well "netdeckers" because they used optimized decklists. In MOBAs you're like the guys that get crushed and complain that people in the game are nerds with no life, and that you're feeding because you don't have 8 hours to play the game every day like all the losers you're playing with. In counter strike you'd be the one calling people "no lifers", telling them to get laid before ragequitting.

In Call of Duty, you would be the one using a tactical insertion to respawn feed your buddy on the other team.

"I'm not cheating, I'm just using a tactical insertion to intentionally come back in the same place over and over to feed my buddy and let the other team win, all the while giving my buddy a huge killstreak and upping his KDR."

Can you do it? Yes.
Does it make you a ****? Yes.
Should that kind of gameplay get you banned? Yes.

Talk about hostile.

In my opinion, this post is basically an "Ad Hominem" attack with a straw man argument. In the past I would have down voted this for how offensive it is, and the nature of the discussion. We don't need analogies that insult people nor fallacies to bolster our points.
I would ask where the volunteer moderators are, but I have a sneaky feeling some of the volunteer moderators were "VETS" who play(ed) this game and might be moving on, because the game is not as fun for them.
At least nobody is breaking Godwin's Law.

Your response was basically Goebbelsesque!


(completely sarcastic, but I couldn't resist the invitation.)

aesthetocyst

sc0ville wrote:

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

It's not about where people finish. It's about how many hit the progressives.

Also, the beneficial part of this change has not even commenced yet.

Can we go ahead and throw quotation marks around the word beneficial in that sentence?

"potentially less negative" is about as much credit as I'm willing to give it until we see it in action or get a more in depth explanation from the devs.

Combined with the sliding discount on defensive losses, the increase in pts won (assuming cap is 75) will be beneficially awesome at 0, meh by 500, gone at 800, and outright harmful at 1k. Past 1k? Well-selected 1-fight hops.

If it's a good slice, these ranges would slide upwards. Would also slide upwards if the playerbase would collectively relax and take a more leisurely approach, q and hit 15min later, rather than playing as if life and limb depended on setting a speed record.

tanis3303 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

No. People were still finishing around what they always finished.

Agreed. Remember, 95% of players that participated in the boosting parties DID NOT KEEP THE POINTS. They sat unshielded after receiving the 1K cover and allowed those points to be distributed throughout the slice to anyone that saw them. Then they'd climb back to an equilibrium point of usually around 800 from cleaning up the retal nodes and hop to what ever score we desired from there.

.....and there were players with relatively weak rosters who ran up from 500 to 1100 in an hour or two, in the first 12 hours of events. Hmmm.

We had a few guys, by few I mean 2-3 out of 100, myself included, who would start early, slog up to whatever progression we wanted, and then dump pts to allies down to a equilibrium point, then farm from there, and continue to give tiny boosts to friends. It was fun, a nice break, it helped people out. My alliance isn't nearly coordinated enough for any massive boosting campaigns, still got its placements the hard way, except the boosting just described.

My impression is that the more organized alliances, in reaction to the accumulated changes from shield cooldowns to MMR and visibility shifts, saw the increased discount on pts lost on offense and took the hint. The previous changes made the older tactic of bouncing off your friends too expensive and risky.

Yes, each retreat kills your lineup 1/3rd at a time. BUT, it also resulted in terrible toons getting a lot more (sacrificial) play

aesthetocyst

sc0ville wrote:

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

It's not about where people finish. It's about how many hit the progressives.

Also, the beneficial part of this change has not even commenced yet.

Can we go ahead and throw quotation marks around the word beneficial in that sentence?

"potentially less negative" is about as much credit as I'm willing to give it until we see it in action or get a more in depth explanation from the devs.

Combined with the sliding discount on defensive losses, the increase in pts won (assuming cap is 75) combined with increase in pts lost, will be beneficially awesome at 0, meh by 500, gone at 800, and outright harmful at 1k. Past 1k? Well-selected 1-fight hops.

If it's a good slice, these ranges would slide upwards. Would also slide upwards if the playerbase would collectively relax and take a more leisurely approach, q and hit 15min later, rather than playing as if life and limb depended on setting a speed record.

tanis3303 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

No. People were still finishing around what they always finished.

Agreed. Remember, 95% of players that participated in the boosting parties DID NOT KEEP THE POINTS. They sat unshielded after receiving the 1K cover and allowed those points to be distributed throughout the slice to anyone that saw them. Then they'd climb back to an equilibrium point of usually around 800 from cleaning up the retal nodes and hop to what ever score we desired from there.

.....and there were players with relatively weak rosters who ran up from 500 to 1100 in an hour or two, in the first 12 hours of events. Hmmm.

We had a few guys, by few I mean 2-3 out of 100, myself included, who would start early, slog up to whatever progression we wanted, and then dump pts to allies down to a equilibrium point, then farm from there, and continue to give tiny boosts to friends. It was fun, a nice break, it helped people out. My alliance isn't nearly coordinated enough for any massive boosting campaigns, still got its placements the hard way, except the boosting just described.

My impression is that the more organized alliances, in reaction to the accumulated changes from shield cooldowns to MMR and visibility shifts, saw the increased discount on pts lost on offense and took the hint. The previous changes made the older tactic of bouncing off your friends too expensive and risky.

Yes, each retreat kills your lineup 1/3rd at a time. BUT, it also resulted in terrible toons getting a lot more (sacrificial) play

Buret0

whitecat31 wrote:

Buret0 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

You remind me of every bad player in every multiplayer game I've ever played. In Magic guys like you ... In MOBAs you're like ... In counter strike you'd be ....

In Call of Duty, you would be the one using a tactical insertion to respawn feed your buddy on the other team.
...

Talk about hostile.

In my opinion, this post is basically an "Ad Hominem" attack with a straw man argument. In the past I would have down voted this for how offensive it is, and the nature of the discussion. We don't need analogies that insult people nor fallacies to bolster our points.
I would ask where the volunteer moderators are, but I have a sneaky feeling some of the volunteer moderators were "VETS" who play(ed) this game and might be moving on, because the game is not as fun for them.
At least nobody is breaking Godwin's Law.

You did see that it was a direct reply to how Arc was characterizing the other forumite's comments in respect of different games, right?

What I did was turn his comments around on him and accurately portrayed his intentionally losing boosting in the same light as he was.

Normally I would have let this go, but Arc was being fairly aggressive in his responses in this thread. Having lost the ability to simply down vote this conduct, I felt like I had to step in and say something about it.

Edit:

...and I'm not sure that you know what a strawman argument is. I in no way set up someone else's position and then destroyed it. I characterized the behavior of retreat boosters in relation to other games that have had issues with people intentionally losing. That's not a strawman.

orionpeace

Buret0 wrote:

You did see that it was a direct reply to how Arc was characterizing the other forumite's comments in respect of different games, right?

What I did was turn his comments around on him and accurately portrayed his intentionally losing boosting in the same light as he was.

Normally I would have let this go, but Arc was being fairly aggressive in his responses in this thread. Having lost the ability to simply down vote this conduct, I felt like I had to step in and say something about it.

And yet he failed to use a single direct insult or include any expletives. You, however, felt it was required.

TheOncomingStorm

jackstar0 wrote:

ArkPrime wrote:

You don't get to decide how people should play this game.

Firstly, I get to do whatever I want.

Secondly, I can judge as much as I want. People judge me and I'm cool with that. Just like the lord tacitly implied was the way to do it.

Thirdly, I wasn't deciding how people should do anything. I was suggesting that people take a moment of introspection and consider that when they use the word "work" in relation to an entertainment they might want to consider what that's about.

Lastly, carry on, gamer.

Meh

GothicKratos

Temporarily locking this topic. No color this time boys, I'm in my phone.

GothicKratos

First thing's first, please read this thread before continuing further posting, especially in this particularly heated discussion. Ignorance will not be an excuse in this thread, as there has been ample time between my locking and this post being posted for there not to be any posts in the works. I won't be combing back through this thread to hand out any demerits or anything, nor will past behaviour influence any decisions - it will strictly be a new slate approach. No more nasty behaviour. No more snark. No more name calling. If you want to have a discussion, you'll do it respectfully, or you won't. As a final note, for those of you that like to play to the role of victim, if you're adding gasoline to the fire by extending the arguement, you're just as guilty as your persecutor, and you will be punished also.

====

Now, I'll get on to my response on the topic at hand.

====

This change should turn out to be a net gain for the majority of the player base. The equilibrium point (i.e. where you can stay unshielded without mass attacks) will likely stay about the same. Increased point intake will make getting to the equilibrium point easier, and in general, it will make getting most progressions easier.

However, it will make getting the high end progressions higher. Definitely. More points per match means more people can more quickly hit higher point totals to be able to see you and hit you, this is especially so when you're 700+. I don't think it will be that much harder for players to hit 1k, though, because the majority of players actually hitting that mark, I would hedge a bet are forumites already coordinating outside of the game to hit high marks via truces, coordinated climbs, etc.

To those of you dismissing this change because "not a lot of people were doing it". You're wrong. I know at least four or five people in my overarching Alliance was doing it, and our top group is t100, so I feel like it was a lot more widespread than a couple dozen people. Even if it was, they're artificially injecting points into the ecosystem without using any resources. This is bad for the game's economy. Yes, it can definitely be argued that the increased amount of points in the slice is good for players, because it makes getting to higher progressions easier for the whole slice. However, "good for the player" is not synonymous with "good for the game". How are the developers supposed to balance Progression Rewards to a proper scale if all the slices are inflated with points that shouldn't even exist?

If anything, you're hurting a lot of people to gain for yourself. You're entitled to do that if you want, sure, because you're not breaking any rules. You are, however, abusing a broken system, and you don't have a right to complain when something broken is fixed. Even if it's fixed with a Band-Aide. You're mad because your 'easy button' is gone.

There was a specific analogy that ArkPrime made that I found pretty entertaining. He compared boosting to "netdecking" in TCGs (which is a process of looking up a decklist of usually a professional players card list for a deck and just running it). That's a really bad analogy though. Netdecking is like only playing PvP with the best characters - because that's what that is; using your best guys as efficiently as possible. Netdecking is generally looked down upon because it's deemed as lazy and uncreative. I generally laugh at this assertion. Playing something competitive inherently means you're hamstringing yourself to only playing the very best. That's what it is. I do think netdecking is lazy, and ultimately, you can generally tell if a player is using a deck they tested and built themselves, or if they pulled someone else's list by how they play. That's why it's like only using the top tier guys in our game, because that's pretty much exactly what it is. Our forum is practically netdecker central, frankly. All the "best build" stuff, et al. That's exactly what that is.

However, boosting; boosting is a different beast. Boosting is like botting in an MMO. It's not technically cheating, no, but it's certainly unethical and [/i]unfair[/i], as you're getting resources for little to no effort that other players have to be attentive for.

My two cents. (Also, topic is unlocked.)

Pylgrim

simonsez wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Seriously, what would you recommend to make players that dislike playing the game start liking it?

They could start by undoing 80% of the changes that have been made in the past few months.

You jump to the dev's defense in just about every thread where people are voicing gameplay complaints, and yet you act befuddled as to why people are disgruntled. Maybe next time, before mounting your white horse, take a moment to read and absorb the comments that you're arguing with.

Dude, it's precisely because it's almost impossible to wander the forums for more than 30 seconds without absorbing the ungodly amount of toxicity generated by knee-jerkers that I feel the need to be add a bit of objectivity and a different point of view to that of the embittered "vet" that has accumulated a huge bias and digs and digs in every little change or feature until finding something to complain about. 80% of the changes? I challenge you to make a list that support that statement and actually includes ALL the changes made in the past few months.

Now, going back to the point of reading and absorbing, if you actually read my post and the post of the person I was answering to, you'll see that I was talking about the very act of playing a match, which is something that people exploiting shortcuts to the top seem to want to avoid.

(edited to account for the previous post)

fmftint

Please stop calling it an exploit, the devs specifically avoided calling it an exploit, how you feel about it is irrelevant.

The real issue is the PvP experience has gotten so bad, mostly to the developers treating symptoms and side effects instead of looking for a cute. Fix this, break that, fix that, break something else... The entire system has gotten to the point it needs to be scrapped completely

This is what pvp in MPQ has become

Unknown

fmftint wrote:

Please stop calling it an exploit, the devs specifically avoided calling it an exploit, how you feel about it is irrelevant.

The real issue is the PvP experience has gotten so bad, mostly to the developers treating symptoms and side effects instead of looking for a cute. Fix this, break that, fix that, break something else... The entire system has gotten to the point it needs to be scrapped completely

Amen.

Buret0

Intentionally losing to feed or boost someone else is so counter to the point of this game that I can't believe that anyone would come in and defend the act of doing it.

Any changes that deal with the issue of loss feeding are welcome. However, I do not believe that this solution was the answer, as it seems to create as many problems as it solves.

Making defensive losses more costly is not the answer... we would call a law with this approach overbroad. Yes, it addresses the issue of people trying to game the system, but in doing so it also catches and negatively affects the people who aren't trying to game the system.

I'll give it some time to see if the approach is as negative as I think it is, but it pretty much guarantees that you are going to need to finish each PvP shielded. Get some points, take big hits, recover those points quicker (because of the point boost), take big hits (because your losses are now more costly than before), make one last big rally, shield to protect yourself from any huge snipes. Maybe attempt a late hop.

Ebolamonkey84

Buret0 wrote:

Intentionally losing to feed or boost someone else is so counter to the point of this game that I can't believe that anyone would come in and defend the act of doing it.

Any changes that deal with the issue of loss feeding are welcome. However, I do not believe that this solution was the answer, as it seems to create as many problems as it solves.

Making defensive losses more costly is not the answer... we would call a law with this approach overbroad. Yes, it addresses the issue of people trying to game the system, but in doing so it also catches and negatively affects the people who aren't trying to game the system.

I'll give it some time to see if the approach is as negative as I think it is, but it pretty much guarantees that you are going to need to finish each PvP shielded. Get some points, take big hits, recover those points quicker (because of the point boost), take big hits (because your losses are now more costly than before), make one last big rally, shield to protect yourself from any huge snipes. Maybe attempt a late hop.

Are you not already shielded at the end of PVP? I got to 800 in Divine Champions to get my Rags blue, didn't shield, and got knocked down to mid 500s.