Design Philosophy: Reward vs Punishment

Unknown

Chuckova wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Chuckova, long time lurker, first time poster.

You might have seen me in such tournaments like Hood lighting round failing to get top 2.

I usually don't post, but the direction of the game is taking a turn for the worst, so I wanted to say something and hopefully help get it back on the right track.



Design philosophy: Reward vs Punishment.


It's usually better the reward those that play they way you want as a developer instead of punishing those that play differently.

Seems like MPQ is making the same mistake that early World of Warcraft made by going the direction of punishment instead of reward.


Blizzard didn't want players playing 24/7 and killing themselves, so they wanted to make players take a break once a while.

So in early WoW beta, they add a 'fatigue system' which punished players who played many hours a day with dimishined xp gain and other penalites. Everyone hated it.

They eventually replaced it with the 'rest system' which is increase xp gain for those that logged off. Everyone loved it.


They both achieved the same result of getting players to take breaks, but the implementation of rewarding rather than punishing is vastly superior and accepting to the players.


In MPQ

If you log in everyday and play one match you get a bonus chest containing some 100-500 xp or 1 health pack or 50 gold.


Could you imagine if it was change, that if you logged in every 24 hours you got nothing, but if you didn't login every 24 hours you would be TAXED 1 health pack or 100-500 xp or 50 gold.

This idea is obviously super terrible, should be burned with fire, and never spoken of again.

Both give reason for player to log in every 24 hours, but one is much superior to the other.


Currently in MPQ there are some examples of punishing instead of rewarding.


1)

The Oscorp Heroic event is implemented poorly by punishing players with the lock out of most characters and forcing the use of a few select heroes, most of whom have no boost bonus.

A hero pool similar to the Hulk and Ares event would have been much better, where every hero is available, but a few select heroes are boosted so players are encouraged and rewarded for using these heros.

"Captain America has 10x boost and will make this event easier? Sure I'll pump 10-20 levels into him." That is the feeling you want players to have.

Not, "Oh god I need to use my unboosted level 6 Captain America for this event. Because everyone else is locked out. Time to play something else for the next 5 days"

You need to give players the OPTION to use the heroes you want them to use, not FORCE them by locking everyone else out and alienating a large percentage of your player base who either don't have those heroes,

or don't have the levels for those heroes.


This event also punishes grinders with increased mob levels of 230 max for every match, and punishes people who don't play a lot with Zero rubber banding.

It's pretty obvious some tweaking needs to take place to achieve a finer balance of grinding and rubber banding.

I Agree with most of the points but people have to realize that this Oscorp tournament is a story tournament and as such, in the comics, if magneto was never there in the storyline, how can he be there in the game? Instead, they should instead make sure that the tournament is fair for the people that play. Also we cannot really compare this game with WoW because in WoW, you actually HAVE to pay to play so the WoW players are paying customers. I guess in their mind since it's a free game, they can do whatever they want and we should just be happy that the game exists in the first place.

2)

Future implementation of -10 iso skip tax.

There was a brief moment where this was actually live for like 5 mins of game time a few days ago. The skip button was pink and had "Skip -10" on it if I remember correctly.

Just seeing it, I had an instant reaction of disgust.


It would be wiser to reward players not to skip constantly rather punishing them with a skip tax.

I remember someone suggesting some kind of streak bonus which breaks on skip or lose.

This bonus has to be good enough so there is a decision to skip and break the streak or not.

But not so good that skipping is no longer a option.

The max streak bonus also can't be too long because after a skip it should be somewhat quick to rebuild it back to max bonus.


*note: numbers are not set in stone, it's just to give you a rough idea of how it would work.

2 streak: + 5 iso bonus
3 streak: +10 iso bonus
4+ streak: +20 iso bonus per win


now there is a small incentive to keep your streak alive and not skip. But players still have the option to skip if need be.

Also it has a side benefit of gently leading players to play on different stages.

Since if I get a hard match up on the forest stage, to keep my streak I have to play on a different stage. So it's like you get 2 free skips with stage changes before you have to break your streak with an actual skip.

This also gives a small incentive for players to level other heroes to take advantage of these 'free' stage skips in some tournaments to keep the streak alive.


with this system, the average iso gain per match will increase from 105 iso currently to a range of 105-125 iso.


Which is similar to what it would have been after the developers added the 100 iso and 200 iso rewards which makes it (70 + 100 + 140 + 200) / 4 = 127.5 iso,

with -10 skip tax and average of 2 skips per match it goes down to 107.5 iso per match. 2 skip per match is probably a very low estimate given the current match making system for many players.


In the end I don't think this tax would reduced the number of skips as much as you would expect.

But, it for sure will annoy and frustrate a lot of the player base.

Because sometimes you just need to push that skip button for one reason or another outside your control, MMR hell, 0 or 1 point reward, +50 lvls above me, and it's just so shiny! I need to click it!

I believe the streak system(reward) is superior to the skip tax system(punishment) for the players, and in the end achieves what the developers want more effectively, less skipping overall.


So to the developers and designers of MPQ, for the future changes, I hope you ask yourself if this feature is rewarding the player or punishing the player.


Reward the players and they will reward you back... with money!, buckets full of money! and less forum hate, which is probably more valuable at the end of the day.

Just kidding, money is awesome!

That skip tax thing is horrible. The game punishes me for skipping away from a strong player while punishing me even more for fighting that strong player if I don't have the skip tax to pay. On the other hand, it is just 10 iso and we can get 20 iso by playing a prologue mission which is SUUUPER easy. But since it's just SUUUUPER easy, why don't they just award us 10 iso for skipping and save us a few seconds of battling right? I mean, it's sort of the same thing. Unless they really want to take the time out of our day by making us play mundane games with mundane prizes all day long. After all, who are we to demand anything? We didn't pay for jack squat.

Instead of having that skip tax, why not award a player for fighting stronger players? That ensures that if you win you were probably strong enough to beat the computer AI AND the team and so must be given a suitable reward for having the tenacity to win (especially since you ONLY have 1 try). You should get ISO equal to the combined level of the covers. Fighting against 3 level 100 covers? Get 300 ISO. Too much you say? Ok then have the new scoring system be maximum iso earned is equal to the sum of all the levels while the other reward is sum of all levels divided by 2. So we can get a ton of ISO to start levelling up our characters as well so we can fight stronger players.

Most of my fights are 85 thor, 85 wolv, 100 someone else. That's a max of 270 iso i can earn as opposed to a piddly 140. Even if I get half of that pointage i still get around 135 iso which is 5 points away from the max i could've gotten as it stands right now.

Clintman

Good ideas

Unknown

OP nails this topic masterfully. Honey will always succeed where vinegar does not.

A couple of thoughts though...

In regard to the "streak bonus", you need a carrot out there for people to strive for. What's my incentive for streaking past 4, or 6? Put a small "ironman" endurance reward, say +100 iso, at a 10 streak, as a one time per streak reward. Keep a streak counter on the screen to remind players of the bonus that would be lost by skipping. Perhaps the reward could be more significant. Would players want to spend boosts in an attempt to overcome difficult fights to preserve a long streak bonus for a chance at a coveted prize?

On the other hand, the "streak bonus" does not solve the problem of people mass skipping to find high value targets at the end of a tourney. What is to discourage a player mass-skipping to find high-value targets at the end of a tourney and ride the last 30 minutes to victory? Perhaps this could be mitigated by a degree by awarding "free skips" to players who achieve a certain streak progression awards. Allow the player 3 skips by default (enough to clear each circle once to "reset" the PvP board), and then award +1 skip for every 3-fight streak. This would benefit players who play early and often by allowing them to stockpile skips for the end of a tourney, while countering the late-comers who join in the last hour and look exclusively for 35+ point fights to leapfrog everyone by depriving them of needed skips.

dark jurai

Both of these suggestions are awesome.

Unknown

Great post. Hope the devs read this instead of hundred or so negative posts below!

Unknown

If the devs do this, I would like to get paid for the ideas. At least in ISO. 50,000 iso will do just fine.

Unknown

The problems with limiting the hero pool come from differences in power levels. In the Oscorp's case the issue is goon control. the best 3 star heroes for goon control are in the available pool, but the best 2 stars are not. At one star, I'd argue that Juggernaut does more saves than anyone else, and he is not legal either. This provides even more negative reinforcement than usual, as not only are people stuck playing with suboptimal teams, but they also know other people get to play with their optimal teams.

This is compounded by the fact that the other tournament of the day is also about having Thor maxed out. So if you do not have a Spiderman or a level 85 Thor, a mid level player will get middling rewards at best. That after we had a full week of 'get really bad rewards unless you have patch, who will the winners more patch for the next day'.

Positive reinforcement and a well defined path of advancement are key to customer retention. A team made mostly of 1* should be participating in tournaments with the expectation of some 2* rewards towards a 2* team. 2* teams should be landing either very desirable 2* covers or 3* covers.

Unknown

hibikir wrote:

That after we had a full week of 'get really bad rewards unless you have patch, who will the winners more patch for the next day'.

A decent proportion of the people who were competing for final main placement paid relatively little attention to the subs once the main was up because of the points disparity. Nevertheless, I agree they could really stand to do something about grindmonkies binning 3*s by the dozen while more sedate players would still be pleased to get their hands on one. I probably could (and should) have built most of a 5/5/3 Patch by now out of discards. If the game would let me decline those and default them to the next ranked player, I'd do it, but I don't really see Demiurge being up for that.

Spoit

Twysta wrote:

This is exactly the kind of things the devs need to listen to.

People like misguided have been saying that for months, since the skip tax was first mentioned

Unknown

And I thought only like 3 people saw my streak bonus suggestion before it was buried in unfathomable amounts of complaining. Good stuff.

Twysta

For those end of the tournament skips... instead of having an iso bonus... or even better, alongside a small iso bonus(!) you could also get extra points per win on your streak. So every win nets you a +1 modifier (But PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't mean that takes extra points away from the defending player). That would absolutely most definitely keep a lot of people from skipping and would help curb the wrath of losing points from retaliations.

So after 10 wins in a row you'd be making an extra +10 points so instead of getting something like 15 points from a weaker opponent you get 25, while the defending player only loses the 15. At least then even when/if he retaliates you're not losing so many points.

And then if they don't go all weird with wanting people to get more points to reach progress rewards That should help everyone. Right?!

Twysta

Spoit wrote:

Twysta wrote:

This is exactly the kind of things the devs need to listen to.

People like misguided have been saying that for months, since the skip tax was first mentioned

These are dark times we live in my friend

Unknown

I like the idea of streaks, but I also think a skip tax is not bad if it is reasonably implemented.

Unknown

Chuckova wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Chuckova, long time lurker, first time poster.

You might have seen me in such tournaments like Hood lighting round failing to get top 2.

I usually don't post, but the direction of the game is taking a turn for the worst, so I wanted to say something and hopefully help get it back on the right track.

Design philosophy: Reward vs Punishment.

This post was perfect. I was thinking the same stuff about the Oscorp Heroic, but that's some very clever thinking regarding replacing the "skip tax" idea with a "streak bonus". They keep putting up barriers to playing and it needs to stop, but you've gone further with the reward idea. Sucking ISO out of the economy with a skip tax is just daft, arguably there is too little ISO going around as it is, which is why people are stuck using the same heroes they have already levelled as it will take a couple of weeks of playing (at least, a couple of weeks when a fun event like Hunt or Hulk is on) to get the ISO to level a new character up to a useful level.

Seriously, following up Thick as Thieves (which caused people to feel that playing was a grind or just too hard and not rewarding) with Heroic Oscorp (which makes it hard for people to play it all, thanks to the terrible choice of heroes, lack of boosted heroes compared to the enemy levels, requiring Daredevil who most people don't have or at best have 1 cover of and making him the only boosted character- oh, did we mention that his abilities are useless against goons, making him an awful choice as the only boosted character even if everyone had him? Gah) is just mindbogglingly bad design philosophy. They really need to just give us a feel good "ISO and covers for everyone!" kind of tournament where we kick enemy **** at high speed so we can feel good about the game again while they sort out their design problems.

Unknown

good ideas. but the dev want listen to player's suggestion unless its lead to profit.any ideas to award players mostly won't be heard. it's just mostly stick, less carrot. u want carrot? ope ur wallet

Tannen

Another couple of suggestions...

- if we're going to implement the pay to skip option, give the paid iso to the person that has just been skipped.
- as an alternative to iso, make the "skip" option cost tournament points and award those points to the player skipped -- like what "forfeit" used to do when there were three chances to win.

Cheers...

Kolence

Great post. I heartily endorse both proposals.

Unknown

Chuckova wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Chuckova, long time lurker, first time poster.

1) ... give players the OPTION to use the heroes you want them to use, not FORCE them by locking everyone else out. This event also punishes grinders with increased mob levels of 230 max for every match, and punishes people who don't play a lot with Zero rubber banding. ...

2) ... reward players not to skip constantly rather punishing them with a skip tax. I believe [a] streak system(reward) is superior to the skip tax system(punishment). ...

I'd find it hard to believe they didn't have an ulterior motive for selecting these characters. They probably want to see what strategies are used. I bet they want to see if anyone uses Invisible Woman.

Why is skipping so important that 10 iso a skip is such a burden?

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

Chuckova wrote:

Hi everyone, I'm Chuckova, long time lurker, first time poster.

1) ... give players the OPTION to use the heroes you want them to use, not FORCE them by locking everyone else out. This event also punishes grinders with increased mob levels of 230 max for every match, and punishes people who don't play a lot with Zero rubber banding. ...

2) ... reward players not to skip constantly rather punishing them with a skip tax. I believe [a] streak system(reward) is superior to the skip tax system(punishment). ...

I'd find it hard to believe they didn't have an ulterior motive for selecting these characters. They probably want to see what strategies are used. I bet they want to see if anyone uses Invisible Woman.

Why is skipping so important that 10 iso a skip is such a burden?

For one thing, if someone attacks me and takes 35 points off my score, the last thing I want to do is attack them back for 15 and give them another shot at me. They've proven they can beat me already, so I just gotta live with that and move on. And that goes for any opponent that's fielding 3 characters higher than mine but worth fewer points, which after a certain point seems to be almost every opponent.

Secondly the skip feature sucks. If I see a guy with an amazing roster and decide I have to pass him up, it's very likely that I'll see him show up again within 2 skips. I'm forced in to skipping due to poor matchmaking, charged ISO for it, and it just brings up the same 6 people every time.

Unknown

RockMonster wrote:

For one thing, if someone attacks me and takes 35 points off my score, the last thing I want to do is attack them back for 15 and give them another shot at me. They've proven they can beat me already, so I just gotta live with that and move on. And that goes for any opponent that's fielding 3 characters higher than mine but worth fewer points, which after a certain point seems to be almost every opponent.

Getting to the top, and pushing higher, is risky indeed. When you're 200 points higher than everyone else, most people are going to be 15 points or less.