New Shielding/Retal Mechanic

IceIX

Wanted to chime in here with some info. This is a bug related to a change that *shouldn't* have had user facing impact that would have also reduced server impact on the retaliation system. So this is unintended behavior. The upside is at least that the original intended change worked!

We'll work on getting a fix out soon, but we also want to make sure that backing out the other change doesn't muck something *else* up, so this may hang around for a little. Apologize for the inconvenience!

drcassino

Many thanks for the clarification. Glad it's a bug, and it'll be fixed.

wymtime

drcassino wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

It's server lag. Server is late reporting a loss (losses) that already happened before you shielded.

Those are some slow servers - I just got a retal 3 1/2 hours after shielding. Certainly possible: time will tell. Anyone else noticing this, or is it just me?

2 out of the past 4 PVPs I have lost points after shielding. One time it was for 100+ points the other was for 53.

IceIX

We made a pass at fixing this, let us know if you're still seeing retal nodes while shielded. Not saying that the fix shouldn't work, but then again, this bug shouldn't have existed in the first place.

Buret0

IceIX wrote:

Wanted to chime in here with some info. This is a bug related to a change that *shouldn't* have had user facing impact that would have also reduced server impact on the retaliation system. So this is unintended behavior. The upside is at least that the original intended change worked!

We'll work on getting a fix out soon, but we also want to make sure that backing out the other change doesn't muck something *else* up, so this may hang around for a little. Apologize for the inconvenience!

I've been getting pages of hits when I'm unshielded (was sitting unshielded in SHIELD (lol) after hitting 2,000), but I'm only getting 2 retaliation nodes. Obviously I can't see if it was because I was hit by the same two people over and over, but it has been happening a lot in both the Dr. Doom and Shield PvP events.

nwman

Re getting hit after shielding

It's lag. Soon as you shield look at the leaderboard to force a server update.

It has happened to me twice and it hurts. This should help.

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

We made a pass at fixing this, let us know if you're still seeing retal nodes while shielded. Not saying that the fix shouldn't work, but then again, this bug shouldn't have existed in the first place.

IceIX, are there any plans to update the current Shield Hop mechanism for high end Versus so that outside communication (such as LINE, etc) gain such an advantage in a net point increase than those that have to rely on spending large amounts of ISO for skips to find a reasonable opponent that yield points? Right now, for those who do not want to download another app (i get it, some people talk in real life with their friends while playing the game, that's fine) have to spend more ISO, and check often to get a decent opponent, and quite sadly, sometimes we cannot find a target worth more than 6-8 points. Others who purposely allow being attacked (communicating when they remove shield) are causing point inflation, and force others to use the same methods to be as competitive. Is this considered intended game play and how you want high end Versus to be played?

Possible Solutions (not saying they are any good but throwing it out there):

Allow targets to be discoverable even while shielded, so that they risk the chance of being hit when they remove shield. But most importantly, let people gain points off of them, so they can catch up without waiting for the thumbs up from the shielded player. Allow me to spend X Amount of ISO and automatically give me a decent target (above 10-15 points?).

Thanks.

Unknown

Had a bounce while # within the last and no retal node came up.

So far so good.

marc

IceIX

sagapo wrote:

IceIX wrote:

We made a pass at fixing this, let us know if you're still seeing retal nodes while shielded. Not saying that the fix shouldn't work, but then again, this bug shouldn't have existed in the first place.

IceIX, are there any plans to update the current Shield Hop mechanism for high end Versus so that outside communication (such as LINE, etc) gain such an advantage in a net point increase than those that have to rely on spending large amounts of ISO for skips to find a reasonable opponent that yield points? Right now, for those who do not want to download another app (i get it, some people talk in real life with their friends while playing the game, that's fine) have to spend more ISO, and check often to get a decent opponent, and quite sadly, sometimes we cannot find a target worth more than 6-8 points. Others who purposely allow being attacked (communicating when they remove shield) are causing point inflation, and force others to use the same methods to be as competitive. Is this considered intended game play and how you want high end Versus to be played?

Possible Solutions (not saying they are any good but throwing it out there):

Allow targets to be discoverable even while shielded, so that they risk the chance of being hit when they remove shield. But most importantly, let people gain points off of them, so they can catch up without waiting for the thumbs up from the shielded player. Allow me to spend X Amount of ISO and automatically give me a decent target (above 10-15 points?).

Thanks.

It's more likely (although don't take this as *any* statement of development intent or planning) that we'd do more to break shield hopping as a mechanic than to shore it up through adding complexity to the current shield mechanic. Something like resetting all queued nodes on breaking shields or the like so that it's actively dangerous to try to hop.

We constantly discuss shielding and how Versus scoring and matchmaking works for all forms of players, casual, meta-gamers, and otherwise. It's an extremely hot topic, and decisions on changes there are very heated since any changes there affect every single one of our high time playing players, paying and non alike. So even saying something like "we'd break shield hopping" isn't a statement of fact, since we know darned well that it has ripple effects across everything else, so it may very well not be the right course of action.

So yes, we've got ongoing discussions. No, we have nothing to announce planning/change-wise.

simonsez

IceIX wrote:

It's more likely (although don't take this as *any* statement of development intent or planning) that we'd do more to break shield hopping as a mechanic than to shore it up through adding complexity to the current shield mechanic. Something like resetting all queued nodes on breaking shields or the like so that it's actively dangerous to try to hop.

From a developer's standpoint, if people want to spend 1000HP on shields to score 2,000 points, why would you want to discourage it? I'm not one of those people who ever do that, but I'm curious why this is seen as a bad thing from a business perspective.

IceIX

simonsez wrote:

IceIX wrote:

It's more likely (although don't take this as *any* statement of development intent or planning) that we'd do more to break shield hopping as a mechanic than to shore it up through adding complexity to the current shield mechanic. Something like resetting all queued nodes on breaking shields or the like so that it's actively dangerous to try to hop.

From a developer's standpoint, if people want to spend 1000HP on shields to score 2,000 points, why would you want to discourage it? I'm not one of those people who ever do that, but I'm curious why this is seen as a bad thing from a business perspective.

We don't really make much of our money on Shields, so it's not something we'd feel too bad about breaking. It's also likely that that spending would just shift elsewhere for most of those users. Or they'd just adjust to a rougher shield hopping environment and spend anyway by battling twice instead of 3 times with the 3rd "battle" being spend in skips. But it is another thing to consider, yes.

Edit: That's not to say that we don't *like* people spending on Shields. Everything adds up, and we do like to eat. Just that if it's a choice of a little bit of revenue versus a better overall game experience for most players...

simonsez

IceIX wrote:

Edit: That's not to say that we don't *like* people spending on Shields. Everything adds up, and we do like to eat. Just that if it's a choice of a little bit of revenue versus a better overall game experience for most players...

I think that last part is the part I'm still not getting. How does the experience get better for most players if you change shield-hopping? I think most players like having 70 point targets available. The poster you originally responded to was basically saying he wants to get in on it too, without having to deal with Line. You change shield-hopping, and then we all end up with the "it's too hard to find worthwhile targets" scenario that he was complaining about. I guess you could argue that we'd all be on equal footing, but we'd all be equally miserable and frustrated as well.

fmftint

IceIX wrote:

simonsez wrote:

IceIX wrote:

It's more likely (although don't take this as *any* statement of development intent or planning) that we'd do more to break shield hopping as a mechanic than to shore it up through adding complexity to the current shield mechanic. Something like resetting all queued nodes on breaking shields or the like so that it's actively dangerous to try to hop.

From a developer's standpoint, if people want to spend 1000HP on shields to score 2,000 points, why would you want to discourage it? I'm not one of those people who ever do that, but I'm curious why this is seen as a bad thing from a business perspective.

We don't really make much of our money on Shields, so it's not something we'd feel too bad about breaking. It's also likely that that spending would just shift elsewhere for most of those users. Or they'd just adjust to a rougher shield hopping environment and spend anyway by battling twice instead of 3 times with the 3rd "battle" being spend in skips. But it is another thing to consider, yes.

Edit: That's not to say that we don't *like* people spending on Shields. Everything adds up, and we do like to eat. Just that if it's a choice of a little bit of revenue versus a better overall game experience for most players...

Making things even more cutthroat, which is what breaking shield hopping would do, wouldn't make for "a better overall game experience"

IceIX

simonsez wrote:

I think that last part is the part I'm still not getting. How does the experience get better for most players if you change shield-hopping? I think most players like having 70 point targets available. The poster you originally responded to was basically saying he wants to get in on it too, without having to deal with Line. You change shield-hopping, and then we all end up with the "it's too hard to find worthwhile targets" scenario that he was complaining about. I guess you could argue that we'd all be on equal footing, but we'd all be equally miserable and frustrated as well.

Sure, but you'd also all be in a brave new world where shield hopping was functionally useless, so it'd create a different meta. 2000 point highs wouldn't really be possible since no one could make it that high in the heap. Which means that accordingly, the 30-50 some odd attacks in hops by each player to get that high wouldn't have ever been in the system either. Sure, maybe 20 of those attacks were coordinated against other shielders, but the other 10 or so were against open targets of opportunity. So those attacks, attendant points loss, retals, etc, wouldn't exist. It'd make for a fundamentally different high end for the majority of players that aren't using out of game chat for coordination.

That's still a simplistic way of looking at things though, since it doesn't account for griefers who'll still do the equivalent for teh lulz, snipers that'll hit high scorers for the heck of it, spenders that'll pay anything for a couple more points... All of which also affect that meta, and could actively make it worse if we made said change. Hence why this discussion isn't a cut and dried "Oh, if we just do this, everything will be "better". Comtraya!

simonsez

IceIX wrote:

[Which means that accordingly, the 30-50 some odd attacks in hops by each player to get that high wouldn't have ever been in the system either. Sure, maybe 20 of those attacks were coordinated against other shielders, but the other 10 or so were against open targets of opportunity.

Like I said, I'm not one of "those guys", so hopefully some will chime in, but my understanding is that none of their attacks are "open targets of opportunity". Aside from it being too hard to luck into a decent target when you're at the top of the leaderboard, the last thing you want to do is leave someone with a retaliation node open who might end up hitting you after you've climbed another 500 points.

I'm just speaking as one of the players who never engages in high-end shield-hopping, and I can say that their existence makes my play experience much better and far less frustrating. The worst PvPs are the ones where you end up in a dead shard that has none of the top alliances. You can't find worthwhile targets, and you get hit constantly at much lower score levels.

IceIX

simonsez wrote:

IceIX wrote:

[Which means that accordingly, the 30-50 some odd attacks in hops by each player to get that high wouldn't have ever been in the system either. Sure, maybe 20 of those attacks were coordinated against other shielders, but the other 10 or so were against open targets of opportunity.

Like I said, I'm not one of "those guys", so hopefully some will chime in, but my understanding is that none of their attacks are "open targets of opportunity". Aside from it being too hard to luck into a decent target when you're at the top of the leaderboard, the last thing you want to do is leave someone with a retaliation node open who might end up hitting you after you've climbed another 500 points.

I'm just speaking as one of the players who never engages in high-end shield-hopping, and I can say that their existence makes my play experience much better and far less frustrating. The worst PvPs are the ones where you end up in a dead shard that has none of the top alliances. You can't find worthwhile targets, and you get hit constantly at much lower score levels.

Anecdotally, there are definitely attacks of opportunity. There have been many a time that I've gotten hit by hoppers that are hanging out in one of the BCs once I've hit the 1K/1.3K mark.

morph3us

IceIX wrote:

We constantly discuss shielding and how Versus scoring and matchmaking works for all forms of players, casual, meta-gamers, and otherwise. It's an extremely hot topic, and decisions on changes there are very heated since any changes there affect every single one of our high time playing players, paying and non alike.

Just wanted to say thank you, IceIX, for feeding back even little things like this. I know you can't say anything substantive, but it really helps to make us feel like we're a little bit in the loop. I think, sometimes, players feel like they're playing a different game from the devs, and it's comments like this that let us know that the same stuff that worries us, worries you too.

TheOncomingStorm

First, everyone knows mpq wants us to buy health packs, not shields. (Nod to Mouser. Sorry, if not on Line, you missed gold. )

Secondly, I am not opposed to changes in shields at this point. I would be hesitant in the past, but MPQ has built up some credibility points with the scoring and progressive changes made following the mmr change. I am more inclined to trust them to make tweaks in a timely fashion if they made a change to shields and the results were not the best for vets.

No one wants to say it because we're making off like bandits, but pvp is broken. It's not as glaring right now because most top scoring players don't need t5 or t25 covers. As long as players hit the progressives to get their 4* cover and get season points, they're content for the most part.

However, pvp is now more science than art. Realistically, anyone with patch/hulk can reach high scores on the right shard and good shield hopping techniques. Essentially, players join pvp follow steps 1, 2, 3. The biggest problem is figuring out how long you can hop for before you will get hit by the hoard.

It seems like we've stopped trying to solve the problem of picking shards based on points than what end time is most convenient. Pvp is now coop.

In the greatest irony, pve is competitive, pvp is where players can play and many can get the best rewards without competing against anyone. IMO this ideally should be the opposite, non-competitive pve and competitive pvp.

I guess as long everyone continues to get their hand out, shield hopping will be a player favorite. I also guess if you want genuine pvp you have to play pve or LR.

Der_Lex

Personally I think shield hopping is already risky enough. You want to get at least two matches in per hop if you don't want to spend a fortune in shields, but taking even a few seconds too long means that you'll lose a lot more points than you gain. It's far from something that guarantees success.

Stax the Foyer

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

In the greatest irony, pve is competitive, pvp is where players can play and many can get the best rewards without competing against anyone. IMO this ideally should be the opposite, non-competitive pve and competitive pvp.

I guess as long everyone continues to get their hand out, shield hopping will be a player favorite. I also guess if you want genuine pvp you have to play pve or LR.

As you alluded to, that's a direct result of the reward structure. Where the ranking awards are more valuable than the progression awards, you get competition. Where the progression awards are more valuable than the ranking awards, you don't.