Idea for PVP

XandorXerxes

This spawned after reading that whole freaking thread on promoting players with high scores. I felt like my idea wasn't entirely on-topic, so I'm starting a new one. Sorry if I'm mistaken. Basically the idea that someone else determines how well I can score doesn't sit right with me (have to see high-value targets to progress well at higher scores, can only do that when they're unshielded - please for the love of Moonstone don't start another Line argument). The goal was to find an idea that wouldn't profoundly change the current meta but instead make PVP more about personal strategy and less about whether you're in a bad shard or everyone else is asleep.

Idea time:

Make players invulnerable for X minutes after breaking a shield (a third-state, such as "recently shield-less" so to speak), and make all players targetable at all times.

Players with stronger rosters can capitalize more in the same time frame as players with weaker rosters (or weaker players). Shield cooldowns are still a thing, so a newbie can't shield forever and climb to 1300 points. No coordination needed to try to get placement rewards, just time and shield-money. This may inflate scores a bit more than D3 wants, and so progression rewards might have to be shifted upwards. Players who use defensively-weak teams to hop quicker may get rewarded, but in theory they'd have to use a meta-strong team to get to a place to hop those last bits with the weaker team in the first place and at that point it becomes a reward on roster diversification / boost to people who have been playing longer and collected more covers / spent more iso.

It does mitigate sniping to an extent (though if you go too long, snipers are still going to get you), so that probably takes a little bit of the "alliance feel" out of it when it's harder to take revenge for a buddy - but it can also take away the reason sniping was supposedly called for in the first place, so that's a wash to me.

No need to spend time hoping to find good queues or waiting for those top-10ers to unshield unless you just want to try to bring their score down, in which case that's your time and effort you're spending at your discretion, and not a requirement to actually make progress.

I'm sure there's a downside that I haven't considered, so lay it on me.

El Satanno

I'll jump in first.

The biggest thing is that all progression would go out the window. We already have completely insane scoring. If you allowed shielded hits, I seriously think you'd see PvP scores breaking 5 digits. Just to see if it could be done. Where do you make your benchmarks if a decent 3* roster can already double the max progression with a little work?

The game has been operating with the same standard set of events since inception. It's sadly not bloody likely to change in a significant way. Ever.

Unknown

How about stripping the points awarded for hitting a shielded player.

Instead of getting that 50...you get 18 or 16 or whatever

simonsez

Splarne wrote:

How about stripping the points awarded for hitting a shielded player.

Instead of getting that 50...you get 18 or 16 or whatever

What problem does this solve exactly? You'd be depressing scores significantly, and making progressions much, much more difficult to get. Last I checked, I don't see any threads complaining that the game is making 4* covers too easy to get.

simonsez

XandorXerxes wrote:

Basically the idea that someone else determines how well I can score doesn't sit right with me

Then let's just make every battle worth 50 points, regardless of the person's score. It'd be great being able to hit half-covered 3*s and get the same amount of points I get for hitting a max boosted KP/GT combo.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

Splarne wrote:

How about stripping the points awarded for hitting a shielded player.

Instead of getting that 50...you get 18 or 16 or whatever

What problem does this solve exactly? You'd be depressing scores significantly, and making progressions much, much more difficult to get. Last I checked, I don't see any threads complaining that the game is making 4* covers too easy to get.

It would remove the coordination between a mass of people. The underlying message about the complaint with utilization of LINE is that getting that 4* IS easier for those making use of it.

It was just an idea.

elvy75

Back when shields were introduced for the first time in the game you could que shielded players, which inflated scores, as players were climbing by hitting just those ones that are shielded in their t10, thus avoiding retaliations on their climb. It was fast discarded as a really bad idea, and shielded players were removed from the pool. Going back to it is not something devs would want.

simonsez

Splarne wrote:

The underlying message about the complaint with utilization of LINE is that getting that 4* IS easier for those making use of it.

Sorry, but making it much harder for everyone, even those currently not using Line, isn't much of a solution.

donietsche

Splarne wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Splarne wrote:

How about stripping the points awarded for hitting a shielded player.

Instead of getting that 50...you get 18 or 16 or whatever

What problem does this solve exactly? You'd be depressing scores significantly, and making progressions much, much more difficult to get. Last I checked, I don't see any threads complaining that the game is making 4* covers too easy to get.

It would remove the coordination between a mass of people. The underlying message about the complaint with utilization of LINE is that getting that 4* IS easier for those making use of it.

It was just an idea.

and even if that's the case (it isn't; as someone else noticed in the other thread, you really just need to put some effort and logic in what you do to get there... and ofc you need a decent roster), the score inflation allows people not using LINE (or the igc, telegraphic messages, telepathy, or any other mean of communication to share intel) to hit 1.3.

If you have only one target worth 1.3 in a slice, without coordination among players, you will hardly be able to hit 1.1 or 1.2: unless YOU start building up points for everyone else, by attacking random folks for 20 points and then shielding; then rinse and repeat... and then crossing your fingers, hoping to not gangraped during your next hop, because you're one of the fattiest targets out there.

As long as there are build pointers, or player coordinating in order to score more efficiently, you (lone wolf) can play and act as a free rider*. As soon as those cooperative tactics are removed, you won't have anyone to leech point from, and much more aggressive competitors fighting you in the 1k (or lower).

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_rider_problem

elvy75

Splarne wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Splarne wrote:

How about stripping the points awarded for hitting a shielded player.

Instead of getting that 50...you get 18 or 16 or whatever

What problem does this solve exactly? You'd be depressing scores significantly, and making progressions much, much more difficult to get. Last I checked, I don't see any threads complaining that the game is making 4* covers too easy to get.

It would remove the coordination between a mass of people. The underlying message about the complaint with utilization of LINE is that getting that 4* IS easier for those making use of it.

It was just an idea.

Scores would go down, and significantly, as everyone would just play in last few hours in order to push for as much as they can and shield. There would be no hopping, as who would want to be snipped to death while hopping, since now they would be worth high points unshielded and petty points while shielded. This would mean that only 270 rosters would be able to reach top progression rewards, as they are the only ones with rosters scary enough to be skipped by majority of player base. In the end this wouldn't fix the problem you are wishing to address, as it wouldn't eliminate utilization of LINE or FB chat, it would just switch the way they operate.

XandorXerxes

simonsez wrote:

XandorXerxes wrote:

Basically the idea that someone else determines how well I can score doesn't sit right with me

Then let's just make every battle worth 50 points, regardless of the person's score. It'd be great being able to hit half-covered 3*s and get the same amount of points I get for hitting a max boosted KP/GT combo.

That would be drastically different from what I'm proposing. What I'm proposing would still put those with top rosters on top (in theory) and make those who want top scores have to fight those with top rosters. Someone could get to the top fighting a bunch of 1-5 point battles against weaker teams with lower scores, but if they only have say 6 minutes to do it I don't see where that's worthwhile for them.

elvy75 wrote:

Back when shields were introduced for the first time in the game you could que shielded players, which inflated scores, as players were climbing by hitting just those ones that are shielded in their t10, thus avoiding retaliations on their climb. It was fast discarded as a really bad idea, and shielded players were removed from the pool. Going back to it is not something devs would want.

I did not realize this, thanks. I assumed some score inflation would occur (thus my comment about raising the progression rewards), I just didn't think it would be problematic enough to be an issue. I figured the ability to climb wouldn't change on a large scale (especially if you get targeted more as you're doing better) because you're still going to have your equilibrium point from your initial climb. Your second climb would still be limited by your ability to take on the better teams (mostly) without burning through your health packs. Those players that are going to spend the maximum number of shields in a PVP will post crazy-high scores comparatively because they can see others doing the same thing now, but when you're conflating the scores of people who are already in the top few percent of players I don't think that's a huge deal - at that point they've got all the progressions, they're fighting for placement / bragging rights. Might as well let them see how far they can get against each other until they run out of shields or packs... which would make getting some of those progressions a lot easier after all.

That said...

simonsez wrote:

Splarne wrote:

How about stripping the points awarded for hitting a shielded player.

Instead of getting that 50...you get 18 or 16 or whatever

What problem does this solve exactly? You'd be depressing scores significantly, and making progressions much, much more difficult to get. Last I checked, I don't see any threads complaining that the game is making 4* covers too easy to get.

If you stripped points of hitting a shielded player to say, 25-33 max (slightly beneath the break-even point) but also allowed queuing shielded targets then you've offset (at least partially) the depression of scores from the point suppression with the increase in scores from higher node availability. The players who complain about seeing nothing but single-digit point targets at the top ranks when everyone else is shielded now have the chance to hit someone, but if the points are below the retaliation threshold they'd have to really want it to go for it to use it while climbing.

You can also define the length of the "recently shielded" invulnerability state as a function related to their score or even the points gained from hitting a shielded opponent. Say (1500-score)/100 points, 0 if score >1500 (10 minutes for a person at 500, 5 minutes for a person at 1K, none for anyone over 1500) or (1500-score)*0.05, 10 if score >1250 for the max number of points a shielded opponent is worth (50 points max at 500, 25 at 1K, etc.).

Again - not trying to change the meta of hopping to rewards that are above your sustainable level, I'm mostly attempting to make things like shards or everyone above you being shielded matter less. Someone in shard 3 with the same roster and skills in shard 1 should, in theory, be able to reach the same score with the same effort. In reality that won't be the case, but it doesn't need to be as bad as it is. A player shouldn't have to check in every 15 minutes to see if he can queue a high point total just to progress, only if he wants to truly excel.

Now I'm muddling all of the ideas in the thread, but surely there's some idea in here somewhere that's at least sparking some way to improve things?