Suggestion : Banking pts instead of shielding

Pinko_McFly

This is to suggest an alternative to the shield mechanic currently used in PVP.
I am just throwing this out there and trying to keep it short, but I welcome all feedback from others.

During the course of the PVP you would have a finite amount of times in which you could 'Bank' your PVP score for a set amount of HP. To keep the devs from losing all of their income from shielding, I propose something like:
1st bank - 75 HP
2nd bank - 150 HP
3rd bank - 300 HP
4th bank 600 HP (or 500 if that's too high).

Once you bank your score, that's the lowest your points can drop for that PVP.

I see the following pros in such a scenario:

1. Increase in available targets for everyone, no one is ever shielded so no one disappears an available target. More high value targets are there for everyone no matter their skill level or current score.
2. Create a more competitive top end as the high scorers cannot hide behind a shield. They could hide behind a banked score, but all the other players have an opportunity to hit them for points to catch up.
3. Reduce the advantage gained by outside communication that allows player to know when a high score is unshielded so that can queue them up for later.
4. Give users more control over when they can play, if a player wants to push to a certain level then bank, they can come back when it is conveniant for them to push again instead of within 3, 8, or 24 hours.

The major set-backs I see are

1. Decrease of revenue to devs, which I tried to address with the increasing cost of banking.
2. Possible uniform increase in scores which may require the rewards threshold to be worked out.

Thoughts anyone?

Phumade

Pinko McFly wrote:

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1st bank - 75 HP
2nd bank - 150 HP
3rd bank - 300 HP
4th bank 600 HP (or 500 if that's too high).

Once you bank your score, that's the lowest your points can drop for that PVP.

So lets assume I climb to 500, I bank my score for 75hp. Does my score go back to zero? or remain in 500? If I continue climbing to 1K, I bank my score again. Is the banked score now 1K? or 1500?

The main issue is that you need a way to accumulate points. Even the strongest players can't stay above 1200 unshielded for more than 10 min without inviting attacks.

Work out some additional examples, so that its easier to follow your suggestion. But I suspect that once you bank your score at 1200, it becomes exponentially difficult to get to 1300, 1400 etc..

What ever mechanic you suggest, should not discourage people from playing past the eq point

Pinko_McFly

Your points would remain at where you bank, like a perma shield at that score for the remainder of the PvP. Going higher will open you up to risk. In regards to your example, if you then banked at 1000, it would be only 500 more points you've earned. Maybe bank is not the best term but lock doesn't really work either.
I understand your points about the higher levels inviting attacks, but with everyone out there, I wonder if the frequency of attacks coming your way would be as high.
I am an 800 pt player, but well familiar with the concept of getting murdered if I try to many matches after breaking a shield.
As I envision it, I see people being able to hit their normal score before their first shield as usual and then bank/lock their score at those points. When they try to go higher, they are not all of a sudden a juicy target entering a pool as they and everyone else are always visible to others. Now this might lend itself to the original problem with shields where shielding left u visible and people were feeding off each other constantly to drive up their scores, I was not around then, but that's part of why I suggested a finite number of times where you can bank your score, because if the only deterrent was hp cost, people would pay it.
I hope I cleared up what I meant.

Kolence

I suspect what you propose would inflate scores, but I'll suggest a tweak or two anyway.
First thing, why so many bankings per event? One chance (maybe two?) to bank points per event is enough; for instance, if you reach your desired score early and paying multiple shields till the end is more expensive or just inconvenient. Unless I misunderstood and this is to replace shields completely? Then it should be usable repeatedly and with a less steep price increase.
Second, I would set the price in hp depending on your score, something like: your_score/10 (rounded down) x K (tweak this value so the price makes sense for all parties ). You can make the suybsequent bankings always double (or something other) in cost to previous one, but relative to your new score.

Dayv

This seems more complex and fiddly than shielding, and I think it would definitely result in point inflation.

Heartburn

so basically a visible shield?
i'm on board. but from another post:

j12601 wrote:

Likely not going to happen.

There have been bugs in the past where a shielded player was still visible. The most immediate one that comes to mind was season 1's Top Gun (Falcon) PVP. A player named kyip was shielded but still visible. He took enough hits netting the occasional (or intentional once people figured it out) defensive victory so his points kept climbing. So people kept hitting. And everyone's points went higher and higher. In small chunks kyip ended up at 1900+ with somewhere between 4-900 of those points from defensive victories. This was back when losses counted a little bit more, but the cap on a fight was 50, not 75. People who struggled usually to hit 1100 (which used to be the 3* cover level back then) were going to 1300 with ease. 1400 before shielding. 1700-2000 for the event.
From one person shielded and still able to be queued.

Imagine a whole field like that. Progressions would have to be moved higher and higher, and each event would be like a 60 hour lightning round.

Not really the solution to the problem you're having.

but slightly different as the points get eaten back to the banked point value so it with be more localized then the previous example, however there will be a variety of these, instead of just one, at varying heights. Also, a little coordination can go a long way.

slidecage

i like to see a 25 hp shield

Unknown

I dislike the shielding system because it takes fights away from people that are not ready to shield.

What if instead of shielding we could pay to bank our points to where they can not go any lower than when we banked them. Others can still get points from us but we do not lose any points from the banked pool. It could still cost around the same with a taxing system. 75 hero point cost bank= 10% tax you lose 10% of the points that are banked 150 hero point bank= 5% point loss 300 hero point bank = no points lost.

I feel like D3 would make more money off of this system as even casual players would be more inclined to use it. I also feel like this feature would make the game more enjoyable for everyone.

Just realized some system would have to be in place to stop purposeful retreating but still I think this is better than the current system.

Unknown

DayvBang wrote:

This seems more complex and fiddly than shielding, and I think it would definitely result in point inflation.

I get the impression that was the idea.

Pinko_McFly

DayvBang wrote:

This seems more complex and fiddly than shielding, and I think it would definitely result in point inflation.

I may have not presented it clearly, in my head it didn't seem that complex.
Say I hit 800 points, and bank those points, my points will never go lower than 800.

This method was to mainly address the frustration people get from unshielding, winning their first match, to discover a net loss of 100 points from getting hit. Also wanted to give the devs another approach to think about since there has been talk of another change to shields.

Point inflation is probably a given with this. They could drop the max points back down to 50 (and invoke a day or two of forum rage) and see how it goes from there.

Malcrof

i understand the concept, and actually like it. This way, you can hit 1k, bank it.. and people can smack you all they want, and you will never fall below 1k.. This would cost the same as shielding, and add more points into the node.

The issue would simply be point dumping. If someone banks at say 1700 points.. they can go in with 1* teams and retreat against their friends teams all day. giving that other person 50 or so defensive wins for artificial inflation.

Also, how long the bank lasts would also be an issue.. hittting 1k on day 1 and banking.. should not last the entire rest of the event.

Pinko_McFly

Definitely other things that would need to be worked out.
As far as the point dumping, I can see two scenarios that would have to be addressed.

1. Having a banked score, attacking friends, then retreating to give them points. Could be solved by removing defensive win points. They are not that helpful anymore anyways since they have been sliced in half.
2. Having a banked score, finding a weaker team and attacking them with a weaker roster so others can attack you and feed off of your weak line-up. This is much harder to address, one way to downgrade its threat would be to limit your attack on any team to once a PVP. How to figure retaliations into that? Also tricky, maybe stop the retaliate, re-retaliate cycle. You hit me, I can retaliate once, you can't then re-retaliate.

To your other concern, why not have it last the whole event?