Ramifications of a PVP change

dkffiv

What would be the side effects of being able to target all players but keeping shard end times as is? Points I've come up with:

Shard 1 would have the fewest targets climbing and shard 5 would have the fewest ending, but s5 would have the benefit of the best climbing bracket. S5 probably the must vulnerable to sniping.

Overall the bracket scores should go up since there won't be dry shards.

Targets stay in a players queue until they skip or fight. Points are awarded like normal even if the targets shard ends (targets score obviously not changed post event).

Not sure how overall scores will change. Placement rewards shouldn't be affected because the scores in the shard should all be relative. Progression should be easier, certain shards may be better for individual scores. I don't really see any negative effects compared to what we have now.

Ducky

IceIX gave us his viewpoint on this in a previous thread:

IceIX wrote:

aesthetocyst wrote:

The solution I would suggest would be to drop slices, go back to all players in a common pool, so there no longer are dry slices. But that's easy to say ... no doubt there are additional considerations there as well.

Timeshards immediately increased our user engagement numbers and kept them up. When players can play and end an event when they want them to, they're far more willing to partake. Merging everyone into a bucket would necessarily mean killing timeshards. Otherwise if you kept shards but bucketed everyone you get:

Players in shard 1 that get an extra few hours where they're only facing other shard 1-ers. Not very fun, tiny pool. Then they're out of the pool several hours while everyone else has the full pool to work with. Not fun, tons of points and they can't reach them.

Players in shard 5 that get the end of the event with one of two things: Either no one to play with other than other shard 5-ers if we kick people out of the pool when their shard is up, which is very volatile (no way to tell how many points that shard will create in the bucket) and could end up with very low or high scoring shard. Not predictable like shards 2-4. Or else they end up with several hours where the vast majority of opponents can't fight back. No retals, free points. Feeding frenzy! Which means shard 5 is the place to be, which means that shards 1-4 necessarily clear out, which means we're back to step 1 with no timeshards, except for a few poor souls who just act as feeders for everyone else.

dkffiv

IceIX wrote:

Players in shard 1 that get an extra few hours where they're only facing other shard 1-ers. Not very fun, tiny pool. Then they're out of the pool several hours while everyone else has the full pool to work with. Not fun, tons of points and they can't reach them.

The extra hours are when the event first starts and when almost no one plays anyway. The later shards would have a bigger incentive to play early since there are points to be had (thus generating more targets for s1 too). People who prefer s1's end time are going to play there regardless, by s1's end time every other shard is already up and running. Progressing to 1300 should still be easier than in current dry shards and if s1 is truly that empty than that will be an excellent shard for placement rewards.

IceIX wrote:

Players in shard 5 that get the end of the event with one of two things: Either no one to play with other than other shard 5-ers if we kick people out of the pool when their shard is up, which is very volatile (no way to tell how many points that shard will create in the bucket) and could end up with very low or high scoring shard. Not predictable like shards 2-4. Or else they end up with several hours where the vast majority of opponents can't fight back. No retals, free points. Feeding frenzy! Which means shard 5 is the place to be, which means that shards 1-4 necessarily clear out, which means we're back to step 1 with no timeshards, except for a few poor souls who just act as feeders for everyone else.

I don't see why there is any need to kick people out of queues, just make it so they no longer show up in new queues after their shard has ended. Retals stay up until either skipped or fought. At the high end retals don't matter because most attacks bounce off shields and those that do go through are either skipped or saved for the next hop (when they will probably be shielded). At the low end, players won't be able to tell who's in what shard so I doubt it will affect their decision on who they want to attack. The "worst" situation is that a player hits a target whose shard is just about to end, making it so there won't be the potential for a retaliation (which they won't know about). Net result is points are added to the system.

Even if S5 was the best for points/action, S1-4 will still be active due to players choosing their own optimal end times and those that are looking for the best chance at placement rewards. It can't be any worse than current dry shards.

Ducky

Personally I don't like the idea of cross slice targetting. It gives those in later slices an advantage.

Think of it this way. S1 starts and the bracket's points have to start from scratch. S5 starts and if a player wanted to they could climb to 1300+ immediately and start hopping with an hour or two of the bracket starting. How is this even remotely fair?

Buret0

You either leave yourself as a target after the slice ends (meaning free no retaliation points for later shards) or it means that all of the points will dry up when the early slices end.

I think it is a terrible idea to do cross-slice PvP.

Hell, I don't even like the idea that people in my own slice and sitting on a different leaderboard can target me. It is one of the reasons that outside communication is a thing. Either make the entire slice into a single bracket or isolate the brackets so that they are only fighting against their own bracket for placement. Obviously points would need to be more generous or the economy wouldn't climb quickly enough for people to hit progressions.

Heartburn

I am one of those early players in a new shard, so starting early will be the same as always so I don't see a problem. But once the new shards open up it seems like it will be a frenzy to the end. The good thing is we may not need to waste soo much Iso looking for matches, not skipping the same ppl over and over again. Would be interesting to see in action.

dkffiv

DuckyV wrote:

Personally I don't like the idea of cross slice targetting. It gives those in later slices an advantage.

Think of it this way. S1 starts and the bracket's points have to start from scratch. S5 starts and if a player wanted to they could climb to 1300+ immediately and start hopping with an hour or two of the bracket starting. How is this even remotely fair?

Does that even matter? Personally I usually start 12-18 hours out and climb to 800-1k and leave myself unshielded. In the last 3-12 hours is when I actually start playing + shielding. If someone wants to rush to 1300 in the first hours of a bracket they're going to get shot to hell by all the people in the earlier brackets looking for their shield hop targets. If they're climbing to 1100-1300 then shield hopping for over 48 hours, well its their money to spend. For the average player that means tons of juicy targets.

Buret0 wrote:

You either leave yourself as a target after the slice ends (meaning free no retaliation points for later shards) or it means that all of the points will dry up when the early slices end.

I don't think anyone is mad about getting attacked after a shard ends and their score is already locked in place. For the player attacking a target that is now gone:

1) The attacking player doesn't know the person won't be able to retaliate unless some form of communication was used. In that case, it doesn't really make any difference compared to what's currently in place because the target would announce when his shield was up and he wouldn't have lost points anyway (and no chance for retal).

2) If the target was worth a lot of points (which is frequently the case) and would've lost points due to not being shielded, there is a low probability that the person would've retaliated anyway. If a much lower score manages to tag me I usually just skip them anyway unless they're in a top 10 alliance and I'm able to track their score and wait until they're a viable target.

3) The only case where this even matters is if you're attacking someone worth like 30-40 points and even then there's no guarantee they would've retaliated anyway.

Ducky

dkffiv wrote:

DuckyV wrote:

Personally I don't like the idea of cross slice targetting. It gives those in later slices an advantage.

Think of it this way. S1 starts and the bracket's points have to start from scratch. S5 starts and if a player wanted to they could climb to 1300+ immediately and start hopping with an hour or two of the bracket starting. How is this even remotely fair?

Does that even matter? Personally I usually start 12-18 hours out and climb to 800-1k and leave myself unshielded. In the last 3-12 hours is when I actually start playing + shielding. If someone wants to rush to 1300 in the first hours of a bracket they're going to get shot to hell by all the people in the earlier brackets looking for their shield hop targets. If they're climbing to 1100-1300 then shield hopping for over 48 hours, well its their money to spend. For the average player that means tons of juicy targets.

It matters because s1 scores can never get as high as s5 scores if people start hopping from the beginning of the slice, which in turn has a huge effect on alliance rankings.

Also, I don't know how much experience you have from going from 0 to 1300+, but it is entirely possible to do so without ever being hit once if you are fast enough due to server lag catching up to your point total in people's queues. I climb to 1300+ a lot from zero and it's usually 50/50 chance that I finally shield due to being hit vs running out of targets.

And say I am in s5 in an event like the previous one where scores were 3k+. If i was able to still hit people who were in previous slices after their slices are over (assuming they don't get locked out) then I could free climb until the cows came home for a ridiculous score with a much lower chance of being hit. The amount of players finished with the event during the last 3 hours would vastly outnumber the people climbing in s5 so they may never even get hit until 1700+ due to all the high value targets being available.

No matter how you look at it, it is a huge advantage to start in s5 if cross slice targeting is allowed and a huge disadvantage to start in s1.