Victory Bonus - Upcoming PVP Change Planned for R48

IceIX

For S.H.I.E.L.D. Field Agent immediate consumption:
A recent memo was released detailing what on private S.H.I.E.L.D. forums our Agents have taken to calling "Skip Tax". While we have no intention of taking away an Agent's income while they are simply completing tasks in the line of duty, Agent feedback to the proposed change has been such that we have decided that moving forward with the change was not the right thing to do. So, while our reasoning behind wanting to implement the change in costs for skipping opponents in our Versus Simulators remained the same we decided to go back to the drawing board on how this would affect our Agents.

We have been rolling things around with our Level 7+ S.H.I.E.L.D. officers and doing some further digging on exactly how Agents are currently utilizing the Versus Simulators. With this additional data in hand, S.H.I.E.L.D. will be turning the income lowering "tax" into an incentive for bravely stepping up to opponents in the face of danger. Starting with the R48 revision to the Starktech Versus Simulator, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s quartermasters will offer bonus Iso for taking on matches without utilizing the Skip function of the device. This bonus will start at a peak and lower each time Skip is used until the Agent is finally being charged a small (capped) amount for continued use of the function. It is believed that Agents will be incentivized to earn extra Iso in addition to the normal 70/140 rewards that are available for each victory. The Victory Bonus is reset after every match, so even if an Agent ends up wanting to skip a couple of times for one match up, they will still be able to take advantage of the bonus Iso for the next match that they come into.

As a summary of what this will look like with R48:

- The Victory Bonus begins at +30 Iso for a win - The bonus lowers by 10 Iso per Skip - The bonus disappears at 0, then caps out at -10 Iso per skip after additional skips - The bonus returns to +30 Iso after the match is completed, win or lose - The Victory Bonus is only gained if the Agent is successful in their matchup

The intended effects of this change:

- Agents will skip less often due to the likelihood of increased Iso gain - Agents will fight other teams that are more balanced to their current matchmaking scores instead of skipping until they can find weaker Agents to cherry pick - Agents will begin falling more in line with others they *should* be matched up against as they are not winning against cakewalks all the time and raising their rating when they would otherwise be facing a challenging team - Being attacked multiple times by other Agents will decrease as Agents are incentivized to fight who they're matched against instead of picking someone "below" them, which multiple attack recipients often are. - As Agents get used to this system, they'll be gaining more Iso per battle overall.

S.H.I.E.L.D. officers will be monitoring this change after it goes live on the Simulators and will be ensuring that it in fact has the positive Agent training results that are expected. If necessary, tweaks to this system will be implemented to ensure that Agents feel the full positive effect of this change over time.