Do we even need retaliations in the game?

Unknown

A lot of peoples concerns/issues with the introduction of the skip tax and subsequent streak bonus is that skips are generally used to find matches witha decent reward.

Obviously this is super important because if you attack someone for who is worth 10 points and keep on playing, when they log in and retaliate, you'll probably be worth 40 points to them and you'll lose more than you won, resulting a net loss points wise. Through no fault of your own you LOST points for winning a game.

My question is...retaliations cause so many problems, is it even worth having them at all? Would anyone miss them? They are the full extent of interactivity between players in the game and even then, the only quantitative difference is that their symbol is red rather than yellow. I personally don't get any extra sense of satisfaction from defeating a retal, I don't feel like I got 'Revenge' or won some secret macho thug life points. If anything, I've just opened myself up to another points pasting.

So maybe I'm missing something about the system and it has some facet that I'm not appreciating. I know it is a decent 'back of the box' feature but I'm not sure there is much of any practical gameplay benefit.

Unknown

No.

And because it won't let me post unless there are more than five characters, I'll add that if they went away I'd be freed from sleepless nights wondering what someone who repeatedly attacked me from a higher rating until we wound up at about the same score was trying to achieve. I usually just assume ISO grinding, since it's the only time I might do that.

Unknown

No

One less pop-up would be nice.

windfallstar

I don't understand the purpose of retaliations. For me, I rarely find any battles worth retaliating. About half the time the other players are have a lower score so retaliating would result in a net loss, and the other half of the time the players have about the same score which just means that neither of us are getting anywhere with attacks.

Unknown

No. They should go. They serve no purpose other than punishing winning and encouraging people not to take risks.

Unknown

Retaliations are pointless, and I would love to see them removed.

Kelbris

Remove them, they suck eggs

mischiefmaker

Just to play devil's advocate, remember that the vast majority of players are not necessarily optimizers and/or rational actors. For them, seeing "you got attacked! Retaliate now!" is probably a pretty good driver to get them to play. I'm sure there are people who derive satisfaction/enjoyment from retaliating, even if they're losing points/getting nowhere.

Also remember that most forumites have significantly better rosters and better results than the vast majority of the playerbase. For us, retaliations are an annoyance, because they're usually not worth fighting (I know I skip most of mine). But the flip side is that there are probably a ton of players who get retaliations worth a big bundle of points to them, which is fun and maybe encourages them to fight someone harder than they otherwise would.

Retaliations also offer the illusion that you can do something about being attacked. Lots of players are frustrated that they get attacked and lose a bunch of points. I think they'd be way more frustrated if they couldn't do anything at all about it. Retaliations at least feel like you're getting back something.

Finally, retaliations remind you that there's a person on the other end of the line. Without them PvP might end up just feeling kind of like PvE. Not that there's a whole lot of interactivity now, but sometimes I like getting into a retaliation war to see which of us blinks first. Hey, I said we weren't all rational actors.

Vohnkar

The main problem with retaliation for me is that most of them are worthless to retaliate due to very low points (15 or less), so if I retaliate I'm lossing points, because I'm worth 30+ points for the other player and he will attack me again. The ones I can get some points on (25+) are usually hard matches for me. When a player with a rooster of 3x85+ attacks me I don't stand a chance, I don't have any 3* lvled yet.

It would be nice to have this aspect of PvP fixed.

Unknown

Retaliations are good; the problem is re-retaliations. I think everyone should have the opportunity to retaliate once for free.

Bacon Pants

We do not need retaliations, I do not use them. I find them useless, and retaliating runs the risk of an endless back and forth. I get attacked for -30 but don't fret! I can retaliate for a whole +8 points! Whoopee!

Unknown

There's a lot of things we don't need.

I think retaliations could be a good system if it were a one-time thing and could restore half points lost (or maybe even all with no ISO reward) regardless of rating. As of right now, retaliating is most oft never a good choice.

Unknown

Retaliation doesn't really even matter unless you're attacking a team with lower points than you that is also stronger than you, but if such a guy is in your MMR range he'll find you sooner or later anyway.

Part of the strategy of doing well is trying to pay off your debts (outstanding retaliations) early so you can be the one doing the collecting instead of the paying in the crucial run.

Twysta

The current retaliation system doesn't work due to the way the point system works for them.
IF they change the amount of points you lose to a fraction of what the other team receive then I don't think it would be as bad.
I would also help inject points into the system.

Unknown

I have to say that if I join the tournament early and play one or two games, by the time I start playing again, those first retaliations are easy, and net me a ton of points if you decided to be active and shoot for the top. The problem is that the system doesn't say you've been retaliated against, just that you've been attacked. For all I know, you attacked me and when I finally attack you, it's not worth it for you to retaliate against me anymore, causing the current brand of outcry. I say keep them in, but limit it to only the single retaliation. If you attacked me and gained points off of me, I should be able to gain them back for defeating you in a subsequent match.

Twysta

Actually that's a really good point. Retaliations should let you gain all the points you lost back.
So if someone with a lower points value attacks you and hits you for 40.
You should be able to win that back with a successful retaliation, surely that's the point of a retaliation?
To at least break even?

- Obviously the opposing player wouldn't lose the total 40 points he earned because then what would be the point in fighting higher ranked opponents?.

kidicarus

I've been grinding to 300 or 400+ and going to sleep unshielded to wake up finding out that I've lost 180 points. In most cases retaliations help me grind back up to my previous position because I'd be at 150 or whatever and they would have gone up past 200 or 300 so it's worthwhile to retaliate in those cases. So they do kinda let you get your points back.

Now the retaliations in the last 3 hours are of course annoying since you're likely to be attacked by those in a lower position hoping to attack a turkey. I believe that imposing a skip tax might have an effect of cutting down the number of attacks you get then since you won't always be offered up on a silver platter for those who are chasing a top 5 position. Of course you won't be able to avoid getting attacked but hopefully your positioning would then be based on your speed, consistency, clever use of boosts, shields and whatnot.

bahamut685

Twysta wrote:

It would also help inject points into the system.

This is why they won't do it... They don't want high points, because high points = people earning the hypothetical progression rewards. (See last PVE for more details, since most brackets had 2-3 people obtain the 10k point prize and the top prize was at 54k.)

Eddiemon

Twysta wrote:

Actually that's a really good point. Retaliations should let you gain all the points you lost back.
So if someone with a lower points value attacks you and hits you for 40.
You should be able to win that back with a successful retaliation, surely that's the point of a retaliation?
To at least break even?

- Obviously the opposing player wouldn't lose the total 40 points he earned because then what would be the point in fighting higher ranked opponents?.

That would turn PvP into a case of 'who has the most time to play' as long as you have a reasonable roster.

Twysta

You think?
I dunno since you'd still be getting attacked from all sorts and there's still the possibility of you losing fights, especially with people with less points.
The risk would obviously be if you want to get say those 40 points back, if they're roster is good enough... you might give them another 35 points or something.

And yeah it does seem they want to stop people reaching progression rewards... which honestly I'm not really sure why...
I guess I could understand if too many people were hitting it, otherwise though it's really kind of pointless to have them there anyway unless they want it as incentive for people to try reach that goal.
But really if they don't want people to get that much HP or that 4* Cover give them more ISO instead or something!
Only the devs know the reasoning...
But they've shown that if the user base is committed enough that something will make a change for the better they'll properly consider it.
It's worth putting it out there anyway.

Unknown

D3 would like to inject points into the system because from their point of view there's literally no point to have a prize at 1400 if nobody could possibly reach it because it's just some kind of cruel joke.

However, they don't want to make it so that playing more gives you an overwhelming advantage. When shields were injecting points into the system, you were seeing scores like:

#1 2400
#2 900

And the guy who had #2400 simply played a lot more, likely during 3am. Yes, there's a pretty big advantage right now to play at a late hour too, but back in the shield days what happens is that the 10 guys playing at 3am all have 2400 points. Right now, if you have 10 guys playing at 3am consistently, none of them would get very far from 800 from having to fend off each other. Yes, 800 is still a huge hurdle to overcome, but it's not 2400.

I'm guessing they'd want the score to look like what the Elite tournaments look like with the top around 1400, but that's easier said than done. The only reason those scores are obtainable in the Elite tournaments is people shield like crazy in there, and while having some sort of P2W element for big prizes is fine, it'd be very lame if every PvP tournament turns out to be like that. I mean, you can simulate the same behavior by taking the shield prize to 1/10, but then that'd mean most of the time people above you are completely invisible (if shields only cost 7 HP you'd obviously use them all the time).