Rework the Shield please

Unknown

I am sitting at 12th place in the current "No holds barred elite" tournament. Just as 2:30 EST, everyone including me is sitting here with the stupid shield on. There is not a single attackable target that shows up that will garner more than 5 points. This is stupid and the game is stagnant as hell. How about, the shield prevents point loss, but doesn't stop targeting? Last night, I couldn't find a target that provided any points AT ALL. This needs to be addressed.

mischiefmaker

The problem with letting people target those who are shielded is that that's how it originally worked, and it made it so that people who were able to spend a continuous block of time playing late at night could springboard off shielded people, in some cases as high as 2500. The dev team has shown repeatedly that they don't want to design the game so that being able to grind for long periods of time is a prerequisite for doing well.

A few other people have suggested that shields reduce point loss (say by 90%) but allow the user to be targeted still. That's interesting; it'd solve the problem of not having anyone to target, but it would make shields a little harder to understand and I'm sure some users might be really frustrated about losing 20-30 points overnight while shielded and dropping out of their preferred reward tier.

Unknown

Shields both suck and are awesome/necessary all at the same time. There is no way to actually "win" in this situation, as people don't want to lose their hard work, and don't want their hard work to be nullified by leapfroggers while they sleep. If the point loss was minimal, there would be an outcry of unfairness, and if the point gain off a shielded player was minimal there would be an outcry. In paid events, the shield is a tool and crutch. You need AND require it to gain traction. Shields suck, but what would be the fix? You could make the shield un-breakable. That way there, if you put up a 3 hour shield, you have to wait the 3 hours before playing another match. If other people's shields lapsed all you could do is watch them rise. Then the debate becomes, "to shield, or not to shield" or rather, when to shield.

Unknown

I really like the idea of being able to reduce point loss, yet still be targeted. I just dropped from 8th to 24th place while slamming out <1 minute wins for 30-45 points a piece and just had to leave a shield up at 24th just to not fall all the way down. No grinding? ALL GRINDING on the slipperiest slope. I am so dissatisfied with this game right now. I mean, 80% of the wins I just had, the opponent got 0 turns. I come out and there is a rain of -45 points. I get that there has to be a way for people to come from behind, but I put days in to this. I don't find it tenable.

Unknown

If you are in the top 100, you won't find any opponents to give you meaningful points.
If you are in the top 100-200, it's like climbing a mountain just to get to top 100 and risk losing 1 time to smash you back to top 200.

All of these happened because we can't target shielded players.

So i assume this is what people do.

1. Shield yourself
2. Spam the skip button until you found opponents that give you 20-30 pts
3. Repeat no:2 on the other environment stages.
4. Unshield yourself and beat those 3 opponents.
5. Put up another shield.
6. Repeat no 1-6

I would do that if i'm ready to invest at least maybe more than 1000 hp.
Maybe when R48 is live, there won't be much skipping.

Unknown

I own and operate a business that opens at 11AM. The night is the time I can mostly play. I imagine D3 would love my disposable income, but I won't be comfortable putting actual money in to this game until it feels balanced. Or rather, doing nothing until the last 3 hours isn't such a good strategy.

Unknown

Pucco wrote:

If you are in the top 100, you won't find any opponents to give you meaningful points.
If you are in the top 100-200, it's like climbing a mountain just to get to top 100 and risk losing 1 time to smash you back to top 200.

All of these happened because we can't target shielded players.

So i assume this is what people do.

1. Shield yourself
2. Spam the skip button until you found opponents that give you 20-30 pts
3. Repeat no:2 on the other environment stages.
4. Unshield yourself and beat those 3 opponents.
5. Put up another shield.
6. Repeat no 1-6

I would do that if i'm ready to invest at least maybe more than 1000 hp.


You are correct. To a point. You have about a 90% chance of losing 100-200 points every time you unshield in the top ten. Get to attack all 3? I wish! You get one. Make 1 attack, finish quick as hell and throw up a shield. Wait for the ocean of return attacks from people 1848843 places below you and the people in the top x that have a retal. waiting for you. Doesn't work out this way so well. Feels WAAAAY too much like the game is milking players too hard for the shield HP. Today alone I spent almost 4000 on shields.
.

Unknown

Please feel free to jump on me and say this is a stupid idea if it is but here are my thoughts.

Remove Shields and remove point loss. Radical i know, but my reasoning is to make it operate more like a real life league table. if you want to get above somebody with 100 pts you need to get 101 pts. makes sense to me rather than all this bouncing around the leaderboard.

And as for newer players not being able to reach top places, does it matter? This is the position i am in with my top team still being IM35 MBW and MStorm with the occasional Thor. i would prefer knowing what i need to aim for and the challenge of improving my characters to the point where i am able to reach top places, as a tournament of just about anything else would work in real life.

In fact the only reason I can see for the current way it works is for the Devs to make money and i can understand the need to do that, but if it so frustrates people that they start quitting then they ought to rethink how they go about it.

Dayv

The PACman wrote:

Please feel free to jump on me and say this is a stupid idea if it is but here are my thoughts.

Remove Shields and remove point loss. Radical i know, but my reasoning is to make it operate more like a real life league table. if you want to get above somebody with 100 pts you need to get 101 pts. makes sense to me rather than all this bouncing around the leaderboard.

And as for newer players not being able to reach top places, does it matter? This is the position i am in with my top team still being IM35 MBW and MStorm with the occasional Thor. i would prefer knowing what i need to aim for and the challenge of improving my characters to the point where i am able to reach top places, as a tournament of just about anything else would work in real life.

In fact the only reason I can see for the current way it works is for the Devs to make money and i can understand the need to do that, but if it so frustrates people that they start quitting then they ought to rethink how they go about it.

They'd have to rework progression rewards without point loss, but it could make them a lot less fur trusting to reach, especially for newer players who can't really compete for placement.

On the other hand, wow, that would probably really reward grinding out low-point, low-risk battles 24/7.

Unknown

Hmmm, yeah i hadnt really thought it through that far, grinding low point - no risk battles would actually work which wasnt what i intended! guess that would be one more reason for them to sort the matching out so you get fights around your level.

Unknown

MorbidlyObeast wrote:

I really like the idea of being able to reduce point loss, yet still be targeted. I just dropped from 8th to 24th place while slamming out <1 minute wins for 30-45 points a piece and just had to leave a shield up at 24th just to not fall all the way down. No grinding? ALL GRINDING on the slipperiest slope. I am so dissatisfied with this game right now. I mean, 80% of the wins I just had, the opponent got 0 turns. I come out and there is a rain of -45 points. I get that there has to be a way for people to come from behind, but I put days in to this. I don't find it tenable.

I attacked you last night, probably right when you unshielded near tournament's end to solidify my place in the top 100. Now I feel bad about it. Sorry.

I'm not a top ten guy, but I agree about the shields. I used 4 shields on the last day to try to get to or stay in the top 100. The problem is that the way the game is set up now, with shields and retaliation, you are discouraged from actually playing. I understand that it is still a sort of Meta-strategy about when to shield and when to fight, but isn't the point of a video game to play it? But the way it's set up now, you are actively encouraged not to play many fights. Just seems backwards.

Unknown

First thing is to remove retaliations. They're no fun and encourage slap-fights where neither player advances.

Second is to re-enable shielded players for being targeted. Removing the ability to create a tank team was one thing, and being unable to find shielded players is another, but both together is too much. Pick one or the other, right now the higher progression rewards beyond 1000 are incredibly difficult to attain without relentless grinding and a team nobody will want to attack.

Unknown

Kamahl-FoK wrote:

First thing is to remove retaliations. They're no fun and encourage slap-fights where neither player advances.

Second is to re-enable shielded players for being targeted. Removing the ability to create a tank team was one thing, and being unable to find shielded players is another, but both together is too much. Pick one or the other, right now the higher progression rewards beyond 1000 are incredibly difficult to attain without relentless grinding and a team nobody will want to attack.

You know I had never really thought of this, Now that you can't easily set up a tank team being able to hit shielded players wouldn't be as much of a problem because you aren't getting 50 point battles with tank teams. They really should allow hitting shielded players again then!

CloudTactics

mischiefmaker wrote:

The problem with letting people target those who are shielded is that that's how it originally worked, and it made it so that people who were able to spend a continuous block of time playing late at night could springboard off shielded people, in some cases as high as 2500. The dev team has shown repeatedly that they don't want to design the game so that being able to grind for long periods of time is a prerequisite for doing well.

lol...you realize that grinding to the top still hasn't been solved, right? In fact, it's worse now than it was before with heroic/elite events. To place 1st in the elite events, you have to be right there, when the event starts, grind to the top faster than anyone else. Once you're in the lead, you start shielding. After shielding, you just glue yourself to the leaderboards until someone in the top 10 unshields, and you relentless search him out so you can maintain your lead.

Summary - To finish top 10, you're going to have to not only grind (having to hawk the leaderboards is still grinding, as you can't do anything else), but now it's time sensitive too, and you HAVE to be there when the event starts to gain a lead.

I honestly prefer the old system much more over the previous, but both still had flaws. I'd be in favor of either not being able to break your shield (waiting the full duration), or adding a cooldown to it. That would easily destroy the people who are leaderboard abusing it. Shields are meant for reprieve, not as a way to keep playing.

While I'm at it, I rose to rank 5 on the elite events, and my matches were nothing but players who yielded 0 events. Would be nice to have some kind of auto filter so I don't get 0 pointers flooding into my match list.

Unknown

dlaw008 wrote:

MorbidlyObeast wrote:

I really like the idea of being able to reduce point loss, yet still be targeted. I just dropped from 8th to 24th place while slamming out <1 minute wins for 30-45 points a piece and just had to leave a shield up at 24th just to not fall all the way down. No grinding? ALL GRINDING on the slipperiest slope. I am so dissatisfied with this game right now. I mean, 80% of the wins I just had, the opponent got 0 turns. I come out and there is a rain of -45 points. I get that there has to be a way for people to come from behind, but I put days in to this. I don't find it tenable.

I attacked you last night, probably right when you unshielded near tournament's end to solidify my place in the top 100. Now I feel bad about it. Sorry.

I'm not a top ten guy, but I agree about the shields. I used 4 shields on the last day to try to get to or stay in the top 100. The problem is that the way the game is set up now, with shields and retaliation, you are discouraged from actually playing. I understand that it is still a sort of Meta-strategy about when to shield and when to fight, but isn't the point of a video game to play it? But the way it's set up now, you are actively encouraged not to play many fights. Just seems backwards.

No worries, man. It is totally allowed in the rules, and I didn't get up that high by NOT attacking people. This is about a mechanic that takes fun out of the game and me hesitant to put more money in to it. Two things everyone cares about.