Why do you SKIP?

Unknown

I guess this might help the devs to understand why we skip opponents in PvP and they work on a real solution instead of these firefighting.

I press SKIP when:

1. The enemy is much stronger. The random gave me someone with much higher level characters, with tons of hit points, etc. I don't really have chance to beat him with my characters. (Or I'm just a p***y.)

2. The enemy is bad match for me. For example I'm fighting mostly with Greens, and the enemy has a 69 Daken.

3. The enemy has a leveled required character, while I have only the stock. Since the required character is always boosted, this gives a huge favor to my opponent. My character has only 1 weak skill (being level 15), while the opponent has more and/or better skills. Also, his required character has a lot more hit points.

4. The enemy is about my strength, but has much lower rank. I don't want to fight a battle for like 15 points or less. It is a waste of time.

5. I quickly need more than x points. Similar like point 4. I need x points to get better loot and I mean to do it by battling 1 enemy, thus reducing the chance of being hit in the meantime.

6. I'm out of First aid kits, my characters are injured, I need an easy fight.

Edit: Addendum from other players:

7. I'm shielded and hunting for my next preys.

8. I just got retaliated, I definitely don't want to fight this guys, since he will attack me again.

9. The enemy team has crazy hit points combo and I want a less lengthy fight.


I mostly SKIP for the 3rd and 4th reason, then 1st and 4th, and rarely for 5th. Almost never for 6th.

Why do YOU skip? Any other reason?

Cheers,
Tango

Unknown

Not worth enough points.

Unknown

Not worth enough points. This game is so favored to the person attacking that if you have a decent team, the only reason to skip is points.

Unknown

Pretty much a combination of 1 & 3; I don't have a single character above level 40, which means that as annoying as skipping it is it'll still take less time than however much healing would take for most teams that pop up (given that I even have a chance at winning).

Unknown

The player just retaliated so I know they are currently active and will likely put me in a retaliation war I don't want. Only one I don't see listed by you already. Looking for mondo points while shielded or a specific person in my bracket might count separately as well. Basically points are the deciding factor all around. Though instead of JUST points I would say its points/minute. If I can beat a 20 pointer three times as fast as a 40 pointer I will probably do it until I see they plan on retaliating. Generally if someone retaliated I don't hit them again unless I plan to shield soon as its just asking for them to use you to point climb.

Eddiemon

You'd also need to point out why you think the current 'firefighting' doesn't address these.

E.g. If people can't skip around looking for only 30 point wins then overall scoring should be reduced, meaning you don't need to skip around for 30 point wins to be competitive either. 15 points stops being a waste of time.

Unknown

For most of the event, the points. Why should I do 10 battles when I can have the same result with 5? Also, being queued in 10 players' retaliation lists or 5 is quite a difference.

When pushing for the top spots, also known as the point where everyone and their dog and pet lizard can target you, even at 500 points or more lower than you, enemy total health is an issue, as you want your battles as short as possible. Also, worth the risk in points to being hit for a fat -50 in the meantime, possibly multiple times.

akboyce

Eddiemon wrote:

You'd also need to point out why you think the current 'firefighting' doesn't address these.

E.g. If people can't skip around looking for only 30 point wins then overall scoring should be reduced, meaning you don't need to skip around for 30 point wins to be competitive either. 15 points stops being a waste of time.

I think this is slightly flawed.

To be competitive to win the top spots you will still need to do this. This change does not address getting retaliated for more points than you earned. It just means you have to pay ISO to avoid it.

It will make things better in the middle of the pack but at the upper levels (especially in the more brutal ones like LR) you will just have to decide do I want ISO or use skip to maximize score.

This is an interesting trade off but it only covers up the issue of poor match making rather than fixing it.

People who skip between a small pool of players over and over at the top or lose more points due to retaliate will still suffer.

Unknown

95% of the time it's because they aren't worth enough points.
Sometimes it because I need quicker games and they have like a 141 hulk 115 rag ???? Team or some other crazy hp combo.

Unknown

Eddiemon wrote:

You'd also need to point out why you think the current 'firefighting' doesn't address these.

E.g. If people can't skip around looking for only 30 point wins then overall scoring should be reduced, meaning you don't need to skip around for 30 point wins to be competitive either. 15 points stops being a waste of time.

As you can see I gave 6 reasons to skip and others already added more. All valid reasons.

Now if people can't skip, then they will be forced to fight battles they can't win. That is only good for the top dogs, with awesome lineups.

Since this is a game, first and foremost, it should be fun. If the players are forced to do anything they don't want to (like fighting impossible battles), they won't like the game and they won't play it. That is not good for anyone, devs included.

So the reason behind this questionnaire is to give the devs an insight from us, the players, why do we skip. Then it is up to the devs if they use it, or they still try to force us to do things against our will. It is quite clear already that the main reason is the earned ranking points, so they should think about revising the ranking system, instead of punishing skipping (i know, they changed to rewarding not skipping, but it is generally the same).

Eddiemon

unqltango wrote:

As you can see I gave 6 reasons to skip and others already added more. All valid reasons.

Now if people can't skip, then they will be forced to fight battles they can't win. That is only good for the top dogs, with awesome lineups.

Since this is a game, first and foremost, it should be fun. If the players are forced to do anything they don't want to (like fighting impossible battles), they won't like the game and they won't play it. That is not good for anyone, devs included.

So the reason behind this questionnaire is to give the devs an insight from us, the players, why do we skip. Then it is up to the devs if they use it, or they still try to force us to do things against our will. It is quite clear already that the main reason is the earned ranking points, so they should think about revising the ranking system, instead of punishing skipping (i know, they changed to rewarding not skipping, but it is generally the same).

They are valid reasons, but you seem to think the skip tax won't address these reasons and as a result it isn't a 'real solution'.

Being forced to fight battles you cannot win is good for everyone, because it gives the ranking system useful data in your abilities and who you should be matched with. An end to the wonderful 'I've been boosting and cherry picking my targets, why does the system only present me with hard targets' days.

The system cannot present you with battles you have a 90% chance of winning because you skip those fights for reasons 1 to whatever number we are up to now. So you never face a fight you may lose unless it is the unlucky cascade or terrible board fight, neither of which give the system any statistically valid data on your capabilities to give you appropriate matches.

So the cycle is skipping challenging fights - too long, boosted character, bad mix for me for easy fights until you outrank all even reasonable fights, then complain about MMR he'll because you fed it all that bad data, then tank and lose to everyone to feed the system more bad data and so on.

Half your reasons go away if the matching system could match you up correctly. The other half go away because the new system affects everyone, so your score losses will be experienced by everyone else so relative to your old position nothing changes.

And of course this isn't all done in isolation. Once people start fighting down more Demiurge can change the retaliation penalties so people don't lose as much per attack but lose the same overall amount. Progression scaling can be moved again.

Unknown

Il Palazzo wrote:

For most of the event, the points. Why should I do 10 battles when I can have the same result with 5?

This.

Unknown

I skip if I see a low point (<15) team that could beat me. If I attack them, I get very few points, they retaliate and I lose 30 or so. I also skip when I see a team I have very little chance beating especially if my buffed character is much much lower than their buffed character. In LRs when speed is a factor, I avoid fights that I probably COULD win, but would take a very long time to do.

Side note - Does logging out and in reset your skip count? If so, easily abused. If not, I'd easily eat a point loss by sacrificing Yelena and Hawkeye to a difficult team. Yes this will also give them points, but/shrug I'm not in PvP to get 1st place on the big tourneys.

Unknown

I skip to find the 25+ points. Anyone under 25 points already has less points than you in total. Which means if they fight you, they gain 25+ points off you. Now, if you hit them and steal 15-20 or whatever, they can retaliate back for over 30. Not fun.

PorkBelly

1 & 3.

Otherwise I'll generally give it a shot.

Unknown

1&4, and for me 3 kind of goes with 1. I'm not dumb enough to hit a guy with all maxed three stars when I don't have close to that. Same with a guy who has a maxed out required character, especially since it seems many required guys are three stars. And if a guy will give you under 20 points, you will beat him without too much trouble but he'll do just enough damage you'll have to use health packs. With the rubberbanding, you can't win more than two or three fights in a row before you see nearly everyone with either low points or really tough teams.

Unknown

The main reason I skip is because I try to get as much points as I can since I can do just a couple of battles due to injury, I don't waste my time with low reward battles or retaliation, I'm going to get hit and using my health packs I can only manage 3 sometimes 4 battles before I have to take a break and let my team heal.

Unknown

I'm bumping this up now because I don't like the current "reward" system. it is just the penalty in disguise really. IMO the MMR works only if you have plenty of different characters leveled up, so you can go against basically any team the game gives for you. I'd guess the majority of the players have only few leveled up characters and they play with those usually.

For example I use basically 3 characters only for my fight, and only one of them on max level (a lvl 85 Uncommon). Other than that, I'm sitting on 65K+ Iso-8, and waiting for the proper Covers to drop (I didn't see any of the characters I would need since weeks, in any event). I spent some of my Iso to add a few levels for other characters for the current events (for the required characters), but I want to keep most of the iso for my main fighting force, if the covers ever drop.

Anyway, what I wanted to say with this that I have plenty reasons to skip (see OP), definitely more reasons which could be balanced by the meager bonus, which eventually easily becomes a penalty.

Unknown

I climbed up to 500 last night not skipping one time, started off with nothing but 12-16 pt matches, but about six or seven matches in I started getting 20+.

I expected a massivekitty load of retaliations over night, but didn't get whacked for anything above -18. Woke up this morning at about 400.

I think they adjusted the pts lost on retaliations, seems alot lower than I recall especially when I'm attacking for <25 pts wins.

Unknown

My skips are primarily too high/will down my team members. I don't tend to care about match-ups at this point unless there is an obvious bad one. I simply don't have the depth to really deal with the matches I get tossed often. As it stands, my free account is locked out of the Psylock event because I was attacked three times and need to pay to skip the matches who will all beat my ****.

Awesome job, D3. Awesome job.

Unknown

They have adjusted points lost somewhat - it scales, and that helps the system. A retaliation war can actually be good for both sides now.

That said, I skip because I don't want to initiate a match that is going to cost me tournament points. Ideally, that means I want an opponent above 25 points. In practice, I'll settle for a low point opponent only if I don't think they can win a retaliation. And, to minimize skipping, I'm going after those in the latter category much more now than I used to, but to keep those opponents showing up (as oppose to a wall of opponents at a higher level for 10 points, who will definitely successfully retaliate), I have to keep tanking my mmr.