Get rid of skip tax

Unknown

As I'm typing this post, I'm watching my team be killed, one by one. This doesn't actually require any play on my part, because I'm playing against a team with Spiderman, and I've been stunned for the past 20 turns. It's also a maxed out Spiderman, and along with Black Widow Gray Suit, and I have no three star characters. I choose to play this team instead of paying the skip tax, because I think a skip tax is dumb.

Instead of actually fixing the MMR, the developers have decided to profit on its dysfunction by charging us to skip obviously unbeatable teams.

They've put out a theory that the skip tax will fix the MMR by causing teams to tank, thus eventually giving them teams they actually stand a chance at winning. Except the instant you DO start winning, you're instantly back up with all the unbeatable teams.

And as much fun as I'm having watching my team die over and over again as I lie stunned, I'd really appreciate just getting rid of the skip tax. The **** MMR was better than this. If you're not going to fix inherent problems in the game, at least don't exploit your customers by taxing them.

Unknown

The idea behind the skip tax is fare enough, but I'm sill getting teams that are too difficult for me. Once my top team are dead thats my gaming done for 2.5 hours while I wait for medipacks to regenerate. It feels like I'm being punished wanting to play the game?

I don't understand why you don't select your team in advance & then other teams of similar levels are shown for you to play (encourages ALL my characters to be played of all levels not just the odd 1 thats pumped or befed up tank). Adjust the rewards so that lower levels get a slightly lesser reward.

It would also have the potential of encouraging sales of coin die to people being able to play ALL chars and seeing their abilities and either buying the upgrades directly or gambling for packs. It'd keep people in game and playing, which is what you want?

Since the update its been horrible, instead of being able to play (and win) for hours, I'm pushed out of PvP / off the game because my chars aren't high enough level. Bad idea...

Unknown

I like it. You get four shots at finding a good match, plus the other two battle slots makes six. It adds a new element of strategy. Should I fight this guy or gamble that an easier guy will come along soon? Plus, any iso that you lose, you will gain back from the iso you get when you don't skip as much, and youll probably even make a profit. Matchmaking could be better, but in my opinion the new skip rules are still good.

Unknown

there is no tax. there's a bonus for not skipping. You get the same if you skip 3 in a row as you did prior to the new system. Quit whining.

Unknown

Chops wrote:

there is no tax. there's a bonus for not skipping. You get the same if you skip 3 in a row as you did prior to the new system. Quit whining.

If you skip > 3 times it takes 10 iso.

reckless442

The skip tax is idiotic when the MMR is so broken. Take what happened to me a little earlier for an example.

I'm in the middle of NHB, sitting in 90th place and shielded. I would like to move up, but at least want to ensure a top-100 finish. The problem is that if I break shield for an extended period of time, I will lose more points than I can possible gain because 90-95% of my opponents are worth less than 25 points when I am the attacker and I am worth more than 25 points when I am attacked. It took me more than 15 tries to find an opponent worth 26 points (especially because a lot of the same names kept coming up). During that time, I also lined up a secondary opponent worth 20 points. Total in skip tax -- about 120 ISO. I broke shield, won the first battle, winning 26 points and 70 ISO. I then won the second battle, 140 ISO + 30 ISO bonus. Total gained in ISO -- 120 ISO. Oh, and while I was in the first battle, I got attacked and lost 28 points. But I got lucky and managed to re-shield before I was hit by a second opponent for 33 points. At the time I re-shielded, the battles in my queue were worth 21, 11, and 9 points.

The point is that skipping is necessary because the point system is so messed up. If you are going to potentially lose so many points when you actually fight a battle, you shouldn't be penalized for passing on a battle.

Unknown

Getting less iso for fights is no problem but losing iso that you have already collected is.

Still, why is it a problem that people skip fights? We skip either because we feel the points we get for the fight are too low so we don't want to waste time, or we skip because we the enemies are too hard for us and we dont' want to send our team on suicide missions.

Again, I don't see the problem with skipping. Can D3 please explain WHY skipping is bad for the game and the players and WHY we don't get to skip for free?

If the skip tax will remain, then at least refresh all the current matchups whenever a player have lost or won a fight, and let us skip those three "free" times on EACH fight to find a suitable opponent. I also hope their will be a clear warning that you will start losing iso if you skip more than you're supposed to, but on the whole there should not be a skip tax at all.

Unknown

Typhon13 wrote:

I like it. You get four shots at finding a good match, plus the other two battle slots makes six. It adds a new element of strategy. Should I fight this guy or gamble that an easier guy will come along soon? Plus, any iso that you lose, you will gain back from the iso you get when you don't skip as much, and youll probably even make a profit. Matchmaking could be better, but in my opinion the new skip rules are still good.

What six? You start with 3 nodes with low points. You skip one node until find some match that gets you progress. Afterwards the other two nodes remain and get even more worse, and you must spend up ISO to get rid of them. Probably many times unil anything sensible gets offered.

Unknown

Chops wrote:

there is no tax. there's a bonus for not skipping. You get the same if you skip 3 in a row as you did prior to the new system. Quit whining.

Another sucker for the propaganda?

Unknown

Daige wrote:

If the skip tax will remain, then at least refresh all the current matchups whenever a player have lost or won a fight, and let us skip those three "free" times on EACH fight to find a suitable opponent. I also hope their will be a clear warning that you will start losing iso if you skip more than you're supposed to, but on the whole there should not be a skip tax at all.

Yep, even if the other 2 nodes had sensible matches for the moment as you get points for the win they become bad. To have actual progress you must fight people with more points than you -- it is strictly impossible without skipping, and in practice not possible without skipping a lot.

Unknown

On of the effects I'm having is that - since I apparently shredded my mmr in the 1* tournament retreating to lower my score below the Wolverine rewards - I'm now beating up on teams that I wouldn't have bothered with before - I'm much more willing to attack a 15 point team that I don't think will be able to win a retaliation than I would have been before. And, to simplify my matchmaking, I'm going to be putting more and more effort into tanking (Lightning rounds will be tank-a-palooza), this may have the unintended consequence of screwing up the matchmaking system even further.

Unknown

Daige wrote:

Getting less iso for fights is no problem but losing iso that you have already collected is.

Still, why is it a problem that people skip fights? We skip either because we feel the points we get for the fight are too low so we don't want to waste time, or we skip because we the enemies are too hard for us and we dont' want to send our team on suicide missions.

Again, I don't see the problem with skipping. Can D3 please explain WHY skipping is bad for the game and the players and WHY we don't get to skip for free?

Apparently people were skipping through people until they found an easy opponent, and thus bigger teams were bullying littler teams. Which, again, is a problem with the MMR, not the players. The MMR shouldn't be putting totally tiny teams in with huge teams, so bullies shouldn't even have the chance to skip until they find easy wimps to beat.

What's interesting is that most players with good teams don't even bother with playing wimpy teams, because they don't yield many points. But with the imposition of the skip tax, if one of those wimpy teams shows up in their queue, instead of skipping like normal, they're actually encouraged to play/bully-beat them, and potentially taxed if they don't. Which obviously doesn't solve the bullying problem AT ALL.

Another problem: I assumed we wouldn't be taxed for skipping retaliations, but indeed we are! So we have to pay a tax in order to not play a team that can obviously beat us. So if you have a queue full a retaliations, and they're all huge teams, you're basically out of luck.

Unknown

Daige wrote:

Getting less iso for fights is no problem but losing iso that you have already collected is.

Still, why is it a problem that people skip fights? We skip either because we feel the points we get for the fight are too low so we don't want to waste time, or we skip because we the enemies are too hard for us and we dont' want to send our team on suicide missions.

Again, I don't see the problem with skipping. Can D3 please explain WHY skipping is bad for the game and the players and WHY we don't get to skip for free?

If the skip tax will remain, then at least refresh all the current matchups whenever a player have lost or won a fight, and let us skip those three "free" times on EACH fight to find a suitable opponent. I also hope their will be a clear warning that you will start losing iso if you skip more than you're supposed to, but on the whole there should not be a skip tax at all.

+1
Agreed 100%

Unknown

FoxMulder wrote:

Apparently people were skipping through ...

... all huge teams, you're basically out of luck.

^agreed'

Punisher event just now, I was #1500ish in rank and getting put up against top 30 with level 69+ chars when I'd just started the event.

All chars are dead, medical respawns out, barely any iso points gained.

Unknown

I haven't had to skip 4 times yet, but taking ISO is a really effed up.

reckless442

FoxMulder wrote:

Daige wrote:

Getting less iso for fights is no problem but losing iso that you have already collected is.

Still, why is it a problem that people skip fights? We skip either because we feel the points we get for the fight are too low so we don't want to waste time, or we skip because we the enemies are too hard for us and we dont' want to send our team on suicide missions.

Again, I don't see the problem with skipping. Can D3 please explain WHY skipping is bad for the game and the players and WHY we don't get to skip for free?

Apparently people were skipping through people until they found an easy opponent, and thus bigger teams were bullying littler teams. Which, again, is a problem with the MMR, not the players. The MMR shouldn't be putting totally tiny teams in with huge teams, so bullies shouldn't even have the chance to skip until they find easy wimps to beat.

What's interesting is that most players with good teams don't even bother with playing wimpy teams, because they don't yield many points. But with the imposition of the skip tax, if one of those wimpy teams shows up in their queue, instead of skipping like normal, they're actually encouraged to play/bully-beat them, and potentially taxed if they don't. Which obviously doesn't solve the bullying problem AT ALL.

Another problem: I assumed we wouldn't be taxed for skipping retaliations, but indeed we are! So we have to pay a tax in order to not play a team that can obviously beat us. So if you have a queue full a retaliations, and they're all huge teams, you're basically out of luck.

Except points don't correlate to the quality of the opponent's team. I've seen plenty of 9-pt matches with lvl 141 Mags, Patch, Spidey that I've skipped in favor of 20+ pt matches with much easier opponents. So I see don't how skipping in the past really avoided bullying unless you had high-point low-level teams. Now, you're right that when a person has to choose between fighting two 10-point opponents, they are invariably going to fight to easier opponent, which will increase the sense of bullying.

I'm pretty angry right now. I'm in third place in the Fresh Cut event. Not only is it impossible to get a match worth more than 15 points, which means the retaliation value to my opponents is worth much more that I can possibly win, but 90% of the matches I'm getting are with the same 10 opponents -- including the ones I've already beaten, who are now worth even less than before. So I'm basically paying to skip the same people over and over. I finally gave up and shielded, which was smart, because I got hit with two retaliations that would have wiped out 57 points -- nearly the total amount I gained in a half-dozen matches.

Unknown

The thing is, we need the ability be able to play with different characters.

As an example, I might use my high level characters to work on the PvE event. then when I'm out of health, use a weaker set of players to try and hit the bottom tier rewards.

As it stands, if your are pulling match ups that are equal to your strongest players, you will never be able to use your weaker ones for other events.

The game should be pushing us toward using more variety of characters, not forcing us to either use our strongest players or not play at all.

I just tried to get the bottom tier rewards in a lightning round and all my matchups were challenging even for my strongest characters which were laid up from battling in the Russia event.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

The thing is, we need the ability be able to play with different characters.

As an example, I might use my high level characters to work on the PvE event. then when I'm out of health, use a weaker set of players to try and hit the bottom tier rewards.

As it stands, if your are pulling match ups that are equal to your strongest players, you will never be able to use your weaker ones for other events.

The game should be pushing us toward using more variety of characters, not forcing us to either use our strongest players or not play at all.

I just tried to get the bottom tier rewards in a lightning round and all my matchups were challenging even for my strongest characters which were laid up from battling in the Russia event.

Which is why you should select your team ahead of your opponents, instead of vice versa.

It would allow me to use my lower level characters (instead of just letting them take up space), I could try out different combos rather than storm + black widdw + powered up char, or just let my chars heal while I play others.

Unknown

I skipped someone in a retaliation (they were only worth 13 points) in a lightning round this morning only to have him replaced by the same guy, and another where I skipped someone only to have him show up 2 skips later. This is ridiculous; it needs to lock people out for x skips before they can come up again if they're going to charge us for the skips. I had the double annoyance this morning of getting hit for 42 points in the lightning round with six minutes left, which cost me a shot at the top 8, and then having to pay to get the 9 point match off of my queue.

Unknown

Implementing this skip tax without addressing all these matchmaking problems is downright messed up. It is obvious they didn't change a damn thing and just threw in this garbage skip tax. I can easily see this becoming the #1 problem with this game if it already isn't.

Unknown

Just a reminder since many of you don't seem to know or understand this:

LIGHTNING ROUNDS ARE GLOBAL.


My * account gets the same general matchups as my *** account.

MMR restrictions do not come into play on lightning rounds as anyone can be pared against anyone else. The only reason you see easy teams to start with are because they are seeded bots to start the round off until ~10-20mins in where enough real players are in the round to switch them in more.

LR's should be thought of as a free/short version of the entry pay tourneyments. They should NOT be compared to the typical PVE / PVP multi-day bracketed events