Tournament Points - Split from Patch Preview: R41

Unknown

I was really hoping for a fix in this patch to the problem of losing too many points too quickly in tournaments. I don't know whether or not the devs even consider this to be an issue but I find it to be the single biggest problem in PVP tournaments. It almost discourages players from playing until the last day as any progress you might make will generally be wiped out within an hour or two. It also makes those top end prizes (usually Wolverine 4-star covers) entirely unattainable so it comes across as disingenuous to even put them up as prizes. Why taunt us with them if we can't actually get them?

Unknown

I got to 1300 in the Dark Avengers tournament, that's the furthest I have got progression wise. I think that I am helped being in Europe in that respect, as there is less activity in the daytime over here. Has anybody else gone past 1400 or more in any of the featured tournaments?

IceIX

ccseifert wrote:

I was really hoping for a fix in this patch to the problem of losing too many points too quickly in tournaments. I don't know whether or not the devs even consider this to be an issue but I find it to be the single biggest problem in PVP tournaments. It almost discourages players from playing until the last day as any progress you might make will generally be wiped out within an hour or two. It also makes those top end prizes (usually Wolverine 4-star covers) entirely unattainable so it comes across as disingenuous to even put them up as prizes. Why taunt us with them if we can't actually get them?

<This is me speaking PURELY as a player, not as a Dev. Do not take it as Dev gospel for future changes> I'm not sure I get that line of thought, just as I don't understand it on Avenger's Alliance, which uses a similar system (and gets similar feedback). Part of ranking highly in the game is figuring out a team that can not only win on offense but survive on defense. Or if it has a hard time surviving, be something that's at least nasty *looking* so that players will skip you. If you're gaining a ton of points but losing them just as quickly it's a sign that your defense is way lower than your offense. Everyone else labors under the same system, so it comes down to having the best overall setup. It could be that maybe your team just doesn't do well defensively? Is there any way you can create a better balanced team that may not win as easily but won't get thrashed on defense? I personally am doing a fairly good job of that I think, and I'm not using Ragnarok or Storm Classic with a throwaway. Actually, I pity those that do use throwaways. The retaliations are flipped when you attack, so the person who got beat is just going to come back and demolish your team. Good for bursting rating early on, not a smart/reliable strategy for the final portions of a tourney. </PlayerSpeak>

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

I don't understand it on Avenger's Alliance, which uses a similar system (and gets similar feedback).

It's interesting that you bring Avengers Alliance up as I ultimately quit that game due to largely the same reasons. However, it's even worse in this game as in Avengers Alliance, you at least got to set up a defensive team as opposed to here where, if we follow your suggestion, we have to set up a balanced team for both offense and defense.

Additionally, giving people three tries to beat someone else virtually guarantees that you will lose points when you are attacked. I've played quite a lot now and I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've survived three rounds of being attacked by one player.

IceIX wrote:

Part of ranking highly in the game is figuring out a team that can not only win on offense but survive on defense. Or if it has a hard time surviving, be something that's at least nasty *looking* so that players will skip you. If you're gaining a ton of points but losing them just as quickly it's a sign that your defense is way lower than your offense.

I understand your perspective here, but I'm not sure you understand mine - even with infinite ISO and HPs, there isn't a team I can draw up that I couldn't also beat. Similarly, there's no reason that anyone attacking me shouldn't be able to beat me, which is generally borne out through the results. If there is some style of defensive team that I'm not aware of that simply shuts attackers down, I would love to hear about it because I don't think it exists, even if it were horrible on offense.

I'm not using Ragnarok or Storm either, I think I have a fairly balanced team but when you are being attacked by 12 people in the span of half an hour, it doesn't matter how balanced you are. It's simple math - if you are near the top of the standings, you can make one attack, get 15-20 points at best usually, and when you get back to the pairings, you've lost 60-80 points overall because you were attacked by 5 people in that time. The system does not reward people who do well over time, it rewards people who hover below the top and then sprint in the last half hour. I know, because I've done it.

Just like The Ladder, I've finished in the top 2 of multiple tournaments and at best I have maybe crossed 1,300 points and if I did, it was only once (and this is putting in a LOT of time to do that). Yet there are prizes for those fictitious people who get thousands of points? Come on. I've never seen anyone above 1400 in every tournament that's been run. They're fake prizes.

I'm not discounting your point of view, I just don't agree with it because what you're describing is completely different from what I have experienced. And hey, it's your game, not mine - like I said, maybe you guys don't see a problem with it. It's not hurting my results, I still do well, but I think it really sucks the enjoyment out of these tournaments.

Unknown

I definitely have to agree that coming home from work and getting onto MPQ only to find that I have lost all the progress I made the night before and some is incredibly frustrating and worse de-motivating.

I really loved the Red ISO event because I knew I wouldn't be going backwards in progress at any point.

I have accepted that I simply don't play enough to get any high rank rewards from the end of any tournament, but I'd at least like to have that regular progression reward to look forward to. As it stands now I can expect to get up to around 700 points or so in a 3-4 day tournament and I'll be in a position where I'm losing points faster than I can gain them so no matter how much I want to play I just won't be making any progress.

Unknown

Perfect example: put my phone down for 10 minutes. Picked it back up and had lost almost 70 points. So glad the work I put into getting those points didn't go to waste...

Unknown

The biggest frustration I have is not the points loss, rather the fact you can rarely find a worthwhile matchup the higher up the ranks you are. I often find the usual suspects in my selections, but they are not always active in the current tournament. You end up skipping over and over, just to find a match offering points. Could the matchmaking dynamic not look at the players that are around you in the current rankings for that event, and match you against them? That way, not only should you be able to find some decent points to battle for, you aren't going to suffer so many huge crippling losses from someone who wakes up and decides to enter the event!

Unknown

ccseifert I'm actually in the same bracket as you and i'm having the same experience. I have an almost maxed Thor (82) and in progress on classic storm (~30) and then alternate between IM models 35 & 40 to have another tank. I've only had a single time where I've successfully defended against an attacker. I think this particular tournement is HEAVILY weighted to having Juggernaut which i've been selling all of his cards since the beginning so i don't feel like there's much hope. I don't think it's likely that i'll be able to place in the top 25 and considering sitting out the next few days, maybe that will help me get easier opponents in the next tourney?

Unknown

The match making is a close #2 for me in problems with these tournaments. There is no legitimate reason I would ever want to attack someone who gives me 0 points if I win, yet I get offered those matches on a regular basis. It's definitely annoying.

IceIX

Again, my replies in this thread are completely user driven, not Dev comments. We've had extensive (heated) discussions about this very topic. It's pretty divisive to say the least.

One thing I've noticed playing through the tournaments is that there are best times to push for anything. At the start you can push up to around 300-400 before the rate of return on points starts to get to be poor (my personal cutoff is around 13-14). Until then, I can push through a bunch of opponents and gain the first few tiers. Losses are somewhat infrequent at the start once you hit that total since people are just popping in and bashing themselves against other 0-200 rating players. Sometimes I'll get hit by a lowbie, sometimes not.

During the mid Tourney doldrums is when there's a real chance to push up in ratings. There are others playing fairly regularly, more people are joining in, and the overall available pool of points goes up. That makes the rate of return rise again. During this time I can push to around 600-700 fairly easily. If I get lucky with some matchups, maybe 800, but that's rare. At this point, I'm starting to get hit around 12-15 times a day. Points losses are anywhere from 5 to 25 a hit. A rising number of these opponents I can actually retaliate against and gain back most of my points. It wasn't that way a couple tourneys back, but my team is getting strong enough that it's a real possibility.

Last day or two (or last 8-10 hours on a weekend Tourney) is the time to make a run for whatever prize you're aiming for. The points pool is about as big as it's going to get and people aren't constantly around and bashing on you like they will be in the last 2 hours. Perfect time to hit that 1000-1200 point prize if you can spare the time to Skip around and find smart matches. As more players join the game, the overall points pool will also rise, making those currently unattainable prizes within reach. Every point gained is a point lost, so it takes more players coming in and "creating" points as 0s to make for larger pools.

Last 2 hours? Madhouse. I usually just smash as many throwaway Storm Classic teams as I can find in the matchmaker to keep my rankings up and retaliate against those that hit me with that strategy. There are quite a few of them out there, and they're always easy wins.

As for three tries: Points are (about) halved every time you attack someone and lose. However, retaliation points are gained as a full round, not based on the lost points. So if you can retaliate, you'll generally make more points off them than you lost. And if they lost fighting you in the first place, it's very likely that you're going to be able to win a retaliation match. 2 loss retaliations, for me, are pure gravy. Fairly rare, but it's a quick point cash-in.

For the matchmaker: It annoys me as well. Especially in the middle of the Tourney, matches are so spread out that it can take me 30 skips or so to find a single opponent. The (small) upside to that is that sometimes it'll match me up against a creampuff team at low rating that I can snag some quick Iso from.

IceIX

Dralion wrote:

ccseifert I'm actually in the same bracket as you and i'm having the same experience. I have an almost maxed Thor (82) and in progress on classic storm (~30) and then alternate between IM models 35 & 40 to have another tank. I've only had a single time where I've successfully defended against an attacker. I think this particular tournement is HEAVILY weighted to having Juggernaut which i've been selling all of his cards since the beginning so i don't feel like there's much hope. I don't think it's likely that i'll be able to place in the top 25 and considering sitting out the next few days, maybe that will help me get easier opponents in the next tourney?

It'll help a little, but probably not as much as you'd hope. You'll get beat on some while you're idling which will lower your internal rating, but that'll bottom out as your rating lowers and you're down to a point where players see you as too much of a challenge. But once that next Tourney starts and you blaze through your now underpowered (compared to yourself and your characters) brethren, you'll be right back up at the old rating and facing off against the same caliber of opponents.

As for being weighted with Juggernaut, that's how this particular Tourney runs. Almost every Tourney features different characters, so it's usually a good idea to keep as many different ones around as you can.

Unknown

There's two different issues here - how the tournament system affects ability to gain progression prizes, and how it affects ability to win at the end.

IMHO, the rapid turnover of points is a good thing, as far as progression prizes are concerned. It means that more people have an opportunity to hit a given threshold at some point during the life of a tournament. If I can hit a 100HP progression award (or even better, a 500HP award) then I get to keep my prize, even if I'm back to under 200 points at the end of the event. If there was less movement, less people would get participation prizes.

as far as the bigger prizes for 1400+ come in, give it time - if the playerbase continues to grow, both the breadth and height of the ratings "pyramid" should increase and people will start to be able to hit the top prizes. However, it might need as many as 50-100% more active tournament players for this to happen for anyone except The Ladder - this is a mathematical "hunch" rather than anything I've sat down and worked out.

The widening of the scores also increases over the length of the tournament - and the stronger players will rise to the top. However, this isn't a straight progression, it's like the tide coming in, up and down but increasing over time. I'm currently stuck between 800-900 waiting for more people to get there so I've can score some meaningful points. My target is the shiny 500HP prize at 1200 points, but doubt that will be achievable until the day after tomorrow, and even then it might not happen.

Note: ICEIX posted while I was writing this and I endorse his recommendations about how to target participation rewards most whole-heartedly. Except, as stated above, I'm already at over 800

Then there's the end prize. Here, the quick flow of points is a nuisance, as it makes the winner at the end much more random. It's hard to resolve that without ruining what else works about the system, though. As IceIX says, there are was to strengthen your defence, but that only improves your odds and the best player on paper could find themselves dogpiled in the last 5 minutes.

In short - a good player will score highly, but can't control when they reach their highest score, which is why the last few minutes of a tournament are so nail-biting (except for me, I'm usually asleep by then and getting clobbered. One day I'm going to stay up late just to surprise you all.)

The problem with anything that restricts points lost without also restricting points won is that it leads to inflation and rewards playing often over playing well. Preventing players from matching against opponents who are already engaged is also a pain, imagine losing your last fight because you couldn't find an unmatched opponent? I have a couple of suggestions, but not sure if they would work:

(1) I've made this one before - have the tournament remember your highest score ever attained, without changing current ranking. So if I hit 1250 on day 2, but never raise above that rating again, my end score is 1250.

(2) Dampen down the losses and gains as the end of the tournament approaches. So, for example, with one hour to go, ratings change by only 75% of normal, then 50% in the last half hour, 25% in the last 15 minutes and only 10% for any battles that finish after the bell rings. So there's still everything to play for (even a few points can change your placing) but much less churn at the end.

I think that these suggestions wouldn't play together, it's one or the other.

Unknown

The way I see it, the "fix" for the tournament problem is either:

1) You don't lose as much when defending balanced by not gaining as much while attacking.

2) You don't lose as much when defending balanced by an increase in the progression reward levels.

3) You don't lose as much when defending, and it isn't balanced.

In the first two cases you would most likely get less progression rewards and probably get the same placement rewards, although players that buy health packs will have a greater advantage. In the last case you could get all the progression rewards pretty easily, but the placement rewards would only favor people who buy health packs.

I just don't think that any of those is the answer. The solution to avoid that feeling of losing all that progress needs a bigger change. Some examples that I've been kicking around are:

1) Attacking people that attacked you should come with the ISO that they stole. Let me take it back. If they come back again, that ISO isn't up for grabs. Otherwise It would snowball. Instead, they can try to get back any additional ISO I stole. (and steal some more, of course)

2) I think it should be one chance to beat them, not three. It's not that much of a problem.

3) If you lose a character, you don't get as many points. Right now there's a difference between a solid victory and victorious failure except heal time.

4) If you lose when attacking, you lose points. Why wouldn't you? You do when defending. (maybe you do and I didn't realize it)

5) You steal less if you use a boost. Boosts are really common.

6) It might be this way, but you should retailate against the characters that beat you. So if they changed their team up, you still fight the team that beat you. (mostly for classic storm with a throw away so they can't switch it up for defense)

These are just some ideas. I don't know. I like the way it is, but it can be frustrating.

Unknown

i'm pretty sure you fight the team that beats you. otherwise, the retaliations i've saved for some pushes would've changed but they don't, even level wise.

Unknown

Ice, it seems pretty clear that we're not going to agree on this so I'm guessing that even though you're only commenting on it as a player, it's not going to get addressed (fixed, in my opinion). I can only share my frustrations about it. Sure, you can do these 'pushes' over the course of the week to get to different plateaus of prizes. But you can also do that by waiting until the last day of the tournament and do it in fewer matches. All of those players exist with high scores to use against them on the last day. I could start with 0 points on Friday morning, play sporadically through the day, and finish in the top of the standings by Friday night. What's the point of that?

I don't get it, so I guess we just disagree. But I will say this - listing 'unattainable prizes' (your words) sucks. If it's unattainable, it's just taunting us.

It sucks even more if, as an example, there is an unattainable prize at 2,000 and my final score ends up being 1,300. But in addition to those 1,300 points I finished with, I scored at least another 700 over the course of the week that were lost due to being attacked so much because the system works the way it does now. I scored 2,000 points, but that's not reflected in my result.

It's really unfortunate because in general, I prefer PVP play but right now, I think the PVE (i.e. Unstable ISO event) is significantly superior to every PVP event you guys have run because it rewards players for the work that they do, not when they do it (i.e. in the last day or so).

Unknown

forgrim wrote:

i'm pretty sure you fight the team that beats you. otherwise, the retaliations i've saved for some pushes would've changed but they don't, even level wise.

Good point

Unknown

My teams seem to do better than most when it comes to defense than what a lot of forum goers report but I still get the tar beat out of me pretty regularly. I've had several times where I beat a team 2 to 3 times and got a decent amount of rating when they yeilded(usually it's only once though).

There needs to be some kind of limiter on the range of opponents that can attack you though. Being attacked by someone at half your rating with a strong team trying to make a last minute push is really disheartening. There's no incentive to fight back because I'll just donate more rating to them when they attack again.

At the very least, retaliations need to be reworked.

Edit: fixed swypos

Unknown

Just throwing these out there off the top of my head:

• Shield, so you can't be attacked for a certain amount of time after just being attacked.
• Retaliations being a 1-time event, i.e. you can't retaliate a retaliation.
• Limit the rank range at which you can attack. You should have to work your way up the ranks, not jump up from a single battle.
• Overall, just tweak the numbers so you don't lose as much in fights.

Unknown

The only problem with the shield is that people can attack pretty quickly, which could block retaliation. If you ignore retaliation then it could work. I think a lot of people are being retaliated against. It doesn't tell you when that happens. You just have to remember who you fought. I think the limited range would work well, but you might run into problems with both the shield and this. It can get lonely at the top (so I hear). You would need to have a percentage bracket. Top 20%, 20-40%, ... bottom 20%.

Unknown

Blue Shoes wrote:

The only problem with the shield is that people can attack pretty quickly, which could block retaliation. If you ignore retaliation then it could work. I think a lot of people are being retaliated against. It doesn't tell you when that happens. You just have to remember who you fought. I think the limited range would work well, but you might run into problems with both the shield and this. It can get lonely at the top (so I hear). You would need to have a percentage bracket. Top 20%, 20-40%, ... bottom 20%.

Well, a simple fix to that is retaliations should ignore shields.

Unknown

Ranzera wrote:

Blue Shoes wrote:

The only problem with the shield is that people can attack pretty quickly, which could block retaliation. If you ignore retaliation then it could work. I think a lot of people are being retaliated against. It doesn't tell you when that happens. You just have to remember who you fought. I think the limited range would work well, but you might run into problems with both the shield and this. It can get lonely at the top (so I hear). You would need to have a percentage bracket. Top 20%, 20-40%, ... bottom 20%.

Well, a simple fix to that is retaliations should ignore shields.

Yep