Fearless Defenders Discussion Thread

Unknown

I just prefer my human interactions to be meaningful, not faceless.

Unknown

Hey guys, good luck. I don't have any black panther covers, and i'm tired of wasting roster space with meaningless 3 star covers (like 0/1/0 Psylocke).
I've started playing early, and returning each time healthbacks are back ,aiming for the iso grind and proggresion rewards.

By the way guys, if you are to shy to join an alliance or you cant find any, consider making your own, i think it will pay off in the end.

Unknown

I kinda like the idea of alliances, but it has flaws currently. Basically a scrub low level roster alliance could do okay as long as they pony up the dough to buy as much roster space as possible. I'm currently #1 in my bracket, but my 5 man alliance is struggling to stay in the top #100. I think giving out a bonus cover to alliances is a much better idea than penalizing players who's alliance isn't up to par. Granted, I don't even know anyone in my alliance lol, I just joined one that looked like they had a decent roster of covers like mine. I may look for another after the event though, as it seems the more players = top prizes.

Unknown

I already hate alliances (kidding somewhat). Made me jump in earlier than I normally do just to shield at 829 with more than a day to go. D3P definitely has seen an uptick in HP spend from alliance creations. I want that 1100 psylocke but dang, -40 eaxh time I tried to get over 900.

Unknown

Alliances definitely mean there is no more jumping in at the end to snag a top prize.... Which I had become increasingly guilty of. However if you are not in an alliance you will be able to jump in and get good rewards at the end with less competition since alliance-bound players are likely to have joined early.

Unknown

I think the problem with the current implementation of Alliance reward is the fact that players with an Alliance will get strictly better rewards than those without. There is nothing inherently special about being an Alliance other than getting more rewards so in that regard, being an Alliance seems mandatory to play the game. In the worst case, a player creates a solo Alliance just to nab the lowest ISO reward. Since it only takes ISO to create the Alliance in the first place, you can see how after a certain point, the Alliance reward is strictly upside. And this is the worst case of individual players creating their own Alliance. What will most likely happen is they'll join a random Alliance that is recruiting for bodies just to get whatever reward they can. After all, there is no cost to joining an Alliance once it's made so all of the rewards gained from the Alliance reward is strictly better than not being in one.

What I think D3 should do is to create Alliance-specific (or cosmetic) rewards and to do that, they need to first make Alliance-specific gameplay. Make it so that being in an Alliance actually means something and the people interested in that type of gameplay can enjoy that in addition to the solo gameplay and those uninterested remain unaffected. Examples of Alliance-specific (or cosmetic) reward/gameplay:

• Alliance decal/banner.
• Alliance roster spot.
• Alliance based leaderboard (make it seasonal with rewards at the end of a season).
• Alternate art skins for characters.

So at the end of the day, players in an Alliance can still be rewarded with bragging rights while solo players aren't forced to join one just to be on the same foot as the other players.

Unknown

Well this event for me, and most of people here, it is super demotivating. What alliances with few players are supposed to do against super teams (14+ players)?

No doubt this actual system needs to be remodeled. Why not split brackets according to number of players into each Alliance team?

Example given
Bracket A - Teams up to 8 players
Bracket B - Teams up to 14 players
Bracket C - Teams up to 20 players

It might not be the best idea, but just a food for thought.

Unknown

There's an alliance with 6814 rating points, so I'm guessing that's the sum of all its members, unless they somehow have 5 guys averaging 1300 (an unheard of amount of rating). This means there's no point to compete against bigger alliances. It's way easier to get 2 guys who can do 500 versus a single guy who can do 1000, so even a single more roster spot is pretty much insurmountable advantage.

Unknown

I just wanted to add my feedback regarding the current alliance reward structure. Obviously negative.

It has already been brought up that there really isn't any good way to implement the alliance score that is truly fair. Using the sum of scores greatly favors huge alliances, while using the average score benefits 1-man alliances, etc etc. So the obvious solution is that alliance rewards should never be as significant as covers. Alliance rewards should be as originally communicated, small incidental benefits that are nice to get but do not make alliances mandatory. By removing rewards from normal progression and adding the blue BP cover to alliances, you have effectively made alliances mandatory.

Having such alliance rewards will introduce levels of alliance drama and alliance hopping that will make WoW progression guild hopping look tame. It creates a lot of ill will amongst the playerbase towards players who are seen to be underperforming, or not putting enough time, dragging down the alliance etc etc. There are going to be a lot of freeloaders getting significant rewards for doing absolutely nothing as long as they are in a big enough alliance. Players will be encouraged to keep jumping to bigger and bigger alliances in order to get free loot, completely destroying any social aspect of alliances.

Also, from an economic standpoint such alliance rewards do not scale well. If a huge 50-man alliance comes along, it will undoubtedly get 1st place. With the current 100 HP reward, that means an injection of 5000 HP and 50 BP covers into the economy. As previously mentioned, this will obviously have a huge impact on overall HP flow and will prompt HP income nerfing in other areas under the guise of "balancing the economy".

Last but not least is a topic that I am hesitant to bring up, but knowing human nature it is something that I expect to already be happening. Having tangible alliance rewards has now destroyed D3's anti-cheater strategy. There is nothing stopping someone from creating a new account, using a cheat to get 2147483648 HP, then creating an alliance with 100 slots and inviting random people to fill it up. This alliance is now unstoppable and will easily dominate every single alliance event. You cannot sandbox the entire alliance, and kicking the original cheater does nothing. It is a nightmare for customer support as they will have to go through audit logs to reverse all transactions, and at the end of the day the cheater can just do it again and again because the system is not set up to prevent such abuse, only detect it, and it is also obvious that detection does not occur automatically therefore there is always a window of opportunity for cheaters to affect others.

The solution is to make alliance rewards relatively small, such as 500-1000 ISO or maybe 50-100 HP (not such a great idea due to economic scaling as mentioned above but...). Others have also suggested cosmetic rewards like alliance logos etc. COVERS SHOULD NEVER BE PART OF THE REWARD, especially not at the cost of removing them from normal rewards.

Unknown

Alliance rewards can be tokens. You can afford to give a pretty generous amount of tokens and still know that RNG will generally prevent guys from actually getting anything useful (and whoever happens to get lucky is obviously very happy).

Unknown

Got to 600. Got my reward for 600, and as I was #1, I shielded. a couple of seconds later I'm hit for 26pts. so now I'm shielded at #2 with 574pts... I'm really happy that everything in this game is working as intended.

Bacon Pants

Emeryt wrote:

Got to 600. Got my reward for 600, and as I was #1, I shielded. a couple of seconds later I'm hit for 26pts. so now I'm shielded at #2 with 574pts... I'm really happy that everything in this game is working as intended.

I've been seeing a couple of the same people today in matches, if I attacked you multiple times I apologize. I try to skip duplicates after the first match if possible.

Unknown

Bacon Pants wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

Got to 600. Got my reward for 600, and as I was #1, I shielded. a couple of seconds later I'm hit for 26pts. so now I'm shielded at #2 with 574pts... I'm really happy that everything in this game is working as intended.

I've been seeing a couple of the same people today in matches, if I attacked you multiple times I apologize. I try to skip duplicates after the first match if possible.

Yeah, You hit me for 20sth. I don't mind really, as I retaliated immediately for 39pts

Bacon Pants

Emeryt wrote:

Bacon Pants wrote:

Emeryt wrote:

Got to 600. Got my reward for 600, and as I was #1, I shielded. a couple of seconds later I'm hit for 26pts. so now I'm shielded at #2 with 574pts... I'm really happy that everything in this game is working as intended.

I've been seeing a couple of the same people today in matches, if I attacked you multiple times I apologize. I try to skip duplicates after the first match if possible.

Yeah, You hit me for 20sth. I don't mind really, as I retaliated immediately for 39pts

Haha, well I'm glad I could help ya out...I'm shielded at 676 in what currently appears to be a somewhat weak bracket.

Unknown

btw. I'm running Punisher 120 + OBW + MStorm. On the jungle map. Pretty easy battles, though a bit timely - I spend a lot of time to find good matches or thinking about tactic (like - I have 10green. should I get more ISO with Storm or start hitting hard with Frank?).
Really nice team and pretty easy to obtain. I suppose switching Punisher for Patch might also be a good idea.

On the other hand, I assume I pose no thread when someone sees me in their queue.

vudu3

I'm sure this has been asked and answered on this board but I searched and couldn't find anything--

What determines the bracket in which you compete? I'm completely out of my league in my Fearless Defenders bracket. I have a fairly solid 2* team but the 3 starting matches in this event were all against three 3*, level 141 opponents. I had to skip 10 times before I found a match that I felt I could win. I've managed to win a couple since then but this is by far the most difficult bracket I've experienced in my 2 months of playing.

I opened the event within a few minutes of it starting to see what the rewards were but didn't start playing until after the Hulk and BP events were over. Does when I open the event determine my bracket? Does my ranking in previous events influence this event? Or is it completely random?

NorthernPolarity

vudu3 wrote:

I'm sure this has been asked and answered on this board but I searched and couldn't find anything--

What determines the bracket in which you compete? I'm completely out of my league in my Fearless Defenders bracket. I have a fairly solid 2* team but the 3 starting matches in this event were all against three 3*, level 141 opponents. I had to skip 10 times before I found a match that I felt I could win. I've managed to win a couple since then but this is by far the most difficult bracket I've experienced in my 2 months of playing.

I opened the event within a few minutes of it starting to see what the rewards were but didn't start playing until after the Hulk and BP events were over. Does when I open the event determine my bracket? Does my ranking in previous events influence this event? Or is it completely random?

Its based off of the timing of your first win. When you win your first game, you get placed into the one bracket that is open at that time. Once the bracket is full, they open up a new one.

vudu3

Thanks! That explains why things got easier after I found that first match I could beat. I'm still running into quite a few 2*, level 85 teams but it's not as bad as all those 3*, level 141 teams I saw at the start.

NorthernPolarity

vudu3 wrote:

Thanks! That explains why things got easier after I found that first match I could beat. I'm still running into quite a few 2*, level 85 teams but it's not as bad as all those 3*, level 141 teams I saw at the start.

Not quite: you can face anyone from any bracket in the tournament: your bracket only matters for progression awards. I think you just got an unlucky streak with the 141s.

KaioShinDE

vudu3 wrote:

Thanks! That explains why things got easier after I found that first match I could beat. I'm still running into quite a few 2*, level 85 teams but it's not as bad as all those 3*, level 141 teams I saw at the start.

There are two seperate things at work here.

1. Your bracket just determines which other players you compete with for the progression rewards. As others explained, the brackets are just created in a manner that everyone who joins the tournament gets added to the current bracket and once it's full a new bracket is created. These are the folks you see in the score table with you.

2. Which enemies you can see as actual enemies to fight with has absolutely nothing to do with your bracket at all. It is determined by your MMR (match making ranking). Everytime you win it goes up, everytime you lose it decreases (it's probably elo, all game developers are lazy and use the elo system, you can wikipedia it). If you are at a point where you can only find 141 enemies, it's time to tank your MMR. This is what people refer to as tanking (I'm sure you read it before if you are active in the forums at all). You must win with a weak team that sucks, and then wait a few hours / over night. Hopefully a ton of people attacked you and won and your MMR is back low again so you get beatable enemies. The easiest way to do this is in Lightning Rounds, since they are short and if you join directly at the start, you get level 1-15 enemies regardless of your MMR (since the tournament is empty) which you can easily beat with a **** team.