the game demi/d3 want

Alsmir

Quebbster wrote:

Alsmir wrote:

Sorry, not stealing, just abusing faulty game mechanics. Basically cheating, so selected group can get extra points. But it's totally fine, because some random person will also have a chance to get few points every now and then.

That's the thing though: Cupcaking does not mean "a few Points now and then" for "some random person". The entire slice benefits from the cupcake because once you pass 1000 Points the only way to inject new Points into a slice is to hit a shielded target. It's a trickel down effect - even if you don't hit the cupcake yourself you still benefit from it if you hit someone who hit the cupcake and thus is Worth more Points. Compare how many Points are avaiable in a dead slice, where you have to struggle to get past 1000 Points, to one with many cupcakes where things might get slow around 1500 Points.

I prefer dead slices when I can compete for placement rewards, instead of slices full of bakers, where top 10 players have 2k+ points.

Quebbster

Alsmir wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

Alsmir wrote:

Sorry, not stealing, just abusing faulty game mechanics. Basically cheating, so selected group can get extra points. But it's totally fine, because some random person will also have a chance to get few points every now and then.

That's the thing though: Cupcaking does not mean "a few Points now and then" for "some random person". The entire slice benefits from the cupcake because once you pass 1000 Points the only way to inject new Points into a slice is to hit a shielded target. It's a trickel down effect - even if you don't hit the cupcake yourself you still benefit from it if you hit someone who hit the cupcake and thus is Worth more Points. Compare how many Points are avaiable in a dead slice, where you have to struggle to get past 1000 Points, to one with many cupcakes where things might get slow around 1500 Points.

I prefer dead slices when I can compete for placement rewards, instead of slices full of bakers, where top 10 players have 2k+ points.

Fair enough. I find placement rewards too unreliable, so I put my faith in progression rewards. To each his own.

ammenell

don't really care.
i stopped throwing money at the game because of... decisions months ago.

i will just jump on whatever strategy comes up to be most efficient.
worst case I stop shielding and grab whatever I can from pvp and concentrate on the 4*reward in pve

madsalad

Just because you have not eaten a cupcake directly does not mean you never benefited from the baking. More cupcakes meant more points, regardless of who was eating the cupcake.

Say I eat a bunch of cupakes and my score was nice and high. Anyone who queued me up while I was eating cupcakes would be fighting me and my nice high score, getting them 70+ points per battle, getting them higher ranked and closer to progression.

Compare this to slices that traditionally have no bakers, where I'm hitting Top 10 with 1k points, and maybe only 2 or 3 people have met the 1300 point progression mark.

simonsez

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Is it bad news if you never indulged in cupcaking to begin with?

Simply put, **** yes it's bad news. What you people with celiac disease continually refuse to hear is that even if you never hit a cupcake, you're benefiting because you're consistently hitting targets worth more points than they otherwise would be worth without ccs.

ammenell

on my way to 1k I come across 2-3 cupcakes.
i generally stop after 1k because 1.3k is unreachable. ignoring placement rewards i almost never shield and fall back to around 300.
with these changes im not sure I could still hit 900.

Dragon_Nexus

simonsez wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Is it bad news if you never indulged in cupcaking to begin with?

Simply put, tinykitty yes it's bad news. What you people with celiac disease continually refuse to hear is that even if you never hit a cupcake, you're benefiting because you're consistently hitting targets worth more points than they otherwise would be worth without ccs.

Wow...harsh.
Was just asking, dude o_o

Vhailorx

People don't bake because they love the stress of it (though people do enjoy the social aspect. Which is something demi/d3 must consider). They do it because it is by far the most efficient way to reach the max prog rewards.

People also don't play high level PvP in small clusters ifnmstches every 3 or 8 hours because they enjoy it. Theybdobit because it is the most efficient way to reach a given score/placement.

The underlying fact is that "raw" PvP (i.e. the game with no coordination and no one else baking) sucks. It is just not fun to hit a score at which winning any match would result in a net point loss of several hundred points. It sucks having to wait 8hours to play again because your shields are cooling down. It sucks getting matched against no one but 420+ oml/Phoenix or boosted rulk when you have a 3* roster.

The people who come to the forums and complain about how they can't ever get past 600 and its unfair that the bakers can get to 1.3k have a point. The base game mode isn't fun. THAT'S WHY PEOPLE ARE BAKING!

Personally, I don't have a problem with baking because the marginal cost of entering the world of LINE communications is very low relative to already incredibly time/money consuming cost of playing PvP competitively (as long as you are willing to give up your privacy to LINE, inc!).

Think if It like this. To play PvP straight and score well you need: (1) a deep 3* or middling 4* roster, (2) an uninterrupted 40-90 minutes of play time to climb up to a shield-able score (3) enough HP to shield from your playsession(s) to the end of the event, (4) unlimited access to the game while shielder tkncycle nodes for strong targets, and (5) an uniterrupted 10-12 minutes for each shield hop (these periods must be separated by at least a few hours, but no more than 3/8 depending on shield).

That's a pretty stict list of requirements. Adding line is relatively easy: (1) download LINE, (2) join an alliance (this consists I'm making a fourm post and answering some pms), and (3) watching a battle chat while looking for targets.

Looking at those two lists, it seems to me that the first one is the problem that really needs to be solved.

Punisher5784

I am surprised that when the players raged on the forums about defensive team changes, the devs stated there was no change or testing. Then a week later they released the same exact change that the players were complaining about on the forums. Did they think we would forget after a week? It was the most active the forums have been in months.

No matter how many times they tweak PVP it will always suck until they completely overhaul the entire PVP.

mohio

The only way this change even comes close to being palatable is if they severely loosen up matchmaking and they DRASTICALLY reduce point losses. These should be self-explanatory but if some don't understand I'll do the tl;dr (ish) explanation

1) Matchmaking sucks for 5* rosters. Almost at all points in our climbs to ~800 we are stuck in a cycle of the same 4-6 people (although who those 4-6 are sometimes change) and all of those people have similar 5* rosters. We put up with this because after 800 it gets better, and then we get to eat some cupcakes and join the fun >1000 or so.

2) As everyone has said they are not going to want to shield hop where their match is worth 50 points but they are hit 3 times for -150. Those losses are going to have to be worth like -15 instead of -50 in order for people to keep hopping and pushing for higher and higher scores. I kind of doubt D3/demi has gone this far in their devaluing of lost points.i

Vhailorx

Mohio, if a 50 point match leaves you open to 3x -15 point hits then PvP will suck. Do you want to climb to 1.2k 5 points at a time?

GrumpySmurf1002

Alsmir wrote:

I prefer dead slices when I can compete for placement rewards, instead of slices full of bakers, where top 10 players have 2k+ points.

This kind of comment makes me question where in the game you are. Preferring (maybe) a couple 3* covers and some Iso over the 4* and CP is a really strange stance to take, from a roster development standpoint.

The reality is, despite some of the vets getting uppity, is that 4 and 5* rosters are unlikely to have a problem still hitting their progression targets. Closing the bake shops (potentially, we don't know what level of bakes will still be allowed) is going to really hurt the 3->4* transition the most. Which sucks, since that's the group that already has the most problems in the game, between lack of 4* cover availability and poor iso/power ratios compared to the 3/5 tiers.

Fightmastermpq

Vhailorx wrote:

The underlying fact is that "raw" PvP (i.e. the game with no coordination and no one else baking) sucks. It is just not fun to hit a score at which winning any match would result in a net point loss of several hundred points.

This is exactly right. Once you get over 800 points every time you enter a battle you are likely to lose as many points as you gain. You are fighting and getting hit by similar teams that take similar amounts of time to play, and so there is no way to really get much of a competitive advantage that allows you to score points faster than you lose them - especially considering that you can only fight one opponent at a time, but can get hit by multiple opponents. So the only real way to get ahead is to just form a truce with as many people in the slice as you can. You all agree not to hit each other until you shield, and everyone can climb safely without fear of losing points.

The problem is that I don't really think D3 understands high level play well enough to see the potential consequences of various changes to mechanics. Maybe I'm wrong. They did mention changes to point losses, which could potentially fix the issue of losing far more points than you could ever make in one battle by getting hit by multiple enemies, but given their track record, I won't believe it until I see it.

The unintended consequences are going to be:
- Less revenue. This is the big red flag for me that illustrates that they don't understand their own game. The vast majority of changes they make are geared toward increasing revenue - this will decrease it. I think they might assume that people will need to shield hop more to hit max progression, but that won't happen. You won't be able to do much of anything to increase the speed of your battles, and so hopping won't net you any more points than just trying to climb unshielded all event. The most prolific bakers drop 3 shields every 8 hours, and it just won't continue to be as profitable to spend at these levels going forward.
- More external communication. Before cakes there were a lot of complaints about needing to download a 3rd party app and try to inject yourself into this social circle of MPQ LINE users. This will only get worse.
- Less competition. This past couple seasons or so has been the most fun for me. Some of you may not like me, or my alliance, or my play style - and for that I apologize (I'm really a nice guy, I promise.) But we've been moving around from slice to slice in small groups playing competitively. Mostly we try to join in intervals to get different brackets and have as many of us finish T5 as possible. Sometimes we suppress scores, sometimes we try to outbake the bakers, sometimes we coordinate with others, it all just depends on what we feel like doing. We have gotten some accidental T10 finishes just from trying to get all of us into T5. It's fun because we can play all event without shielding, really hit some people hard, but then (hopefully at least) not have any hard feelings as everyone is still able to hit max progression, and move on to the next event. Other than the barren wasteland that is S2 a 5* player can go to virtually any slice and climb to 1300 without coordinating with anyone, without using any shields, and without really making too many lasting enemies. That simply won't be the case anymore, and you won't get to 1300 by having to compete more, you'll get there by holding hands, making agreements with others, and actually having less competition.

Maybe they will do a good enough job with the scoring to allow players to effectively climb over 800 without averaging more points lost than gained and I'll be wrong about all this. I hope I am. But if you take the current mechanics and remove the ability for players to hop quickly, what you end up with is a very hopeless feeling of play for the casual player who isn't interested in spending more time communicating with people outside the game than actually playing the game.

UncleSmed

3 -> 4* transition via pvp has been broken since championing and the 3* nerf.

I know because I'd only recently pushed the top ten 3*'s to 160 about a month before it and found myself able to finally hit the 1k progression of a guaranteed 4* cover.

I could make targetted progression.. then nerf nation attacked with championing.
And i couldn't even break 800 anymore.
I sold 2 OML covers when they came along because scaling and matchmaking sucked.

And you had me with cupcaking.. until you mentioned trickle down.. because that's ****.
The people who grab from the cupcake then shield up.. and guess what? I can't queue them.

Then their mates grab their cupcakes and shield up and i can't queue them.

So let them shut down cupcaking.. shut it down hard if they like. I was here for 2hr 22min pve nodes, i was here for sentry bombing and i built my way through all those changes to a viable pvp progression only to have it snatched away and left for cupcakers.

2 years +, here since the release of Fury. Give me a gorram chance at pvp without having to have line and try to coordinate my sliding shiftwork around the schedule of those gracious enough to pity me with their cupcakes.

ZekeBarrett

All the people chest bumping and thrilled to see cupcakes gone are the same people who never skipped one either. "Oh, I hate cupcakes but look here's one worth 75 points. I'll just skip it." said no one.

TxMoose

Fightmastermpq wrote:

The unintended consequences are going to be:
- Less revenue. This is the big red flag for me that illustrates that they don't understand their own game. The vast majority of changes they make are geared toward increasing revenue - this will decrease it. I think they might assume that people will need to shield hop more to hit max progression, but that won't happen. You won't be able to do much of anything to increase the speed of your battles, and so hopping won't net you any more points than just trying to climb unshielded all event. The most prolific bakers drop 3 shields every 8 hours, and it just won't continue to be as profitable to spend at these levels going forward.

I completely agree here. and many will argue the opposite that it will drive to more hops. in divine champs we were pretty much playing A teams nearly the whole way. my last 2 hops were against higher level rosters than mine, because they had the points. I could not finish one of those matches without coming out to a hit. could not do a single-match hop without taking a hit. if that's the case, my normal 9 shields a week will quickly become 3, regardless of hitting progression or not.

Vhailorx

UncleSmed wrote:

3 -> 4* transition via pvp has been broken since championing and the 3* nerf.

I know because I'd only recently pushed the top ten 3*'s to 160 about a month before it and found myself able to finally hit the 1k progression of a guaranteed 4* cover.

I could make targetted progression.. then nerf nation attacked with championing.
And i couldn't even break 800 anymore.
I sold 2 OML covers when they came along because scaling and matchmaking sucked.

And you had me with cupcaking.. until you mentioned trickle down.. because that's ****.
The people who grab from the cupcake then shield up.. and guess what? I can't queue them.

Then their mates grab their cupcakes and shield up and i can't queue them.

So let them shut down cupcaking.. shut it down hard if they like. I was here for 2hr 22min pve nodes, i was here for sentry bombing and i built my way through all those changes to a viable pvp progression only to have it snatched away and left for cupcakers.

2 years +, here since the release of Fury. Give me a gorram chance at pvp without having to have line and try to coordinate my sliding shiftwork around the schedule of those gracious enough to pity me with their cupcakes.

Why do you think removing cupcaking will make progression easier for you? Ever noticed how much harder it is to score in offseason events when slices have fewer points? That's life without baking.

Sure. Shielded targets are invisible. But no one does a shield hop above 1100 without getting hit a few times. You might get your shield back up before the hits land. But if you spend 5+ minutes unshielded above 1100 you WILL get attacked. And every time one of those hits bounces 75 more points get added to the slice. You don't need to eat cupcakes, or even eat people who ate cupcakes to benefit from cakes.

However, it would be great to get back to the topic this three was supposed to be about. Do players want longer, harder matches? If not, are we happy that demi/d3 seem to want us to have longer, harder matches?

Fightmastermpq

Longer, harder matches means you have to play for longer periods of time to get the same number of rewards. Obviously they like this as they seem to attach dollar values to rewards. Every reward not earned is a reward players potentially spend money to acquire anyway.

It also means more health pack usage, and apparently people spend HP on health packs so they like that too.

Punisher5784

ZekeBarrett wrote:

All the people chest bumping and thrilled to see cupcakes gone are the same people who never skipped one either. "Oh, I hate cupcakes but look here's one worth 75 points. I'll just skip it." said no one.

carrion_pigeons

I imagine the people psyched to see cupcakes gone are the people who have never seen one, actually.