You’re treating the symptoms, but ignoring the disease

firethorne

Cupcakes aren’t the problem. Cupcakes exist because there is a problem. Once you get high enough up, finding matches with a reasonable amount of points for the effort is very difficult. The further up you get, the more difficult it is to progress. Thus, everyone is extremely protective of the points they do have, shield, and reduce the available points up for grabs even further. When you do happen to find a match worth fighting, your points instantly become extremely valuable, and you’re incredibly likely to get hit by multiple people in the the time you’re fighting, thus losing significantly more points than you’ve won during your match. The absolute worse case scenario for winning a match should be breaking even. But, you have created a system where by winning your match, you can end up dropping down the ladder a large amount.

The game isn’t about winning and losing. The AI is stupid, and you’ll win far more matches than you lose. The game is about how quickly you can win, and get back to a shield. Frankly, it is a bad design.

This system that you’ve created also works against many of your own stated goals. It decreases diversity. It forces people to focus on a select few characters that are the fastest. It causes people to mock your characters that, under a reasonable system, are perfectly good and more than capable of winning matches. But, they cannot win them as fast as necessary to prevent losing points. It locks transitioning players with good rosters, but not the right rosters, out of competition. Despite your best efforts at balancing and adding interesting characters to the game, the only ones that matter will be the heavy hitters and the ones that make attackers think twice about taking on a long grueling match where, despite a win in the match, you will still end losing in the event.

Ultimately, all you’re doing is making a shallow attempt at masking the underlying etiology. If you want to argue cupcakes aren’t a symptom of a healthy game, I’m right with you. But, that is significantly different than saying removing the ability to use them will make PvP healthy.

TxMoose

in addition to the scoring/shielding system used, I think the cupcake culture was so embraced because of the screwy RNG nature of 4* and especially 5* roster progression. the only way to overcome the screwy RNG system is with numbers. and since we all have to deal with the same system, helping each other out to overcome the screwy system seemed very reasonable.

Jarvind

The PVP update did state that losses would sting less, in addition to lowering the total scores needed for max progression. Maybe wait and see how that shakes out - personally with the slew of positive changes lately I'm willing to believe they are doing their best to make the game more enjoyable.

MojoWild

Isn't the match with the same points whether a cupcake or not? If you're just looking for points that's one thing. What you're really wanting to do is game the system to get easy points.

Punisher5784

This is how I feel every time I start to climb, win a battle for 40+ pts then lose 200+ pts within seconds. Why can't we have a PVP system that only reduces your points when you actually lose, not when the AI loses with my defensive team. PVE has slowly gotten better while PVP is still as frustrating as always no matter how many things they change.

simonsez

notamutant wrote:

You, along with all the whiners in the other thread about the death of cupcakes, seem to not actually read or consider what was written by David. They did not ONLY say they will make cupcakes more difficult to create. They also said they will 1) lower progression requirements and 2) decrease point loss potential. If those aren't two ways being used to address the "disease," I don't know what is.

I guess you don't know what is.

The OP never said the disease is that it's hard to hit the top progression. The disease is that the design of PvP as a whole is ****. Tweaking points does nothing to change that.

And frankly, someone who has instant access to every new character via a sandboxed account shouldn't be ragging on people who are "whining" about how gameplay changes will affect their ability to build a roster the normal way.

notamutant

simonsez wrote:

notamutant wrote:

You, along with all the whiners in the other thread about the death of cupcakes, seem to not actually read or consider what was written by David. They did not ONLY say they will make cupcakes more difficult to create. They also said they will 1) lower progression requirements and 2) decrease point loss potential. If those aren't two ways being used to address the "disease," I don't know what is.

I guess you don't know what is.

The OP never said the disease is that it's hard to hit the top progression. The disease is that the design of PvP as a whole is tinykitty. Tweaking points does nothing to change that.

And frankly, someone who has instant access to every new character via a sandboxed account shouldn't be ragging on people who are "whining" about how gameplay changes will affect their ability to build a roster the normal way.

You do realize I have a perfectly normal account I play on and grind just as much as everyone else, right? I have been in a top 100 PvP alliance since seasons began. I have earned at least one cover for every new character on their new character PvE release. So I am not sure what your comment about my alternate account used to show people if a character is good maxed or not and how they work on a team is relevant to my explanation on why people should stop complaining before all the details are released on what appears to address some of the issues with PvP. Not only that, I have not used OOG communication to do hops, and have seen at most one cupcake a month, and still managed to hit 1k+ 90% of the time. I do not have any usable 5 stars due to really bad pulls in the beginning.

Back to the main discussion, now that I have qualified my opinion to be of at least some direct experience and relevance. Firethorne claimed the problem with PvP was quite simply the following:

You cannot find people to fight worth enough points higher up in progression, and when you have a lot of points, you are a target and at risk of losing tons of points yourself, more than you would win in a match. He also expressed a separate concern that players are forced use characters that can win the fastest, but circles back to his original complaint about losing points.

So in summary, my comment said that David said they were directly addressing the point loss issue, as well as it not being as important finding people with more points at higher progression levels due to a lower progression reward cap. It might not be perfect, but it will certainly address these main concerns to some degree. I directly addressed the two main concerns from the original post here, and you chose to, rather than explaining why I am wrong, personally attack me and not actually explain yourself what the problems were with PvP or their solutions.

simonsez

notamutant wrote:

I directly addressed the two main concerns from the original post here

The two main concerns *I* see in the original post are that the design puts an unreasonable premium on speed, and funnels everyone into a very narrow set of roster options. I think your interpretation of the OP misses the point.

And yes, I know you play a real account, but come on, the reason we compete at this game is to acquire new characters and build them up to the point where they're usable. If you're already tooling around with these characters on a side account, there's really no sense of competitive urgency on your part, so as much as you might try to empathize, you're not in the same boat. Don't construe this as an attack, it's just how things are.

notamutant

simonsez wrote:

notamutant wrote:

I directly addressed the two main concerns from the original post here

The two main concerns *I* see in the original post are that the design puts an unreasonable premium on speed, and funnels everyone into a very narrow set of roster options. I think your interpretation of the OP misses the point.

And yes, I know you play a real account, but come on, the reason we compete at this game is to acquire new characters and build them up to the point where they're usable. If you're already tooling around with these characters on a side account, there's really no sense of competitive urgency on your part, so as much as you might try to empathize, you're not in the same boat. Don't construe this as an attack, it's just how things are.

I mean he says pretty expressly the reason speed is important is because you lose points while fighting, and this in turn forces you to use fast characters.

"It forces people to focus on a select few characters that are the fastest... But, they cannot win them as fast as necessary to prevent losing points...the only ones that matter will be the heavy hitters "

Seems like his main concern is people losing points during matches, and every other problem he has is a result of that. Could be they will drastically reduce point loss and remove this concern almost entirely, could be they will barely adjust it and the problem will still exist, but we don't know yet. Seems pretty simple to me.

And I agree, having every character max takes away the need to play the game, which is why I DON'T play that sandbox game except for other peoples benefit. I even mentioned that in one of my videos, the game is boring once you have everything. The same could be said why would a whale want to play the game once they have everything. Especially in PvP, there is zero competition for a sandbox account, so no sense of competitive fulfillment there. But anyhow, focusing on me is pointless and has nothing to do with the discussion of whether or not these changes are good.

Do you agree that the main problem of the OP was all pretty much revolving around point loss now? And that the new change may or may not address the worst of it by reducing point loss?

Warbringa

I would actually just love a "real" player vs. player portion of the game where you can actually play another human opponent....just for fun. I am not worried about rewards or rankings etc. with a feature like this. Once you introduce those factors into it, it will bust the fun of this feature. You would be able to use your roster in this mode but there would be no boosts and any damage you take doesn't impact health for traditional PvE and PvP rosters etc. It would add a unique element to the game and allow a chat/social aspect to the game that would help add and keep players. I know it would be a big resource expenditure for the devs but I think it would be worth it because it would be a totally new feature for this game...which the game could really use.

Linkster79

MojoWild wrote:

Isn't the match with the same points whether a cupcake or not? If you're just looking for points that's one thing. What you're really wanting to do is game the system to get easy points.

I like the way this gets completely glossed over by all the debating.

Those at the top, the big hitters and high rollers could beat teams of max championed 4* or possibly even 5* if they wanted the 75 points enough. The reality is though is when they get high enough they game the system to create a little meta game of getting big points, quickly and for little risk and when done turn around and say "That's me done, I'm safe so now it's your turn old boy."

rbdragon

If the points lost are dropped by over 50% then yes, it is helpful. It still doesn't address the biggest problem that you can be hit by 3+ players at once while in your match.

We do need to wait and see, but there's another issue altogether...all the forum speculation due to a lack of details...

Jarvind

Linkster79 wrote:

MojoWild wrote:

Isn't the match with the same points whether a cupcake or not? If you're just looking for points that's one thing. What you're really wanting to do is game the system to get easy points.

I like the way this gets completely glossed over by all the debating.

Those at the top, the big hitters and high rollers could beat teams of max championed 4* or possibly even 5* if they wanted the 75 points enough. The reality is though is when they get high enough they game the system to create a little meta game of getting big points, quickly and for little risk and when done turn around and say "That's me done, I'm safe so now it's your turn old boy."

Word to this. I've never intentionally taken part in the cupcake game, though I do snarf them when I see them. If I see a match for 60+ points and it's anything other than 435+ 5-stars, you best believe I'm hitting it.

Vhailorx

notamutant wrote:

You, along with all the whiners in the other thread about the death of cupcakes, seem to not actually read or consider what was written by David. They did not ONLY say they will make cupcakes more difficult to create. They also said they will 1) lower progression requirements and 2) decrease point loss potential. If those aren't two ways being used to address the "disease," I don't know what is. The only reason progression was so hard to hit was because it was so high and you lost so many points while playing. They didn't lower it BECAUSE cupcakes were so easily able to get it, thus punishing those without cupcakes since the 1300 progression was almost impossible otherwise. Now that they acknowledge scores were only getting so high because of cupcakes, they also are acknowledging the progression level was too high for a regular system, so they are lowering the points required to hit it. Additionally, they acknowledge now that losing points while hopping when fighting stronger teams is painful, and are addressing that through less point loss. They literally are taking the exact steps they need to take. I assume if the number of people hitting 1200 drops significantly, they will lower progression a little bit more even, but I think 1200 is probably reasonable enough. So, before complaining about one part out of a three part fix, think about the whole picture.

A few thoughts Mutant:

(1) I really think that deriding everyone who is upset at these changes as "whiners" is both incorrect and counterproductive. You certainly don't have to agree with any particular argument, but that doesn't mean that different opinions aren't thoughtful and reasonable from a different point of view. All it does it belittle people, and make them defensive. This is how flame wars start!

(2) You are correct that david said defensive losses *should* cost players less points, and the prog rewards have dropped a bit; that might help. Personally, my problem with this announcement is that it was unnecessarily vague. When they switched the scoring system in the spring of 2015, they had a long detailed post explaining that node values were being increased 50% across the board, that defensive losses were devalued below 1k, and that players were universally visible above a certain point threshold. These are the sorts of details that they should offer for this change. They are fundamentally altering how PVP works. They shouldn't bury that in a single paragraph claiming that they are making a "slight" change. I don't think we can know yet what the ultimate impact will be. I am concerned that there will be negative impacts (mostly from the reduction of points in all slices, but perhaps also from a reduction in defensive roster diversity depending on how defensive teams are now set), but that's not the same thing as predicting that the sky is going to fall.

(3) I have no doubts that the new system will be cracked by players in a week or two anyway. And I think firethorne is absolutely correct that the problem is the underlying PVP system, not the specific tactic of baking. People bake because playing PVP straight up is no fun (and before you accuse me of being a cake-eating whiner, I too spent most of 2016 NOT on Line and reached 1k in almost every event I cared about.) So maybe demi's changes have fixed all the underlying problems and PVP will now be a blast for all roster strengths. That would be great, but I am not optimistic. I stated what I think is the fundamental confusion/frustration I have with demi/d3 about pvp in particular in my own thread on this topic. I will restate here:

Demi/D3 have designed a game that heavily favors quick, reliable victory. But then they seem disappointed when players notice this and design strategies and tactics that leverage fast, easy victory?

I just don't know what they want.

Vhailorx

Linkster79 wrote:

MojoWild wrote:

Isn't the match with the same points whether a cupcake or not? If you're just looking for points that's one thing. What you're really wanting to do is game the system to get easy points.

I like the way this gets completely glossed over by all the debating.

Those at the top, the big hitters and high rollers could beat teams of max championed 4* or possibly even 5* if they wanted the 75 points enough. The reality is though is when they get high enough they game the system to create a little meta game of getting big points, quickly and for little risk and when done turn around and say "That's me done, I'm safe so now it's your turn old boy."

I am sorry, but these opinions are just wrong. they misunderstand the problems with the current PVP scoring system above 1k. While it is true that a cupcake is worth the same 75 points as any other high score target, that's irrelevant. The time it takes to beat a powerful team is now pretty long (above 900 or so in pvp, it's hard to find teams that don't have 70,000 health or more.) So even if a player can reliably beat those teams, he or she can only beat them 1 at a time. Meanwhile, the player can (and will) be attached by many many people.

A VERY small percentage of players can climb to 1.3k straight up (although I doubt it would be a lot of fun). Basically those super-whales with 450+ 5* teams, and 4* vets with good champs during the weeks they are boosted. And even then, it might require as 3-4 hops depending on how much action there is, because it will be very hard to reliably do 2 match hops (think about it, can you reliably beat two different defensive A-Teams faster than anyone else can beat you once?). It's worth noting here that doing more than 3 shield hops in an event is awful. Who wants to schedule their life around shield cooldown timers? It sucks, I hate it, and demi should never have been allowed to put that **** in the game.

Baking democratizes 1k-1.3k way more than it creates a club of elite high-rollers and big hitters patting themselves on the back. With baking players that have strong enough rosters to climb to 850+ on their own can now reach 1k or even 1.3k without scheduling their lives around a mobile game. And in doing so they boost points in their slice to let players with weaker rosters backfill the 600-1k scores. That's a good thing IMO.

Fightmastermpq

Linkster79 wrote:

MojoWild wrote:

Isn't the match with the same points whether a cupcake or not? If you're just looking for points that's one thing. What you're really wanting to do is game the system to get easy points.

I like the way this gets completely glossed over by all the debating.

Those at the top, the big hitters and high rollers could beat teams of max championed 4* or possibly even 5* if they wanted the 75 points enough. The reality is though is when they get high enough they game the system to create a little meta game of getting big points, quickly and for little risk and when done turn around and say "That's me done, I'm safe so now it's your turn old boy."

It gets glossed over because it's wrong. The match isn't worth the same points....per time spent playing the match. This is why cupcakes exist, and no matter how many times it gets said, people just refuse to hear it. Every minute you are unshielded is a minute you are at risk of losing your points. In order to maximize the amount of points you can gain while minimizing the time you need to spend unshielded to get them you need to queue up the weakest teams worth the most points......hence cupcakes.

fmftint

Fightmastermpq wrote:

Linkster79 wrote:

MojoWild wrote:

Isn't the match with the same points whether a cupcake or not? If you're just looking for points that's one thing. What you're really wanting to do is game the system to get easy points.

I like the way this gets completely glossed over by all the debating.

Those at the top, the big hitters and high rollers could beat teams of max championed 4* or possibly even 5* if they wanted the 75 points enough. The reality is though is when they get high enough they game the system to create a little meta game of getting big points, quickly and for little risk and when done turn around and say "That's me done, I'm safe so now it's your turn old boy."

It gets glossed over because it's wrong. The match isn't worth the same points....per time spent playing the match. This is why cupcakes exist, and no matter how many times it gets said, people just refuse to hear it. Every minute you are unshielded is a minute you are at risk of losing your points. In order to maximize the amount of points you can gain while minimizing the time you need to spend unshielded to get them you need to queue up the weakest teams worth the most points......hence cupcakes.

And the guys at the top never get 75 point matches. You only get a 75 point match by hitting someone worth A LOT more points than you, several hundred to 1000 points. No the guys at the top fight each other for 5-35 points.

notamutant

Vhailorx wrote:

A few thoughts Mutant:

(1) I really think that deriding everyone who is upset at these changes as "whiners" is both incorrect and counterproductive. You certainly don't have to agree with any particular argument, but that doesn't mean that different opinions aren't thoughtful and reasonable from a different point of view. All it does it belittle people, and make them defensive. This is how flame wars start!

I mean 7 pages worth of people saying how bad this change is when we don't have the details yet does sound like whining to me. Its not like a feature was implemented and worked out horribly already. It's like when David only showed clearance level 6 rewards and not level 7 and everyone went crazy. Then 7 turned out to be good. Patience is a virtue. But you are right that it might cause flame wars, so perhaps different language should have been used.

Vhailorx wrote:

(2) You are correct that david said defensive losses *should* cost players less points, and the prog rewards have dropped a bit; that might help. Personally, my problem with this announcement is that it was unnecessarily vague. When they switched the scoring system in the spring of 2015, they had a long detailed post explaining that node values were being increased 50% across the board, that defensive losses were devalued below 1k, and that players were universally visible above a certain point threshold. These are the sorts of details that they should offer for this change. They are fundamentally altering how PVP works. They shouldn't bury that in a single paragraph claiming that they are making a "slight" change. I don't think we can know yet what the ultimate impact will be. I am concerned that there will be negative impacts (mostly from the reduction of points in all slices, but perhaps also from a reduction in defensive roster diversity depending on how defensive teams are now set), but that's not the same thing as predicting that the sky is going to fall.

Currently we have 4 stickied topics discussing new changes to the game. I am certain that more detail explaining this will come out in another day or two at most. They have been very good lately with explaining things, no reason to be upset about vague descriptions in what was supposed to be a summary post talking about many different changes. I hope they will release such a detailed description soon just like you. I am not as negative thinking points will fall for people that never used cupcakes. Remember how cupcakes work - your goal is to only be unshielded for 2 minutes. How many people will know to queue you that are not shielding themselves immediately thereafter? I disagree with those that think cupcakers contributed tons of points to a slice. I actually think they denied points by moving people up too quickly and getting them to shield too quickly before they became visible by all. If less points are lost, people will be more willing to be unshielded above 800 for longer, thus leaving more potential targets to hit at higher point values. I can understand the concern though, and we really can't know for sure without further details and until it is actually in game.

I value your input in many areas on the forum Vhailorx. I just think everyone needs to have more patience and make the posts less "sky is falling and everything is horrible," and more "waiting to get details."

Vhailorx

notamutant wrote:

I am not as negative thinking points will fall for people that never used cupcakes. Remember how cupcakes work - your goal is to only be unshielded for 2 minutes. How many people will know to queue you that are not shielding themselves immediately thereafter? I disagree with those that think cupcakers contributed tons of points to a slice. I actually think they denied points by moving people up too quickly and getting them to shield too quickly before they became visible by all. If less points are lost, people will be more willing to be unshielded above 800 for longer, thus leaving more potential targets to hit at higher point values. I can understand the concern though, and we really can't know for sure without further details and until it is actually in game.

Patience is good. So is expressing concerns early. Just do it politely, even if it's also harsh criticism! Sometimes that can make good things happen. We agree that "sky is falling" hyperbole is unnecessary.

Re: cupcake points, I think you are just wrong. baking adds points to the slices, and demi/d3 know it. Why else have they have lowered prog rewards and defensive loss points concurrently with their defensive team changes?

notamutant

Vhailorx wrote:

Re: cupcake points, I think you are just wrong. baking adds points to the slices, and demi/d3 know it. Why else have they have lowered prog rewards and defensive loss points concurrently with their defensive team changes?

Because top progression was always too high. The only reason it was ever kept up that high was BECAUSE of the cupcakes. See, the cupcakes weren't helping others, they were hurting them by making D3 think enough players were reaching the highest progression rewards, when in fact many more were reaching it than "should have" according to their roster strength. Had fewer people reached it because of no cupcakes existing, D3 would've lowered it much earlier. That is a theory I have been sharing for months now (and getting much hate for it) in line chat. Cupcake people don't want to admit that they were making the game more difficult for others, and get ridiculously defensive. I don't blame them for trying to use cupcakes, it is just taking advantage of a fault in the games design, but at least man-up and don't get so defensive when people point out that your actions create the need for cupcakes.

I guess this just shows there is an opposite perspective for every change, even though only one is accurate. We just don't know which one it is since they haven't released more details, and they probably never will in this area. They don't usually release information about if they think too many people are getting rewards.

bandog

Yall are going to be tiny kitty shocked at how awesome pvp is going to be.

Firstly, yall dont understand how pvp works. The ratio between points won vs lost is everything. As scores increase, this ratio aproaches 1; which means that when you hit someone for 50pts, they lose 50pts. At this point, when players attack eachother they are just trading the same points back and forth and the only way for the slice to gain points is for someone to get hit while shielded. This leads to a drought of points and most people being shielded above a certain threshold. A good bit below this threshold, attacking someone for 50pts will only take, say, 25pts from them; so points are constantly being created by people attacking eachother and everyones scores can easily rise up to this point. This allows people to float around this point and climb up to the threshold without too much trouble.

Secondly, yall seem to have forgotton one of the reasons for clearence levels. They allow people of various roster strengths to get the same number of points, yet receive rewards appropriate for them. This means that a 1star roster can hit 1200 in pvp but instead of a 4star and 25cp, they will get a 2star and 5cp. So demi can now change the ratio such that the threshold occurs at max progression; allowing anyone, with effort comparable to that of pve, to get it without screwing anything up.

Gee, wouldnt that be awesome?