And the rich keep getting richer!

kidicarus

Phantron wrote:

I don't think you'll see an increase in #2-#50 without a corresponding decrease in #1 because the amount of HP they give out is relatively generous at least for the guys in alliances and I don't see why they'd want to hand out even more. It's more likely #1 gets nerfed to 300 HP than the rest being made higher based on my observation of how relatively few HP awards are handed out. This is one of those subject where player input is meaningless because nobody is ever going to say no to more free HP. Sure, the proposals in this thread seems pretty good from a player's point of view because getting more HP is better than getting less HP, but you've to ask what does the company gain from doing that?

The main reason why I hijacked this troll thread with my diatribe on the prize distribution system is that the system as it currently stands, leads to stagnation. Let's face it, once you have made your 3 star transition, gotten yourself into a decent 20 man alliance, there is very little incentive to actually spend any real money on the game as your income tends to exceed your expenses.

What the company gains is that there will be an increase in the intensity of the competition. Ask yourself this, are the ScAvengers motivated to do better than where they have been placing in current tournaments? My alliance placed 3rd recently in a pvp tournament - it was a nice surprise and all our backs were well patted but we certainly didn't try to get to third place. Wouldn't it be nice if getting 3rd actually meant something. I mean if it did, I'm sure we wouldn't have ended up with those rankings seeing how so many other alliances have better rosters than us. If it did mean something I'm sure we would have spent more HP on shields or maybe even (gasp) buying covers to secure that 3rd place. A higher intensity competition will encourage this behaviour - I'm pretty sure of it.

5DV at least seems to try to place well but as far as I can tell, no one else is really trying and I'm pretty sure they'll burn themselves out if they have to keep having to spend all that HP without seeing anything in return. I would like my alliance (even though we're a strange hybrid of casual-hardcore) to compete against 5DV regularly and eventually against SHI3LD but the prize distribution structure as it stands doesn't lend itself to any real progression based competition.

Anyway, all i'm hoping is that you don't just dismiss my call for more competition as nerd rage entitlement forum rant without at least considering my arguments.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

jozier wrote:

Place first then. It's not like it's an automatic victory for the first place alliance each time.

The problem is that the first place prize is so large in comparison to the others. Because of this every successive win SHIELD makes, the likelihood of others placing first drops. Even after HP distribution is balanced the effects are going to ripple for a long time.

Phantron wrote:

I don't think you'll see an increase in #2-#50 without a corresponding decrease in #1 because the amount of HP they give out is relatively generous at least for the guys in alliances and I don't see why they'd want to hand out even more. It's more likely #1 gets nerfed to 300 HP than the rest being made higher based on my observation of how relatively few HP awards are handed out. This is one of those subject where player input is meaningless because nobody is ever going to say no to more free HP. Sure, the proposals in this thread seems pretty good from a player's point of view because getting more HP is better than getting less HP, but you've to ask what does the company gain from doing that?

It is unlikely they will leave 1st place HP at 500, like you said it will infuse more HP into the game (likely) decreasing profits. Player input will eventually get the developers to balance the current HP being distributed into alliance rewards, and that is what matters.

Actually, the 500 hp works as a carrot to get ppl to drop more $$$ at a chance to EARN that carrot. The problem is that it doesn't work when one or two alliances are able to monopolize that reward to the degree they are right now. The premise is fine, its just sometimes no matter how well laid a plan ....of mice and men or something something blah blah blah.

Regardless, tiers being 1, 2-50, 51-100 seems a little...wide. maybe 1, 2-5, 5-20, 21-50, 50-100 should be the spread for fairness." It's a business and not a game (well..u know what I mean), so fairness is relative.

Arogntbastrd

I'm surely in the minority but I'm fine with the 2-50. It keeps things casual. I'm getting way more hp, ISO, and covers than ever before so I'm not one to complain.

As long as we're discussing tiers though, during one of the pves they did sub events where 1st and 2nd got the same prize. My stabby brethren and I got 2nd twice in those and it was pretty sweet. What are the thoughts on just having it always be 1 and 2 get top prize? Now it's always a two team race, the alliance du jour trying to take s.h.i.e.l.d down gets rewarded for their efforts and people get to stop complaining about how it's not fair the best alliance always wins.

That, or my original suggestion...retire s.h.i.e.l.d just like the butt fumble

Unknown

kidicarus wrote:

The main reason why I hijacked this troll thread with my diatribe on the prize distribution system is that the system as it currently stands, leads to stagnation. Let's face it, once you have made your 3 star transition, gotten yourself into a decent 20 man alliance, there is very little incentive to actually spend any real money on the game as your income tends to exceed your expenses.

What the company gains is that there will be an increase in the intensity of the competition. Ask yourself this, are the ScAvengers motivated to do better than where they have been placing in current tournaments? My alliance placed 3rd recently in a pvp tournament - it was a nice surprise and all our backs were well patted but we certainly didn't try to get to third place. Wouldn't it be nice if getting 3rd actually meant something. I mean if it did, I'm sure we wouldn't have ended up with those rankings seeing how so many other alliances have better rosters than us. If it did mean something I'm sure we would have spent more HP on shields or maybe even (gasp) buying covers to secure that 3rd place. A higher intensity competition will encourage this behaviour - I'm pretty sure of it.

5DV at least seems to try to place well but as far as I can tell, no one else is really trying and I'm pretty sure they'll burn themselves out if they have to keep having to spend all that HP without seeing anything in return. I would like my alliance (even though we're a strange hybrid of casual-hardcore) to compete against 5DV regularly and eventually against SHI3LD but the prize distribution structure as it stands doesn't lend itself to any real progression based competition.

Anyway, all i'm hoping is that you don't just dismiss my call for more competition as nerd rage entitlement forum rant without at least considering my arguments.

PvP is simply not competitive due to the overwhelming emphasis on shields. I assume the idea was that people spend on HP on shields trying to get #1 but of course it's anything but that so far. They basically need to figure out a way to make alliance PvP scores look more like PvE, but it's difficult for me to see how unless you got rid of shields. The problem is that shields are pretty cheap for the amount of advantage you get. While in PvE in theory you can keep on buying health packs or the +50% damage to all enemies boosts that cost 500 HP for 5 (at least I assume it's 5, not that I ever bought them) but of course you'd actually come out way behind on HP if you did that. I guess in theory you can also just buy all the powered up heroes to max level, but it's prohibitively expensive if it's a weak hero like Daredevil, and if it's a borderline P2W character like lazy Thor, plenty of people will be buying his covers anyway just for general purpose so you don't get much of an advantage there. Unfortunately I do not have any idea how you can accomplish this in PvP without making shields cost 10 times of what they currently cost. It should NOT be feasible to get enough HP via winning alliance #1 to shield your way to victory, but 500 HP most certainly is enough to do it.

Given I see no reason to believe D3 would want to inject even more HP, the only way it could work is if you change the alliance #1 prize to 5000 iso + 100 HP instead of 2000 iso + 500 HP. This will prevent #1 from being a self-sustaining process, and if people want to continue pay money to keep up shield usage then that's their choice.

Unknown

soenottelling wrote:

Actually, the 500 hp works as a carrot to get ppl to drop more $$$ at a chance to EARN that carrot. The problem is that it doesn't work when one or two alliances are able to monopolize that reward to the degree they are right now. The premise is fine, its just sometimes no matter how well laid a plan ....of mice and men or something something blah blah blah.

Regardless, tiers being 1, 2-50, 51-100 seems a little...wide. maybe 1, 2-5, 5-20, 21-50, 50-100 should be the spread for fairness." It's a business and not a game (well..u know what I mean), so fairness is relative.

It doesn't work because PvP is P2W. Usage of shields overwhelmingly dominates PvP success and you also get enough HP from winning #1 to sustain the shield usage in the first place. And no, the #2 alliance isn't going to commit 500 HP per person for some chance to beat #1 alliance either because it's totally not worth the risk. Alliance PvE has far better distribution of winners because it's prohibitively expensive to buy your way to victory.

Unknown

shield system suxx. and half of that event end mliddle of night when a lot of ppl can't play and have to shield.
Even if i win 95% of my fights, i never finish first but 2-5 again and again when i shield ( gamble ).

All scaling in that game is the probleme, u play pve early, fight reward are 1/10 that last 8 hours will give you.
U play pvp early, u are first place with 400 points and no fights to give u acces to that 1300 rewards and **** will kick your **** for -50 points in last 3 hours rush.

What, you win 100 fights and 0 lose in first day, no matter, last 3 hours rush will get more points in 20 fights @ 30-40 per fight.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

It doesn't work because PvP is P2W. Usage of shields overwhelmingly dominates PvP success and you also get enough HP from winning #1 to sustain the shield usage in the first place. And no, the #2 alliance isn't going to commit 500 HP per person for some chance to beat #1 alliance either because it's totally not worth the risk. Alliance PvE has far better distribution of winners because it's prohibitively expensive to buy your way to victory.

Just some thoughts on what you've said here, because I think you've got some misconceptions about how this is going down right now:

Could an alliance "buy" first place with shields? Absolutely. Do they? Absolutely not. I've mentioned in other threads, that we haven't changed our shielding strategy for PvP since alliances began. I came out of PvP net HP neutral before alliances (150 earned, 2 3hrs. purchased). My budget for shields is now 225, taking into account alliance prizes in my planning. This would be my budget if we were taking 2-50 home as well, and would still keep me net positive (250 earned, 3 3hrs purchased).

In fairness we do have a couple of maniacs on the squad that just have to get 1100+ on every single tourney, and they do burn into their profits a bit more, but again, they were doing that before alliances began, and I know plenty of players in other squads that do the same.

What's the point of taking first prize for 500HP if you burn all your profits for shields? We're not gunning for first solely to prove anything to the MPQ world, I assure you. Most of our individual players got their rosters by being frugal and smart about expenditures, and our profits don't go towards shields by and large. The 500HP reward doesn't enable us to win - it motivates us to win. If the prize was a new 4* cover every time instead, we would still be pushing to win, and still coming out for the most part net HP neutral. This 1st perpetuates 1st trend is a myth, although I can definitely see how it would appear that way at first. The weird twist here is that if we were buying the win with shields, then we wouldn't be gaining anything for it. That doesn't make any sense. We're crazy, but we're not that crazy.

The reason we don't push harder in PvE is that the rewards for time spent simply aren't as good in PvE as in PvP, and there's not enough time for even the craziest of us to push in all of them. This has nothing to do with the fact that we can't buy our way to victory in PvE. Not to mention we've had consistent success in that arena, too, despite it not being our focus.

Call for a nerf to rewards because it seems unfair? I get that. I think it's silly to think that one team getting less will somehow make the game more enjoyable or profitable for any other alliance, but I get that it feels wrong. What's unfair is that more teams aren't being rewarded for their efforts, not that one team is now able to P2W PvP. That's patently false. We play really hard and really smart, but our namesake isn't the reason for our success.

Colognoisseur

S.H.I.E.L.D assembled a high level team of players who are playing like a high level team of players. Every player on that team has occupied the top of individual leaderboards for weeks if not months. They know how to play PvP to maximize their points and timing. That is what should be rewarded and for those who want that spot you have to assemble a team of equally adept and active players to challenge for it.
I admire the effort they put out as a team and feel they are being appropriately rewarded for it.

Would i like to see more reward tiers in Alliances? Of course but that will come at the devs discretion not because S.H.I.E.L.D keeps taking first place.

Unknown

walkyourpath wrote:

we haven't changed our shielding strategy for PvP since alliances began. I came out of PvP net HP neutral before alliances (150 earned, 2 3hrs. purchased). My budget for shields is now 225, taking into account alliance prizes in my planning. This would be my budget if we were taking 2-50 home as well, and would still keep me net positive (250 earned, 3 3hrs purchased).

Aren't you contradicting yourself in this sentence? You're basically saying that your shielding budget has increased by 75 HP. Honestly, if I should spend 225 points in shields every time, my HP reserve would be depleted very fast. I've never managed to get 900+ points in PvP and my alliance is usually in the 51-100 reward range, so it's 150 "guaranteed" HP every tournament, that usually allow me to stay even and get out of the tourney with three new 3* covers. Even if I know that our rosters aren't even remotely comparable, you have to admit that getting 425 HP (500alliance+100personal+50progression-225shields) from the previous tournament allow you a lot more freedom in shielding than my 0 HP (50alliance+100personal-150shields). In case of an "oh ****!" moment you can break shields and be sure you have enough to buy another one right away, while most of the time I have to hope to get lucky.

Unknown

Kappei wrote:

Even if I know that our rosters aren't even remotely comparable, you have to admit that getting 425 HP (500alliance+100personal+50progression-225shields) from the previous tournament allow you a lot more freedom in shielding than my 0 HP (50alliance+100personal-150shields). In case of an "oh ****!" moment you can break shields and be sure you have enough to buy another one right away, while most of the time I have to hope to get lucky.

For the record the game throws quite a plenty of HP even if you're not in in the #1 pvp alliance. I gained 4k in the last month. Records viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3306&p=97402&hilit=roster+snapshot#p75307 show I was at 100HP on 03/17 and currently look at 4050HP. Including the spend of at least 2x450 for slots of Cap and Torch.

My regular shield budget is also 75 or 150 or 2x75, I think used 150+75 once where I was not around at proper time and prizes were essential. If you play the game not restricted to the versus events you should have no problem to afford sensible shielding from the prizes.

Unknown

pasa_ wrote:

Kappei wrote:

Even if I know that our rosters aren't even remotely comparable, you have to admit that getting 425 HP (500alliance+100personal+50progression-225shields) from the previous tournament allow you a lot more freedom in shielding than my 0 HP (50alliance+100personal-150shields). In case of an "oh ****!" moment you can break shields and be sure you have enough to buy another one right away, while most of the time I have to hope to get lucky.

For the record the game throws quite a plenty of HP even if you're not in in the #1 pvp alliance. I gained 4k in the last month. Records viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3306&p=97402&hilit=roster+snapshot#p75307 show I was at 100HP on 03/17 and currently look at 4050HP. Including the spend of at least 2x450 for slots of Cap and Torch.

My regular shield budget is also 75 or 150 or 2x75, I think used 150+75 once where I was not around at proper time and prizes were essential. If you play the game not restricted to the versus events you should have no problem to afford sensible shielding from the prizes.

Absolutely not restricted to the versus events. I've had my fair share of HP, I can't deny it, and I've spent 800 HP for my Cap and HT slots. The problem is that while you're currently at 4050 HP, I have 500 in my pocket, 400 of which are already "reserved" for Falcon. I cannot risk spending more than my 150 HP for each versus tourney because I may not have enough saved for Falcon when the Hunt ends, and that means either playing the subsequent Falcon tourney with a loaner, risking a bad placement, or throwing away one of my 1*-2* (and I'm running out of characters to throw away).

You can't deny that 4k+ HP give you a lot more breathing room than me.

DD-The-Mighty

Alliances were rigged for this kind of nonsense.
There really is no point in wasting energy getting mad SHIELD, 5 deadly Hail Hydras, the anti-SHIELD scavengers or any of the other NY-Yakee's of MPQ. They're practically walking sales pitches for HP driven 20+ man alliances. They're either top alliance, wannabe be top alliances or those attempting to make your own "top alliance", with a forum minority of players refusing to get on the gravy train to 3* cover town. Take your pick.

Heck, just look through any and all these alliance criticism threads: its full of guys telling people how easy and simple it is to just fork over the HP and make/join your own super alliance and win all the chickens. Players without HP buy some to pay their way into 20 man clan or burn their stock piled HP. Fresh sale or HP flushed out of circulation. Its win/win for D3. Attack the disease, not they symptoms.

Only Nerf i see coming down the line, may be the one thing D3 hates more than loss of revenue: End-gamers easily gaining more than they are spending. Remember why they took HP out of 3* cover sales. That's the only time you will see a sudden need to "reevaluate the reward structure".

reckless442

But it's your decision not to spend on HP or to save it for other things. I suspect that several S.H.I.E.L.D members' budgets are only 75 to 150 per PVP, because they prioritize making a net-HP profit off each event. So they aren't that different than you. On the other hand, there are some of us who have different goals. For me, part of the fun of a PVP is to see how high I can score. If that means not making a "profit" for the event, so be it. I'm not adverse to buying a Stark's Salary on occasion if my HP gets too depleted. When I do a cost-per-hour comparison with other forms of entertainment, $100 occasionally on MPQ isn't a bad deal. I'm also fortunate that I have the disposable income to be able to drop money on the game. (Shocker, I know, but S.H.I.E.L.D members actually have jobs.) Whether that makes me a P2W player is your call.

Unknown

Hell, I wish I was able to get people to join my Alliance so I could even have a snowballs chance in hell at getting to the better rewards. But the cost for getting more roster sports for the Alliance just feels way too high early on, especially since that makes it harder to earn more HP as prizes to buy 'em.

I feel like I'm stuck in this **** middle ground of not being able to get people to join my Alliance because it's still small, but I can't join a big Alliance because I don't have the HP for it.

Unknown

Kappei wrote:

Absolutely not restricted to the versus events. I've had my fair share of HP, I can't deny it, and I've spent 800 HP for my Cap and HT slots. The problem is that while you're currently at 4050 HP, I have 500 in my pocket, 400 of which are already "reserved" for Falcon. I cannot risk spending more than my 150 HP for each versus tourney because I may not have enough saved for Falcon when the Hunt ends, and that means either playing the subsequent Falcon tourney with a loaner, risking a bad placement, or throwing away one of my 1*-2* (and I'm running out of characters to throw away).

You can't deny that 4k+ HP give you a lot more breathing room than me.

You missed the point: 1 month ago I was looking at 100HP. I didn't change any of my habits. Just do whatever is reasonable. And HP has a tendency of just accumulating. In that 4k some came from really high alliance positions, but I guess with some medium alliance it would still over 1k safely.

As for your reserve: does it make sense? I spent HP on last few extra slots only because it was sitting around in excess. My original plan was not to buy more slots since before LT. But to drop something useless from the roster. New slot was made dependent on HP income from the intro tournament. This far it kept dropping more than slot price. Same could work for you: just use that 500 as needed instead of reserving and make the decision a week ahead when Falcon is in your hands. If you actually win even a single cover it must come with at least 200HP, more likely 300+ really.

Unknown

You see what you did now Doug? So much for your troll post

Unknown

Honestly i think the best thing they could do would be to alter 1st and 2nd to be 300 HP (this would effectively not add or remove any HP from the current payououts)
Then award differing amounts of ISO for other tiers they would make into the 3-50 range. Maybe make a 3-10, 11-25,26-50 tiers? *shrugs* anyhow u get the general idea of placing at the top still has very tangible rewards while making the whole spectrum at the top a little more competitive.

Unknown

I rarely shield in PVP. Rarely did before alliances, rarely do now. I like saving up HP for use. That's hardly a P2W mechanic involving shields, since I don't put the 500 HP back into shields just to earn 500 HP.

We don't win PVP rewards because we get loads of HP to spend on shields. We win PVP rewards because we coordinate better and play more efficiently than any other alliance.

Unknown

Kappei wrote:

walkyourpath wrote:

we haven't changed our shielding strategy for PvP since alliances began. I came out of PvP net HP neutral before alliances (150 earned, 2 3hrs. purchased). My budget for shields is now 225, taking into account alliance prizes in my planning. This would be my budget if we were taking 2-50 home as well, and would still keep me net positive (250 earned, 3 3hrs purchased).

Aren't you contradicting yourself in this sentence? You're basically saying that your shielding budget has increased by 75 HP. Honestly, if I should spend 225 points in shields every time, my HP reserve would be depleted very fast. I've never managed to get 900+ points in PvP and my alliance is usually in the 51-100 reward range, so it's 150 "guaranteed" HP every tournament, that usually allow me to stay even and get out of the tourney with three new 3* covers. Even if I know that our rosters aren't even remotely comparable, you have to admit that getting 425 HP (500alliance+100personal+50progression-225shields) from the previous tournament allow you a lot more freedom in shielding than my 0 HP (50alliance+100personal-150shields). In case of an "oh ****!" moment you can break shields and be sure you have enough to buy another one right away, while most of the time I have to hope to get lucky.

No contradictions there. My budget has increased by 75 because of assuming a Top 50 alliance finish, not because of assuming a #1 finish. I'd be coming out ahead whether 1st or 50th.

Unknown

MTGOFerret wrote:

Honestly i think the best thing they could do would be to alter 1st and 2nd to be 300 HP (this would effectively not add or remove any HP from the current payououts)
Then award differing amounts of ISO for other tiers they would make into the 3-50 range. Maybe make a 3-10, 11-25,26-50 tiers? *shrugs* anyhow u get the general idea of placing at the top still has very tangible rewards while making the whole spectrum at the top a little more competitive.

The #1 alliance PvE award went to 250 HP for The Hunt. Hotshot is unchanged.