Questions for Devs: Future for PvP

aa25

@Brigby

There are a lot of improvements/changes on the PvE side of the game recently. I'm just wondered if there is a plan for any improvements/changes for PvP planned at all ? There are tons of threads that people pointed out the flaws of the current PvP mode and a lot of suggestions. Are any of those are being considered ?

Daiches

SCL9 and upgraded rewards pls

Kevmcg

Concurrent 4 star PVP.  A ton of events have been run only 1 time.

ZootSax

Daiches said:

SCL9 and upgraded rewards pls

I was going to make a snarky comment about the wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the PVE rewards change, but I do wonder if they changed the 575 progression to 8 CP, made 25 CP a 1,500 progression reward, added an extra 3* cover in progression and increased the iso rewards by 35% if the PVP community would generate the same levels of outrage.   I would guess probably not, but as someone who doesn't play PVP really competitively, my opinion is probably meaningless...

nitefox1337

The PVP right now is terrible. It punishes you for actually Playing PVP. The more you play PvP, the higher your ranks get, and the more people attack you.

Worse: You lose fights even when you are actually in a fight! xD

You win one game, but you lost 10 games at the same time. That's silly.

So what you do is you wait for less crowded hours, to snipe points, and once you get your reward, you just forget about PVP.

As a new Player, I opened numerous threads about losing points while in-fights. That's an automatic deal breaker for new players.

Here are the changes that would make PVP WAY more Interesting, bringing REAL Competition between players, and making more money for the devs:

Read the steps till no 4 where It will make sense.

1. Remove loss of points completely.

Losing points is a terrible incentive. It generates "competition anxiety", (as discovered by Blizzard and thus removed point loss in Starcraft 2 rankings), and it discourages players.

2. Fix reward points accordingly. Give way more points when a 50k Heroes Player is downed. like 200 points but lower low level team reard to like 5 points:

Now you just gave lower level players an incentive and turned high level players to some kinds of "end game boss". And high level Players will have to fight each other now, instead of feeding on new players and scaring them of.

3. Sell Reward Boosts:

The way Shields are implemented is silly. They protect you when you don't play. Ok. But they do not protect you when you need it the most as when you play and get higher in rank.

Once you remove loss points, no need for shields. Instead sell "Reward Boosts":

What these do is that they multiply the points you get from a Victory.

What you just did is that you started a mechanism that not only will become addictive, but will ignite Veterans too.

You're selling some kind of Victory amplification. That new Player who needs 200 points will definitely buy that if its the only way to his reward.


4. Put insane Rewards at insanely high Ranks:

No more point loss means no more rating. Ranking will be directly made by the guy with the highest Points! It's no more a rating but a Race.

Just think how much Reward Boost you can sell, if the guy with the most point will get "10x Legendary Token"....


5. Create a Bragging Right Medal:

You definitely need to give some kind of recognition to Veterans who keep winning PVP tournaments. It can be a medal, an achievement, something that will differentiate them from others. Cause after a while, those tokens won't be much of value for them.


Conclusion:

You are fixing PVP, welcoming new Players, Everyone gets a Reward they can get, and Veterans have a way more interesting End Game then just parking their Rooster.

Crowl

They don't actually need to remove point losses entirely from pvp, simply have one score for placement and one for progression with the progression score only counting the gains and losses from matches when you are on offence with placement scoring being unchanged.

smkspy

Keep point loss, but add milestone markers so that you don't consisently fall too much behind if you're hit too much.

Honestly, I rarely push pass 650 and I refuse to fall into the shield hopping trap. So I play every event 2 hours before it ends to 575-650 and either small shield or time it out for around top 50 placement. 

If they would introduce milestones, it would give more players incentive to play pvp when each event starts.

of course, less shield would be needed meaning less HP sales, so it'll never happen.

TPF Alexis

I don't care what the details are, as long as they make it worthwhile to keep playing throughout the event. Most of the PvP events, I don't spend more than half an hour playing, and then there's no point left. That's not good design.

Pongie

nitefox1337 said:

1. Remove loss of points completely.

Losing points is a terrible incentive. It generates "competition anxiety", (as discovered by Blizzard and thus removed point loss in Starcraft 2 rankings), and it discourages players.

Wizards of the coast did something similar when they revamped the DCI points to planeswalker points. One of the few times I've seen the ELO rating systems in use and scrapped. High ranked players were basically not playing if fear of losing points. Pretty much the same as our current pvp system where players are shielded 95% of the time.

nitefox1337

Tony Foot said:

Yeah I said this in the PVE rewards thread:
I have no idea why people continue to PAY with their own money on a broken system. I go to 575 take the CP, if the timing is right or boosted are good I run from 575 to 900 in the last 30 minutes. Costs me nothing and all I miss out on is 15 CP and a small amount of ISO. The placement rewards are meaningless. I cover the latest before they get half way through the list anyway.

This is Exactly what I am talking about. And this is exactly what I am doing. The last Sharp event took me 1 day to reach 575. Waited for monday morning. Got 10 CP. Then left my team to be destroyed without looking back.

The most terrible thing in PVP is when you win a game but you are still stressing out cause you know you lost 5 games in a row while winning.

The Next Event I am going low level. Will go back to 5 CP, and forget about it. Doesnt worth the drag.

Crowl said:

They don't actually need to remove point losses entirely from pvp, simply have one score for placement and one for progression with the progression score only counting the gains and losses from matches when you are on offence with placement scoring being unchanged.

This makes Sense too.

Another think they could do is remove points Only if you lose a game you are actually playing. Which is also fair. But losing points for a game you can't play doesn't make sense.

I understand that they punish you because you are not playing. All pay to win do it. You're not in the game? Someone will feed on you. So you pay for a shield. Ok. Got it. Don't like it but hey. That's how it works.

But they Punish you for actually being in the game, in a fight, and even winning your fight, by letting 5 people beat you while you're at it?

Now that doesn't make sense because there's Nothing you can do about it. Shields dont work when you fight, you can't play 10 games at once, and you have no say on who's attacking you.

Bowgentle

nitefox1337 said:

But they Punish you for actually being in the game, in a fight, and even winning your fight, by letting 5 people beat you while you're at it?

Now that doesn't make sense because there's Nothing you can do about it. Shields dont work when you fight, you can't play 10 games at once, and you have no say on who's attacking you.

Of course you can do something about it.

Learn how high you can float.

Want to go higher? Shield up, line up a 65+ point match, win it quickly, shield again.

Don't want to shield? Then just accept that you will not be able to stay above 600.

You don't get progression rewards for showing up in PVP, unlike in PVE.
You earn your rewards in PVP by having a good roster and/or knowing exactly how high your roster can get you.

jamesh

One change I wouldn't mind seeing would be the ability to play against shielded players.  They are already protected from point loss, so does it really hurt that much to include them in the list of opponents?

It would reduce the benefits of out-of-game collusion, and would mean there are more targets available at higher levels, which should help everyone.

Beer40

jamesh said:

One change I wouldn't mind seeing would be the ability to play against shielded players.  They are already protected from point loss, so does it really hurt that much to include them in the list of opponents?

It would reduce the benefits of out-of-game collusion, and would mean there are more targets available at higher levels, which should help everyone.

You can already do that. I'll see attack notifications when I have a shield up. My guess is that the attacker just doesn't see any indication the player is shielded and that's why you don't realize it.

nitefox1337

Bowgentle said:

nitefox1337 said:

But they Punish you for actually being in the game, in a fight, and even winning your fight, by letting 5 people beat you while you're at it?

Now that doesn't make sense because there's Nothing you can do about it. Shields dont work when you fight, you can't play 10 games at once, and you have no say on who's attacking you.

Of course you can do something about it.

Learn how high you can float.

Want to go higher? Shield up, line up a 65+ point match, win it quickly, shield again.

Don't want to shield? Then just accept that you will not be able to stay above 600.

You don't get progression rewards for showing up in PVP, unlike in PVE.
You earn your rewards in PVP by having a good roster and/or knowing exactly how high your roster can get you.

Not only your arguments are incorrect but they in fact strengthen my Arguments.

You are clearly stating "Play Less PVP, Just steal a game between shields"...

I don't think Devs of this game intended PVP to be something you play once in 3 or 6 hours to steal one game between shields.

and yet, even that is almost impossible.

And no you can't do anything about it.

First, when you start a match, on the background you're losing 5. 30 points won may cost you 40 lost.

You say shield up. Ok. But shield again after a match? How? There's a cooldown on Shields. Once you used them all, you can't shield anymore.


I suggest you read my suggestion from scratch, pass more time trying to understand them and sleep on it. It will make way better sense in the morning.

Fightmastermpq

Beer40 said:

jamesh said:

One change I wouldn't mind seeing would be the ability to play against shielded players.  They are already protected from point loss, so does it really hurt that much to include them in the list of opponents?

It would reduce the benefits of out-of-game collusion, and would mean there are more targets available at higher levels, which should help everyone.

You can already do that. I'll see attack notifications when I have a shield up. My guess is that the attacker just doesn't see any indication the player is shielded and that's why you don't realize it.

As it is now you can only queue someone up 2 maybe 3 times (if you are lucky) just before they shield.  You hit them 3 times and then their queue goes away until they break their shield.

He is talking about queuing players while they are shielded which would be a terrible idea.  You would inject tons of points into the shard and scores would skyrocket.  Someone would climb to 2k, put out an easy team, shield, and every would just hit that easy team over and over and over until everyone was at 2k and then you just continue climbing up from there.

What most people don't get about PvP is that if it feels impossible to get certain rewards that's because you weren't meant to get those rewards with your roster.  It's not PvE.  There are no participation trophies.  Changes to make it friendlier to younger rosters are counter to the nature and intent of PvP.  It's supposed to be hard.  It's supposed to be competitive.  Only 1 of 500 people is meant to finish in 1st place, and to do that you need to have one of the best of those 500 rosters.

Sm0keyJ0e

nitefox1337 said:

Bowgentle said:

nitefox1337 said:

But they Punish you for actually being in the game, in a fight, and even winning your fight, by letting 5 people beat you while you're at it?

Now that doesn't make sense because there's Nothing you can do about it. Shields dont work when you fight, you can't play 10 games at once, and you have no say on who's attacking you.

Of course you can do something about it.

Learn how high you can float.

Want to go higher? Shield up, line up a 65+ point match, win it quickly, shield again.

Don't want to shield? Then just accept that you will not be able to stay above 600.

You don't get progression rewards for showing up in PVP, unlike in PVE.
You earn your rewards in PVP by having a good roster and/or knowing exactly how high your roster can get you.

Not only your arguments are incorrect but they in fact strengthen my Arguments.

You are clearly stating "Play Less PVP, Just steal a game between shields"...

I don't think Devs of this game intended PVP to be something you play once in 3 or 6 hours to steal one game between shields.

and yet, even that is almost impossible.

And no you can't do anything about it.

First, when you start a match, on the background you're losing 5. 30 points won may cost you 40 lost.

You say shield up. Ok. But shield again after a match? How? There's a cooldown on Shields. Once you used them all, you can't shield anymore.


I suggest you read my suggestion from scratch, pass more time trying to understand them and sleep on it. It will make way better sense in the morning.

I don't understand what you're after. Do you think everyone should be able to climb as high as they want whenever they want? That's PVE, not PVP. This is player vs. player. A better roster is going to win 99% of the time. That IS what the devs intended.

If you're going into a match and losing 5 times before coming out, I suggest you learn how to match 3. Maybe you're doing it wrong. 

broll

smkspy said:

Keep point loss, but add milestone markers so that you don't consisently fall too much behind if you're hit too much.

Honestly, I rarely push pass 650 and I refuse to fall into the shield hopping trap. So I play every event 2 hours before it ends to 575-650 and either small shield or time it out for around top 50 placement. 

If they would introduce milestones, it would give more players incentive to play pvp when each event starts.

of course, less shield would be needed meaning less HP sales, so it'll never happen.

I like this idea.  Removing all point loss is pretty extreme, but having certain thresholds that once you get over you can't fall below this could possibly work.

Sm0keyJ0e

broll said:

smkspy said:

Keep point loss, but add milestone markers so that you don't consisently fall too much behind if you're hit too much.

Honestly, I rarely push pass 650 and I refuse to fall into the shield hopping trap. So I play every event 2 hours before it ends to 575-650 and either small shield or time it out for around top 50 placement. 

If they would introduce milestones, it would give more players incentive to play pvp when each event starts.

of course, less shield would be needed meaning less HP sales, so it'll never happen.

I like this idea.  Removing all point loss is pretty extreme, but having certain thresholds that once you get over you can't fall below this could possibly work.

This would lead to severe point inflation across every shard. I don't like it.

cyineedsn

Sm0keyJ0e said:

broll said:

smkspy said:

Keep point loss, but add milestone markers so that you don't consisently fall too much behind if you're hit too much.

Honestly, I rarely push pass 650 and I refuse to fall into the shield hopping trap. So I play every event 2 hours before it ends to 575-650 and either small shield or time it out for around top 50 placement. 

If they would introduce milestones, it would give more players incentive to play pvp when each event starts.

of course, less shield would be needed meaning less HP sales, so it'll never happen.

I like this idea.  Removing all point loss is pretty extreme, but having certain thresholds that once you get over you can't fall below this could possibly work.

This would lead to severe point inflation across every shard. I don't like it.

It wouldn't just lead to point inflation, points to reach progression would also be raised through the roof because too many people would be hitting max progressions, so that sweet 575 progression would be raised to something high enough that people will complain about burnout grinding to reach it.

acescracked

Way too many people in this thread don't understand how the top 25 alliances play or why people play the way they do. And then give opinions and judgements against that type of play.

PvP is here for a huge chunk of players who spend to get those killer rosters to have fun.  Those 3k & 4k scores are put up more to help their alliances. If your in some random public alliance I can see why people here don't understand.

bbigler

I really like the idea of removing the loss of points.  You can make PVP more of a puzzle instead of a stressful, frustrating experience.  This would take some testing/adjustment, but here's my proposed PVP mechanic:

1. The amount of points in a match is determined by the "power difference" between your top 10 characters and the opponents team.  For example, if you only have 3* champs, then you get more points for beating a 4* team compared to beating a 3* team.  The MMR would not match you up against teams with significantly less "power".

2. To be fair to people with multiple 5* champs, since the opposing teams may not have more "power" than theirs, they would get above average points for beating other 5* teams. 

3. The amount of points in a match would gradually decrease as you climb (diminishing returns).  Otherwise, PVP would turn into a grind fest like PVE.  Players need a reason to stop playing, otherwise they will keep going like mindless robots.  But getting to the very top would require you to beat teams far more powerful than yours, which is the real puzzle.

4. Of course, progression rewards would need to be adjusted and placement rewards should be "flattened out" to discourage grinding. 

What I like about this is that you can choose any team you want without worrying about defense (or trying to scare away potential attackers).  This opens up the possibility of using lower tier characters because they may work best in the team.  The real puzzle here is composing a team that can quickly beat a more "powerful" team, so that you can climb faster and spend less time in PVP.  If that's too complicated for you, then you could simply play teams at your same power level instead, for average points.