Progression Reward Changes in Versus Tournaments (7/20/17)

OneLungDave

I know I'll probably get crucified for this, but it's on the back end of page 30 on a thread no one is really trying to engage with anyway: 

I've read a bunch of posts about "need to do more to achieve the same rewards." But no one is forcing you to play. It's an app, not your first born child. All the talk about walking away is so self righteous. You know how many people actively boycott Wal-Mart? You think if YOU stop shopping there that they'll finally close their doors?

Then there's the "unfairness directed to whales/vets/1200+day players." But it's been wildly unfair to everyone else who doesn't have an above average roster for years. I agree:  removing the CP from progression was a bad move. But there are far more newer players than whales. And those newer players have no legitimate chance of obtaining the better progression and/or placement rewards. Yes, it IS a competition, but the playing field isn't level. The point variance is real and unfortunate. There aren't nearly as many 75 point matches in the 3* realm than in the 5* realm. So getting to 1200k was always going to be fewer matches for those players. 

I've also seen a bunch of "I'm here to compete!" or "what's the point of a scoreboard?" complaints. So you only want to compete if it means less competitions? The scoreboard only matters if you're on the top of it? If all you want is to leave a trail of dead, now's your chance to lengthen that trail! 

I personally enjoyed the test run. I joined my scl8 slice 4 (I think, maybe 5) late, missed out on seed teams, and worked my way thru the 40 wins to get the carrot at the end of the stick. Without having to scream at 200 point losses at inopportune times. My event is still running, so I might play a few more to make a placement, I might not. 

Sorry for the novel. I know long posts are a slog. 

jamesh

I ended up with top 25 rewards in clearance level 7, with 767 points and 52 wins.  It was a bit more work than usual, but for much better rewards (the best I can usually manage is to occasionally get the HP at 725).

1200 points has been out of reach for as long as I've been playing, so moving the second chunk of CP from progression to top 10 placement effectively just changed my chance of winning it from 0% to 0%.  Maybe that's why I didn't consider that change as big a deal.

I wouldn't have complained if the extra CP was still available for progression, but the achievable prizes were already a lot better from my point of view.

HaywireII

I played the entire event with Goddess Thor, Moon Knight and Iron Man 40.  Rarely was attacked even when I was floating between 800 and 950 points.  My 40th win put me at 1064 with about 7 hours to go so I put up an 8 hour shield.  Woke up this morning to see that my final placement was 7th and I got the 15 command points that I've never gotten before since I can't climb to 1200.  Two thumbs up for the new format.

dr tinykittylove

Reached 1160 on my 20th win, but only because someone hit me for -72 just then. Dropped a shield and made an additional 3 match hop, then broke at the end just to bring it to 25 wins. No grills, no seals, no line. Zero interest in grinding out an additional 15 wins. 

Fulgren

Not sure if this is what you intended with this, but I ended up hitting the same one team over and over again.

If the goal of the scenario is to get to 40 wins, and since I wasn't playing for placement, it just made sense to keep fighting the optimal matchup over and over again.

bOmbast

sh81 said:

Genuinely, Im not trying to be rude - I can see that could come across badly.

However, from my experience and that of dozens of posters on here - you do seem to be something of an outlier in this.  Your assertion that just playing gets you to 800 stacks up only for you!

I've reached 575 from "just playing" in most/every single event since I got my first 4* champed (now I have 22, no 5*).
Beyond 600 is a slightly different proposition, because that's when you start seeing (and get hit by) double 4* champ teams, but 600 should be doable without shields. 
I usually float around 600 (drawing some, but not many, hits), then climb rapidly past 800. Put up first shield at ~850, and shield hop from there. I'm not special, that's just the kind of gameplay my roster allows at this point. 

Silverblade

justicealan said:

I fully love and support the new PvP rewards progression!! I liked being able to know I could eventually receive the four star cover rather than keep going back and forth with the points and never get to the 900 points. I hope this comes back around.

Hear hear. This. This is why I love the new system, it values individual effort to get the 4* regardless of how bad those with better rosters spank you while trying to reach 900 and never getting there.

Bryan Lambert

After being excited about this at first, my experience was... mixed.

THE GOOD:

Got a 4-star cover. (Slice 6, SCL 8) With defensive losses, ended up at around 860 points, but cracked 900 at various points on the way to 40 wins. But the experience between 600-900 points was very different than under the old system. Got hit less, and, more importantly, didn't care about getting hit, which is huge. Losing 150 points in PvP was the single most demoralizing, ant-ifun thing in MPQ, and that, more than anything else, was what kept me quitting at 575. I could also play PVP and rack up my 40 minutes whenever I wanted, without worrying about having to pay in bursts. So it was easier to fit a PVP match or to into dead zones throughout my day.

THE BAD:

MMR walls made wins 25-40 a slog. Even with 41 champed 4-stars, in the old system, I saw lots of teams I'd have to skip due to low points but could have beaten easily. That didn't continue. The pool of opponents thinned out mightily and it was just 4Thor/Moon Knight/IM40's as far as the skip button could see. Had to manage health packs a lot more carefully, especiallly with 4Thor being important for Sinister Six and Sinister Six reaching the heavy-on-health-packs point around the same time.

Overall, though, for me, the extra effort is balanced out by predictability. Going for the four-star cover  is now just a matter of "do I have the time in those 2.5 days", and even if I don't, none of the effort is wasted, because at most, I might play three matches I didn't need to. In the old system, Icould clear a progression reward, wak away for an hour, and come back 10+ matches away from the  next reward. Having that certainty in place makes a big difference for me.

ZamWiesel

Currently @72 wins @1535 points. Hopefully will keep top 5 but always a chance to lose it in the next hour before event ends. The only nice thing, and personal effecting difference I have seen, is that I'm now battling for top5 against 5-7 5* players rather than the 25-30 I normally have in my bracket in CL7. All of which are only going for top 5 to get the rewards from leveling the 4*. The 4* that they will most likely never use unless it's required. I don't blame them for it cuz that's just how the system is designed. Hoping IF this system goes into place, that some tweeks are made. Definitely put CP back into progression. 

Friarbundy

+1 for the new changes. I like not losing progress.  Also, as long as I play Level 7 (my max),  and the top of the leaderboard is filled with players rostered with Champed 5* toons,  I'll never win anyway.  Thanks for thinking of the little guy!

BoyWonder1914

Got to 888 points in 20 wins. Nothing but boosted 4s on my horizon, and I don't care to grind out an additional 20 wins against them. I despise PVP, always have, so I'm most definitely not joining with 2 full days left in the event from now on just to make it easier to hit 40. If they are going to insist on a change like this, then I am done with PVP altogether. I don't care if I get to spread it out over more days, you're still asking me to double my efforts for the same rewards. I always join PVP late because I like having a break from the game, and not losing my points floating because I joined too early. 

zodiac339

Well, I did see more people get the 10CP this time. Instead of it being just the 5 players with epic champions reaching 1200, the other top ten had Legendaries up in the 300s and unfinished epics. Success I guess.

vaportrail

I found this test to be an epic waste of time and frustration.  I had 1000 points at 20 wins, ran out of health packs a few times and just floated at 800+ the whole time while I waited for my packs to regen and get me to 40 wins while smashing lower rosters with my 5* teams.  I ended up with 42 wins and 1241 points for like 3-4 hours of work and got 8th in my bracket.  Please rethink these changes, or come up with some tweaks that will benefit all players, not just the ones who feel defeated by the current PVP format.  I usually just go 1200 and shield out, but now I have to keep hammering on weak teams to get a mostly meaningless 4* cover.  

Zalasta

I played like normal and got to the 10 CP reward with over 600 points in 12 wins. With this change, I had to do another 4 wins to actually get the 10 CP reward. So I agree with many other posters that the progression requires to many wins compared to the previous system. I like the change in concept, but the implementation needs to be tweaked.

Maybe it's just the nature of this event (who's powered up), but it I liked the variety of teams that I faced. Maybe people didn't feel as obligated to use the boosted characters, or maybe the boosted characters just weren't that great. Kind of surprised that I didn't see more WinFinite teams.

mkmagius

In my bracket 10th had 1638 pts. At one point I counted 20 players who routinely hit 1200. This was in cl6 for an off season event.

angryelvis

I'm sure it needs to be tweaked in practice but I hope that the win tracking remains. Certainly encouraged me to play more

Doc L

Man, how to make PvP even more divisive than usual? Anyone below a strong 4* roster thinks the system is great (and I can appreciate that) and anyone at that or above thinks it was a grind and needs more work.

For the record, I got 1388, finished 5th in SCL 1.7, 43 wins. I had already gone over 900 when I got to 20 wins, but had to grind out the remaining wins. It wasn't especially hard, just a bit boring - my biggest complaint for PvP is the lack of variety, and this PvP exemplified that for me. One thing I'd say is, this event was not ideal to properly measure some of the metrics as a) it's off-season (many do not play), and b) it's one of the few PvP where you chose all three team members, so not limited to a pair with the PvP-centred character.

It seems that the ideal scenario is one of two possible variations - first, make the scoring a hybrid of '40 wins or 900' and re-add the top progression of Cp in. Second possibility, split it into two concurrent events. This benefits all greatly I would say, especially if you can 'see' all players when looking for matches, but different things matter. And make it 'join one or the other'. This would stop big rosters taking CP from people trying to grow, and would enable people to set up to the less grindy but more rewarding points system for progression. 

Another thought I had was, why not start running 4* PvP with a points system, 3* with the progression wins. The 4* PvP can reward more Cp, ISO etc, but is inherently harder and slower per match. Given the relative affluency of 4* covers compared to one year ago, they are almost like 3* were, perhaps 4* should have been lower down than 900 points anyway, with CP at 900 and 1200? After all, PvE awards you a 4* halfway to two thirds through, but it's higher up in PvP.

Some thoughts. The biggest issue it feels after playing that with my (not whale) 5* roster, is that the game is at a bit of a crux between PvP and PvE, and the two should be synergistic in getting rewards for people growing their roster, and for people at the top extending their roster. Perhaps if there was a third, 'end game' style of content for the top end, like ultra-hard season long Gauntlet events, or Alliance versus Alliance wars, some of the changes to help others wouldn't be seen as an attack on them and their style of gameplay. The way MMR punishes you with 5* (such as if you are a 2* or 3* roster with a 5*, or PvE scaling under the old system), it really feels like the game needs a backend rethink on the top characters, how they work, and indeed, how progression works through the game for players to get to 5* characters. It shouldn't be 'top players take the rewards and it's unfair', nor should it be 'this is too boring, and I'm tempted to quit after 1366 days'... there has to be a middle ground from D3. Otherwise you'll either get put off as a new player, or you'll be put off once you have a comfortable 4* roster, and nether way is good for D3 in terms of income.

monsieurmojo

My experience, just in case anybody is still reading this:

I'm around day 555.  My roster is linked in my signature, but tl;dr, I have a 454 Black Bolt, 405 Banner, 360 Strange, ~25 x 4* champions (about equally split between vaulted characters and latest), and almost all 3* champions (2 x level 266, and a bunch more getting close).   

I used to play PvP pretty regularly, split pretty evenly between S1 and 2.  I've gone pretty casual in the last 6 months, but I can still hit any target I want to with no LINE play at all.  Most of the time, I'd stop at 575.  But if the 4* was a character I wanted, I'd go for that, usually on one shield.  If I had extra HP, I'd hop a couple more times to 1200.

I tried this test on a whim, just to see how it would play with my roster.  Since Thoress is boosted, I went with her, IM40,and Black Bolt.  After the seed teams, I was paired with nothing but 450+/405+ 5* with a boosted 4*.  Each one of those matches takes 5+ minutes.  I got to 591 at 12 wins after about an hour of play.  I stopped before getting to 16, figuring it would take getting to 700+ just to get the old 575-level reward.  

Given the recent 5/6 changes to PvE, I'm just not willing to spend twice as long playing PvP to get reduced rewards.  If this change goes live as-is, I'm probably never playing PvP again.  Personally, I think the best option that's been floated in these 30-some pages is making the wins progression run concurrently with points progression.  The 40-win mark is definitely too high; 30 for the 4* cover seems high-but-reasonable, and reinstitute the 15 CP at 40.

Pinko_McFly

OJSP said:

sh81 said:

I dont know the difference between us, but, going by other testimony on here, there must be something special about you in PVP.

I don't know how to answer that. Thanks for the compliment, I guess.

I can concur that OJSP is something special. But he's not alone.
4* players should be able to get 800+ (900 really) without shielding or coordination.
Those familiar with Line know that it's biggest benefit I'd after 900 points and the climb to your first shield is more of a pain as you have to see if someone is friendly on every match.

Player1575

Just finished hitting 20 wins for the second vintage token. Ended with 800 points even. Had 3 defense losses and 4 wins which netted out to somewhere around -30 for me. 

This was done without any use of line or anything else with a roster that has 16 champed 4*s, and none boosted for the event. I was just hitting whoever looked like an easy target regardless of point value. No taking chances on high point targets or anything else. 

Win totals need to be adjusted, even if it's based on clearance level or something. 40 wins is a ridiculous number for a 4*, when I woukd have been 100 points shy of it under the old format.