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

Ouroboros9999

I found I hit a lot of lower roster teams that I would've normally skipped to hit the onerous 40 win mark.  Overall the event felt like a slog...40 is too much!  

Jaedenkaal

Well, I played 40 matches. The first 10 were against seed teams, so really I played 30 matches. Highest score was ~850. I lost a bunch of points near the end (of course) and ended 77th.

Only to top 10 players in my group stayed over 1200 at the end (Including Dayv. Hi Dayv!); 11th place is 1085.

Best I've done in a PVP since the Balance Of Power where I came in second place on probably day 30 (940 days ago XD), and first 4* cover I've ever gotten in PVP.

nyark

Might as well chime in.  I have a champ 4* roster, played the event over 2 days.  Played up to 16 wins on the first day.  Reached 900 points after 25 wins.  I purposely was looking for easier teams instead of high point teams, but pretty much always find similar level teams so it's not like disregarding points helped me to gain wins faster.  After I got to around 1000 pts I started seeing mostly 5* rosters so I stopped at 32 wins.

I agree that 40 wins is way too many for players with developed rosters

Ebolamonkey84

Yesterday, I slow climbed from 0 throughout the day, with a push to 999 and 21 wins before bed.  Most of the teams were 3 champed 5* or 5/5/high boosted 4*.

When I woke up, I was down into the 600s. I climbed back into the 900s and started seeing unchamped 5s, non-boosted 4* teams worth 20-35 points.  Got to 1173 and 36 wins before dropping my first shield.  Did two hops to get to 40 wins, 1277, and 1st place.

I wouldn't mind the system if the wins were reduced to a 3 win gap between rewards instead of 4.

CT1888

For me, it's a massive step back in time, to when if I wanted to get better rewards I had to either bracket snipe, or climb with all my health backs, fall, come back later climb again, repeat until end - we're talking at least 40 matches. For time and health packs available, I had to chose between pvp and pve (I chose pvp as the first EotS broke me going top 10).
With this implemented, I'd need to choose between them again, rather than being able to benefit from the development in my roster (from winning the 4* cover reasonably consistently with a 3* team, to constantly with a 4* team, to now, finally being able to reach 1200), which has allowed me to be competitive in pvp and reach progression when I have the time in Pve.

Heck, there was someone in my top 10 (CL5 - I wanted the CP) with a 2* roster at 871 points, so getting there is possible when you get player engagement. Rather than create a bigger time sink, i'd prefer to see the progression rewards reviewed to make it worth people's while, as a 3* at 800 is a ridiculous anachronism at this stage of the game.

This change would gut the feel of pvp that I enjoy, the back and forth nature of climbing and retaliating, and turn it into a pve light, with a competative bit tacked on for those seeking placement.

zodiac339

This would have been fine for what I'm currently seeing in Black Vortex. My initial defense was 1*s (Storm, IM35, Black Widow). Lots of hits overnight that I could counter with low Champ 2*s and 1* mixes. Still seeing pretty small attacking teams with a 95 Thor as the toughest attacker. Too bad I'll have to stop win trading by the end of the day and actually starts tearing things up for points.

mpqr7

I ended up with around 50 wins, hitting around 1200 points, made top 10, which was probably easier than it would normally be, because I chose S5 and it's off-season. Normally when I do on-season in S4, top 10 would be around 2000 to 3000 points, which is way out of my reach.

Also, in my opinion, few people in my shard bothered to get to 1200+ because it wouldn't result in automatically winning the cp.

IlDuderino

Wow this was a bl**dy awful slog and I didn't get the 4* cover as I would normally 

madok

I really didn't plan on playing all that much in this test because a lot of the feedback was mixed from early joiners. I ended up blindly sniping a fresh CL8 bracket yesterday at 15 hours from end of the event.

I climbed like a normal event and was around 1500 with 24 wins and the MMR finally broke. I then proceeded to club those poor 3*/2* teams 20 times to get the 40 wins. I felt especially bad when one tried to retaliate and donated a point to me. 

I ended the event at 1700+ only using 2 shields and getting 1st place in my CL8 bracket by a fair margin. So from a HP point of view this was awesome but that is always the case sniping a fresh bracket.

That was one of the most boring PVPs I've ever participated in. I want to apologize to all those low level rosters I beat on to get the wins but that is how d3 wants us to play.

Silverblade

Playing through Black Vortex is awful... Just sayin'

charmbots

I really enjoyed this. I scored higher than usual, placed higher than usual, spent more hp for a longer shield than usual, and actually cared about placement rather than not caring much about the small difference in rewards between placing 5-50. Also, knowing the 4star cover was obtainable was nice, instead of just hoping I could get close enough for a shield hop without without seeing -180. I played more matches than I normally would but it was worth it.

STERLING21JJ

Well after playing the pvp with that test system I can say that I don't like it one bit for the 40 wins progression reward.  I usually can hit 900 in about 24-27 battles and doing 13 or more battles to get the 4 star cover.  Mainly the only reason I play pvp is for the 4* cover  

Crowl

CT1888 said:

This change would gut the feel of pvp that I enjoy, the back and forth nature of climbing and retaliating, and turn it into a pve light, with a competative bit tacked on for those seeking placement.

Surely the competitive part of pvp is still there as before, it has simply become less soul-crushing for those people that most need 4* covers but who keep getting smacked back down to 800 before they can get over the 900 needed?

There are still tweaks needed to the changes, but overall this is a very positive change that should see an increase in engagement in pvp as people realise they have a lot more flexibility in how they play an event and can eventually get the progression rewards even when their roster will prevent them from placing well.

Vhailorx

Crowl said:

CT1888 said:

This change would gut the feel of pvp that I enjoy, the back and forth nature of climbing and retaliating, and turn it into a pve light, with a competative bit tacked on for those seeking placement.

Surely the competitive part of pvp is still there as before, it has simply become less soul-crushing for those people that most need 4* covers but who keep getting smacked back down to 800 before they can get over the 900 needed?

There are still tweaks needed to the changes, but overall this is a very positive change that should see an increase in engagement in pvp as people realise they have a lot more flexibility in how they play an event and can eventually get the progression rewards even when their roster will prevent them from placing well.

I feel the opposite crowl.  overall this change is pretty bad.  Too much work for too little reward.

But in principle the idea of divorcing progression rewards from pvp points is a fine idea.  

My underlyng problem with all of the recent changes is that demi is slapping a thin vineer of qualiry of life stuff on top of much larger systematic changes that require everyone to play more in order to get the same rewards.

It used to be that 36 pve matches a day + ddq + pvp to 1200 (usually 25-30 matches, and less with grills) was enough for all available prog rewards.  That level of play now provides less than before (no 4* cover from pvp, no final cp rewards in pve or pvp).  And while the maximum available prog rewards are slightly higher (in pve ar the moment but presumably for pvp soon enough) getting them requires a significantly larger amount of work.  

Maxing out the prog rewards now requires 45 pve matches + ddq + 40 pvp matches per event.  And the player is still short 15cp (good luck on that top 10 finish!).

It's nice that everyone feels like they can get that 4* prog cover in pvp, or that 33/55co reward in pve,  but how many players actually play 40 matches per pvp event and 5/6 or more in pve every day?  Demi seems to be offering the illusion of improvement to players while actually just pushing us into playing even more.  

(And that's without even considering the treadmill effect of vaulting that makes us all race to level each good 4* as high as possible before they go vintage).

Crowl

You are looking at the game from the narrow perspective of a higher end roster though, the vast majority of people are going to be getting nowhere near 1200 points, so they are not missing out on those 15cp because they had sod all chance of getting anywhere near them in the first place.

People are having to play more games to assure a particular reward, however for those people that actually need that reward the most, they could have very easily got stuck in a spiral of win one game while losing two more on defence and never actually reaching the required points and for them it is a huge improvement. Maybe a better approach would have been to do away with losing points on defensive losses (only lose them on actual losses) since we have zero control over them and they would just need to rebalance the points values for progression rewards accordingly.

Another positive for this new system is that despite the increased number of wins required, you have a lot more flexibility in how you play, mpq is a quick and simple game that for some bizarre reason only seems suited to playing in extended bursts rather than a game or two when you can fit them in, this new test gives you the option of playing that way.

I take your point about the tendency for them to increase the amount of playing time they expect from mpq players who want to remain competitive and hopefully we will see them address this as they have made changes in the past to cut back playing demands even if they have crept back up again since then.

Vhailorx

But crowl the debate between 900/1200 points and 40 wins is mostly moot from the perspective of most players.  The vast majority of all players will never achieve either milestone.

Yes, the number of vets who used to get 900 or 1200 regularly is tiny.  So is the number of players who like the game enough to win 40 pvp matches 3x a week but DON'T have a strong enough roster to hit 900 regularly.

So this change is basically a zero sum game that disadvantages 1200 vets in favor of 575-700 3* and 4* transitioners.  Lets get something that actually makes like better for most players.

Jaedenkaal

Vhailorx said:

So is the number of players who like the game enough to win 40 pvp matches 3x a week but DON'T have a strong enough roster to hit 900 regularly.

I suspect this is not true. From what I've read around here, it's not roster strength, but external coordination that makes 900 points reachable. I suspect there's a huge number of players with the right roster strength who are unwilling or unable to coordinate effectively to reach 900 (myself included).

monsieurmojo

Jaedenkaal said:

Vhailorx said:

So is the number of players who like the game enough to win 40 pvp matches 3x a week but DON'T have a strong enough roster to hit 900 regularly.

I suspect this is not true. From what I've read around here, it's not roster strength, but external coordination that makes 900 points reachable. I suspect there's a huge number of players with the right roster strength who are unwilling or unable to coordinate effectively to reach 900 (myself included).

LINE coordination (shield checks) makes reaching 900 *harder*; you have to stop before every match and make sure you aren't about to hit an unshielded friendly.  Coordination is super helpful once you've shielded *above* 900, to begin hopping off of grills.

Vhailorx

Jaedenkaal said:

Vhailorx said:

So is the number of players who like the game enough to win 40 pvp matches 3x a week but DON'T have a strong enough roster to hit 900 regularly.

I suspect this is not true. From what I've read around here, it's not roster strength, but external coordination that makes 900 points reachable. I suspect there's a huge number of players with the right roster strength who are unwilling or unable to coordinate effectively to reach 900 (myself included).

You might suspect that, but it's not true.  900 is very possible with a deep 4* roster on 0-2 shields. I did it myself for a very long time. 1.2k is a bit harder without out of game coordination (possible but fairly expensive).

GuntherBlobel

This thread is 32 pages long! Where has everyone been hiding this last year?