How will shield spending differ with decoupled progression rewards?

Calnexin

Calnexin

It will decrease

How do you think shield spending habits will differ, if at all, under the Divine Champions beta test when progression rewards are based on a separate win counter that is decoupled from points?

Option 1 - it remains the same.  The theory being that the people who spend on shields now are primarily those people who are vying for placement.  The ones who used to do it to hop to a particular target are either a small population or will continue to spend what they were if they reach a good placement tier.

Option 2 - it increases.  Because the progression prizes are tracked separately, there will be no need to collaborate to boost scores in a slice.  As such, average scores will remain lower, and hits at low points will become more frequent, necessitating more frequent shielding at lower point thresholds if you want to place anywhere decent.

Option 3 - it decreases.  A significant part of the player base only shields to reach their desired progression prize and then "shield out" to maintain whatever placement they got to.  Since they can now achieve the 4* cover regardless of how many times their team is hit, they won't bother to shield at all.

I suspect that all three options are true for a certain percentage of the playerbase, so it's mainly a question of what happens in the aggregate.  Will the overall hp consumption on shields go up, down, or remain the same?

FokaiHI

It will remain the same

Remember, nothing has been permanently implemented. Even if I don't spend HP on shields, I will still spend HP someplace. It wouldn't be American not waste resources on needless things. 

Dragon_Nexus

The issue I have is seasons.
I mean, I have always tried to get to the 4* cover in progression and haven't done it consistently for a while. Going past 800 is usually the up and down zone where I can win 40 and lose 50 repeatedly.

So on the one hand, I can just grind wins and not care about points or score. On the *other* hand...a season has point progression. And I really want to get the full progression each season.

Unless, of course, they decide to change progression in a season to wins as well, in which case I won't give a *damn* about shielding ever again and just grind wins in PvP forever and never care about placement.

Stick

If this means I don't have to worry about getting piled on when I try to get the 4* cover, I'm all for it. If it means I don't have to shield hop to get there, I'm all for that too. I've been so close to t10 plenty of times, until the difference between 10th and 11th place is like 1500 points or more. If the placement rewards end up being a little more spaced out to make say, top 25, 26-50 be a little more worthwhile, sure, I'll still hop. If this gets implemented, that means I can save more HP for HfH or wasting on tokens. Oh, or I guess roster slots, should I need them eventually.

Dragon_Nexus

sh81 said:

Dragon_Nexus said:

Unless, of course, they decide to change progression in a season to wins as well, in which case I won't give a *damn* about shielding ever again and just grind wins in PvP forever and never care about placement.

It would make sense to change season goals as well wouldnt it?

If both tests go live, as they are now, my gameplay is changing dramatically.

Im going for progression in both PVP and PVE and thats it.

Im going to play as an when I choose, and will likely never buy a health pack ever again - because I wont have the time crunch that I do now.

PVE Prog is 5 clears a day, I can manage that and PVP games on standard health packs/regeneration.

Happy days.

Yeah, it would be nice for me not to have to break off what I'm doing at 2:30am to get my points in PvP. Or to spend some time at 2:30pm to do the same.
That and it'll be nice not to be at, say, 880 points, find a fight worth 40, down it really quickly and *not* get the 4* cover because I'm now at 743 points. Or, indeed, not to give a damn about my score at all. Just play PvP as much as I want until I hit that final progression and then stop.

wymtime

It will remain the same

Here is the thing.  Do you want to get the 15CP?  If so you will shield and shield hop so you can get top 10.  If this was for the season players would still score high for season scores and top 10 would get even more competitive because of the CP.  if the CP was at 40 wins and season progression was total wins then yes shields would go down.  I think you will see a massive gap between players who shield and go for top 10 and those who do not shield this event

Dotproduct

I have about 1145 health packs spare so it's likely if this was in a season I won't be spending any. 

revskip

It will decrease

It will go down but only a bit.  The people who were formerly pushing to 1200 in SCL 7-8 even occasionally will now be spread out in SCL 5-8.  

Also the Line community will continue to adjust to min-max time/rewards.  As soon as this goes live the next new ideal way to play will be cracked.  People early climbing with weak teams before switching to solid teams to be able to q seals early and get easy wins plus juicy retaliations, trap caking in a sense.  People coordinating hops will still be a thing but I think it will take fewer serious hops to get there.  

shardwick

I'll still shield to help out my alliance since it's pretty strong in pvp but at least now I'll be able to get better rewards through progression.

mpqr7

It will decrease

There's no way I can get top 10 placement. I'll try for 40 wins (???!!!!!!) if I have the time, and then I guess I'll just shield at the end. Placement is literally impossible at my mmr, unless I were to aim for 2000 to 3000 points or more, which I won't.

Borstock

It will remain the same

I could never hit 1200 or t10 before, and I won't be able to do either now. I see no reason to expect a change in my spending habits.

Magic

A lot will depend on how the system works with the season rewards. If the season rewards are based on the number of wins then my shield habits will slightly change (from 1-2 shields to no shields). But if it's the score - we will see. In general I tend to play PvP less and less. I get quickly frustrated when I can't get to the next goal (like with vulture pvp - I was constantly being bounced back around 780 points so I've decided to quit the event). This change doesn't help with that as I view 40 wins as a lot. On the other hand I always skip easy team that don't give 39+ points. I won't anymore so the time in the event should be similar.

TheRealJRad

It will decrease

If I didn't have an alliance min, I wouldn't even bother shielding under the new system.

smkspy

I would only shield whenever I would snipe a bracket, but if this new system sticks. I would just play progression at 20 matches a day, I won't shield anymore.