Infinity Season *Updated (9/19/17)

Blergh

broll said:

Blergh said:

What cracks me up is it's gone from a system where people buy shields to get the four cover to a system where you can get that cover without shielding or spending anything. 

If the main point of getting 900 was that four cover not placement why should they bother to shield? I mean 930ish didn't even get me top 25 in the last event. There is no reason to score big in the first place, I'll be hitting the weakest regardless of points they have just to maximise the win count. New players coming into this system will have no clue why 900 points is significant. 

It's a win for the wallets at least. Be interesting to see how many people stop shielding altogether if it is introduced main season and shift their focus to a PVE alliance. Most probably doesn't make much of a difference off season. From a business perspective it seems like a dumb move. *shrugs* 

Honestly I think there metrics are showing less and less people shielding and they aren't getting the money for it. I think they can put with H4H as a replacement for that. However it had the problem of being way too expensive for low levels and not offering the right covers.  They seem to be testing a way to address the later with offering covers needed when you get (fill in formula theory). The other half of that is to lighten the HP spend, particularly on lower players so they are more likely to have enough HP that it's worthwhile to purchase the rest.

How'd you arrive at that conclusion? I don't see it. 

People are not shielding - and they are changing to win system so it lessens the burden on HP that comes with shielding? Don't those points contradict each other? If they're not shielding how does this system lessen the burden of shielding? There seems like a bit of a logic flaw in those statements. Unless I'm reading it wrong - if so I apologise. 

Plus the biggest burden on a lower developing roster is slot price, not shielding. 

And if it was simply to lessen the burden or lack of investment in the shield system there are more value-driven ways to combat the problem. Throw a free three-hour shield into the VIP system and you have boosted the value of the VIP program and most likely get more sales, have promoted participation in PVP as a greater number of the VIP's who play don't usually play PVP would join just to use their free shield (it's just human nature) - and by extension be invested in the system - after a successful hop to higher scores they'd be tempted to shield and keep those points. If not they still have that HP for the hero store. 

And it also makes very little sense from a business perspective. Different segments of the market will be driven by different values and costs. As such you want to appeal to as many segments as you can by having multiple transaction fronts. There are very wide and different drives between the two transaction stores that you have outlined that don't overlap or correlate. 

Haven't really done the research but I'd guess the breakdown would generally lie between these:- 

Shield Hoppers:- 
More driven by achievement/competition - part of getting the four-star is goal orientated rather than desire. 
There would be a social aspect to it too - for the alliance - boasting rights. How many times have you seen someone say they feel great as they hit the hero for hire button? 
You also have the point protection angle - they are buying something to protect what they've earned. 
And then there is the cost - a twenty-four-hour shield for a random four at most cost 300 HP which comes in at around £2.00.  Whereas hero for hire is £15.00.  If you are a couple of battles away from the Sam Wilson 4* and out of health packs hero points you'd be more tempted to buy them then the fifteen for his cover. There is a pressure aspect. 

Hero Store:- 
Would be desire driven. They really want that hero - or the iso - or the XP points. They'd be less willing to spend on lower tier fours as it offers them nothing. 
There would be no achieve in buying it. I personally have never been tempted but shield regularly. 
It would most probably be more appealing to people who need the cover, not segments who have them champed - see the cost point above. £2.00 vs £15.00 for an additional level of a rubbish character. 
The purchase would be for them, purely selfish - no social outlet or altruistic justification. Some people will persuade themselves to spend through that. 

I could go on, but no one wants me to as it boring as hell - and over-kill. Basically, the two stores aren't appealing to the same markets. I just don't see how you've come to that conclusion, and if that's the reason it is still pretty much a dumb move business wise. You look to expand sales to different sectors not shut them down. Metrics alone aren't even to drive business decision either, as it's not in the numbers but the behaviour behind them. 

killerkoala

Just a way for us to grind and buy more, simple as that. it's always about buying more things with HP.


True Healing (health packs)
Shield Cooldowns (8 and 3 shields)
Increase Health and damage (health packs)
Excessive character releases (roster spots)
grinding 40 wins to get full progression (Shields and/or Health packs)

WEBGAS

jackstar0 said:

Guess I can look forward to not getting worthwhile season placement as I usually manage (by skipping an event or two).

Great job rewarding the whales (and hyper-alliances) with this mini-season. I'm sure they appreciate the ten-packs they don't need.

10 PACKS is a total joke....9 x 2 stars and 1x 3stars  at least for me....

Anyway I love the new system.. I don't care for placement in PVP . I hated to struggle to climb to 650pts only to be attacked repetedely in a few minutes and lose hundreds of points, so I couldn't care less now.
I will play pvp when I have time, join immediately and do my 40 wins during the 2 following days.
I like it and hope it will be permanentely...... If only one adjustement has to be made is lowering the amounts of wins needed.
35 wins could be a reasonable arrangement

Jsh2014

@Brigby I don't say this often but the designers know that have done a good job here with the new progression please tell them to make it permanent I almost never pushed past 300 points and a lot of the time I just didn't play Vs but I have been battling since it came out and I'm having fun in Vs again. Right now I have 24 wins and I'm in 28th place 

jordanix

I like this test season. I wish the individual progression rewards were reduced from 40 wins, but even then I'm still enjoying the test. I need 4* hero covers, and these changes allow me to do that. The old way of PVP did not.

Am I getting beat down by hundreds of points over night? Absolutely!
Do I care? Not in the slightest. If anything I try to leave up a **** team on defensive if I can since placements mean little to me and I just want to get some progression rewards the next day.

I appreciate that this is not everyone's cup o tea, but personally I'm a fan and am playing more PVP because of it.

ammenell

get some wins, if the easy matches dry up I enter the one with the lowest points and immediately quit.
rinse repeat until I am low enough to see easy matches again.
I lose points, which I don't care about, drawing 100 dq tokens a few days ago helps with the health packs

alaeth

Grind, grind, grind your foes... gently till they scream.
Verily, verily, verily, verily, verily easier retals. for me
(please).

As predicted in my previous posts... same results as last time... I'm very close to finished this off-season event, but no-where close to progression wins.

I was unable to pre-join - so no seed teams.  I climbed to 600 (~20 wins) and now I sit - unshielded... trying to amass wins on whatever poor bastard I find that isn't running triple Champed 5s.  In every beatable case, I try to "send a message" to start a retal. battle.  A couple people got the hint, and we got successively easier with each retaliation, others hit me back with their A teams.

An alliance-mate and I are going at it: level 1 Black Widow (only blue covers - for TUs), level 15 2* Daken, level 40 3* Daredevil.  Works great on offense, but mediocre on defense - so perfect to trade wins until we both hit 40.

Shake my head. Welcome to the new PvP grind-fest... enjoy your stay.

alaeth

@Brigby can I suggest a weighted poll?

I think the issue in the forums is the loudest voices are (often) the least experienced.  I'd like to see a 2-dimensional poll on this new change....

SHIELD RANK * Days played with a "like/dislike" vote.

I'm willing to bet the majority of veterans dislike the change

Bowgentle

alaeth said:

@Brigby can I suggest a weighted poll?

I think the issue in the forums is the loudest voices are (often) the least experienced.  I'd like to see a 2-dimensional poll on this new change....

SHIELD RANK * Days played with a "like/dislike" vote.

I'm willing to bet the majority of veterans dislike the change

What does it even matter at this point.
They ignored ALL our feedback from the last test.
All of it.
They don't care.

broll

Bowgentle said:

alaeth said:

@Brigby can I suggest a weighted poll?

I think the issue in the forums is the loudest voices are (often) the least experienced.  I'd like to see a 2-dimensional poll on this new change....

SHIELD RANK * Days played with a "like/dislike" vote.

I'm willing to bet the majority of veterans dislike the change

What does it even matter at this point.
They ignored ALL our feedback from the last test.
All of it.
They don't care.

Or this test was already in development before the 1st test and they are working on implementing the feedback into a 3rd test that started development after the completion of the 3rd test.

This test seems to be testing something completely different, season vs individual event. It's totally plausible that this 2nd test was coming no matter what and was already in development because it's a major change.  Rather than delay the test to fit changes in they decided to roll forward and do a 3rd or more test later with the feedback from the 1st test.

Spudgutter

broll said:

Bowgentle said:

alaeth said:

@Brigby can I suggest a weighted poll?

I think the issue in the forums is the loudest voices are (often) the least experienced.  I'd like to see a 2-dimensional poll on this new change....

SHIELD RANK * Days played with a "like/dislike" vote.

I'm willing to bet the majority of veterans dislike the change

What does it even matter at this point.
They ignored ALL our feedback from the last test.
All of it.
They don't care.

Or this test was already in development before the 1st test and they are working on implementing the feedback into a 3rd test that started development after the completion of the 3rd test.

This test seems to be testing something completely different, season vs individual event. It's totally plausible that this 2nd test was coming no matter what and was already in development because it's a major change.  Rather than delay the test to fit changes in they decided to roll forward and do a 3rd or more test later with the feedback from the 1st test.

I'm usually looking for the optimism in everything, but even i cannot get on board.  

I was lucky to get three seed teams, and i used champed 3* to beat them.  Right after that, champed 5* teams. I can totally get behind opening up engagement, really i do.  And i can understand more work for more rewards (5 clears in pve for example).  But if i am practically forced to use my 5* teams, and so the matches tend to be longer and definitely use more health packs, then there should be some give with that take.  

TL:DR  this game has beaten the optimism out of another veteran. 

Milk Jugz

Spudgutter said:

broll said:

Bowgentle said:

alaeth said:

@Brigby can I suggest a weighted poll?

I think the issue in the forums is the loudest voices are (often) the least experienced.  I'd like to see a 2-dimensional poll on this new change....

SHIELD RANK * Days played with a "like/dislike" vote.

I'm willing to bet the majority of veterans dislike the change

What does it even matter at this point.
They ignored ALL our feedback from the last test.
All of it.
They don't care.

Or this test was already in development before the 1st test and they are working on implementing the feedback into a 3rd test that started development after the completion of the 3rd test.

This test seems to be testing something completely different, season vs individual event. It's totally plausible that this 2nd test was coming no matter what and was already in development because it's a major change.  Rather than delay the test to fit changes in they decided to roll forward and do a 3rd or more test later with the feedback from the 1st test.

I'm usually looking for the optimism in everything, but even i cannot get on board.  

I was lucky to get three seed teams, and i used champed 3* to beat them.  Right after that, champed 5* teams. I can totally get behind opening up engagement, really i do.  And i can understand more work for more rewards (5 clears in pve for example).  But if i am practically forced to use my 5* teams, and so the matches tend to be longer and definitely use more health packs, then there should be some give with that take.  

TL:DR  this game has beaten the optimism out of another veteran. 

I missed the seed teams, had to jump right in with my A team. This event has been a health pack munching slog. Probably gonna be the first event I DON'T get the 4* cover in over 20 straight events. I'm at 13 wins and had 70x points, have since been beat down to 58x. Normally I would have finished the push to 900 for the cover, but looking at 27 more tinykitty wins to get it is EXTREMELY disheartening........ This whole system is absolute tinykitty! Versus SHOULD NOT get harder to progress as your roster gets better. This is stupid and backwards.....

Lampo

Wait, is the final prize TEN HP???
For real???
It misses at least one 0...

Doc L

alaeth said:

Grind, grind, grind your foes... gently till they scream.
Verily, verily, verily, verily, verily easier retals. for me
(please).

As predicted in my previous posts... same results as last time... I'm very close to finished this off-season event, but no-where close to progression wins.

I was unable to pre-join - so no seed teams.  I climbed to 600 (~20 wins) and now I sit - unshielded... trying to amass wins on whatever poor bastard I find that isn't running triple Champed 5s.  In every beatable case, I try to "send a message" to start a retal. battle.  A couple people got the hint, and we got successively easier with each retaliation, others hit me back with their A teams.

An alliance-mate and I are going at it: level 1 Black Widow (only blue covers - for TUs), level 15 2* Daken, level 40 3* Daredevil.  Works great on offense, but mediocre on defense - so perfect to trade wins until we both hit 40.

Shake my head. Welcome to the new PvP grind-fest... enjoy your stay.

This part about the retal battles is probably one of the most ridiculous things here - you can artificially win matches to get the 40 really trivially if you like, it just takes longer to do now than before... Surely this tells D3 this system isn't right? 

For the record, as with the last one, I am trying it out, and the time issue aside, it's just a bit... a lot dull. 

And i remember when Ice-IX was here posting (as a developer of the game, who interacted a lot before he left the company), the biggest $ earning area he said was roster slots, giving everyone more covers you can't get otherwise is probably better than $ from shielding and health packs. Dunno if that's still the same, but that was at the height of cupcaking when I imagine a lot more shields were used. More rosters needing more spots probably works out best.

Blindman13

Just hit 12 wins, and got 50 HP from the event and 10 HP from the season. Seemed a little odd at first glance, but when you realize all of the following it makes more sense:

1. This is a unique off-season 'season', so all season progressions are bonus
2. This is a short season with only 2 events instead of 10, so progression awards will be smaller
3. For the ISO and HP awards on the season they appear to have divided the regular season awards by 5 because there are 1/5 the number of events in the season
4. To get to 67 wins on the season you will have already gotten significant progression awards from the individual events, it would be overkill to have additional huge rewards in the season progression.

I feel like I have a better chance of getting the 10-pack in this season than I ever do in the regular season, so I am trying harder in PvP now than I ever normally do. Typically, its just the thing I do while waiting for my timers in PvE to build up.

smkspy

Really like all this. Usually I just snipe to get to around 650 and call each pvp a day. Get decent rewards especially for building 2s and 3s, but 4 strs are usually out of grasp even with 41 champed 4s. I just don't like shield hopping and having to battle my way back to 900 when at 875 and then see I got hit for 100 something points after that match.

NF might have been too easy of a pv since AI have so many villains already champed that making 40 matches only took me a night and a morning to achive...and still have 2 days left until the event ends.

BFF is probably gonna be a lot hare to get those 40 wins, but should still be doable if I begin the event from its start like I did NF pvp.

I hope they make this a permanent change, so it'll make finishing off a lot of 4s much easier than before.

Kahmon

I found myself with some free time yesterday just before slice 3 was starting, so I signed up and started at the very beginning. First up 10 freebie seed fights. Then a few more against real teams. Then I had other stuff to do so I took a break. As I had time I would pop back on for a few fights here or there.

Laundry time. Guess I'll play MPQ while it washes. Back to other stuff. A few fights before bed to help me fall asleep. Oh look, 45 wins on day 1. No stress. No pressure. Very enjoyable. Now if only there were 15 command points at 50 wins. Oh well, can't have everything.

And to those who say all your feedback is ignored...
There are lots of us giving feedback about how much we like these changes.
Could it be improved? Definately.
Will they find a happy compromise to make everyone happy? Probably not.

Whatever PvP looks like in a few months, you can bet it is because they feel it is best for the majority of the player base. Some people will feel it hurts them, but they will adjust.

Alterationartist

I honestly can't see what people are having a problem with. The wins only affect progression, not placement. Progression has never been required, which I mentioned before, being physically unable to progress past the 575 point progression tier, so with it not being required, hard PvPers can still work their point placements, and lesser players still stand to gain by just winning, and not seething with hate for the game, its community, the matchmaking, the whales, etc.

Proof

What 5 hours of sleep looks like just getting 600 points at rank 6, and going to bed for not even a full night.

New players join into the game, and see these big prizes listed at 1200 points and think 'Oh I just have to win this many battles and I can get...' only to get halfway there, leave for a while,. and get shunted back to a third of the way there.

PvPers lose nothing to this, and casual players (reminder that this is a mobile game, you're not exactly getting Dark Souls caliber gamers here) can gain at their own pace and their own level of play. It prevents someone who is actively playing with moment to moment health regeneration from being punished for not playing a game the "right way" (amend a hundred extra air quotes to that).

Speaking of, I fail to see how 40 wins is a grind compared to the old progression. Just to get to 1000 tiny globe icons is about 20-30 wins at minimum, not counting being attacked during your climbs, and it sucks spending HP on shields to keep it there for your next climb or Health packs to extend that climb, when there's so many better things to spend it on.

If people are so worried about the progression rewards, maybe they'd feel better if the placement rewards were improved to give their strategic play more meaning and something bigger to strive for without focusing on how 'this many wins equals this 4-star'. Clearance levels were made specifically to help players on different levels with different specific roster needs, and that still comes into play here. More players might be likely to shift their clearance level to get more of a specific 3* or 4* from progression rewards, and participate in more PvP events than they would normally if they're not having to dither with their point totals and shield buying for a maybe possible sorta kinda chance at getting a cover they want from PvP.

Yes, veteran players might have an issue with this, but this change isn't FOR the veteran players. It's to remove the barrier to entry for any new or returning players so people can have FUN with the game in all of its stages and at ALL points in their individual progression. If people are quick to make complaint about fighting 40 people with Champed 5*s, there still exist thousands of players who haven't even reached THAT point, and are struggling to do so because of an unintuitive progression system that gives these supposed teams complete agency over those weaker than them by way of burning the progression points of their peers. Yes, they can win their top spots, but to also stifle those weaker players from breaking out of their niche, except by way of pure luck of the draw from their tokens, is only fun to the sadistic.

//Removed Player Names From Screenshot -Brigby

Doc L

Kahmon said:

I found myself with some free time yesterday just before slice 3 was starting, so I signed up and started at the very beginning. First up 10 freebie seed fights. Then a few more against real teams. Then I had other stuff to do so I took a break. As I had time I would pop back on for a few fights here or there.

Laundry time. Guess I'll play MPQ while it washes. Back to other stuff. A few fights before bed to help me fall asleep. Oh look, 45 wins on day 1. No stress. No pressure. Very enjoyable. Now if only there were 15 command points at 50 wins. Oh well, can't have everything.

And to those who say all your feedback is ignored...
There are lots of us giving feedback about how much we like these changes.
Could it be improved? Definately.
Will they find a happy compromise to make everyone happy? Probably not.

Whatever PvP looks like in a few months, you can bet it is because they feel it is best for the majority of the player base. Some people will feel it hurts them, but they will adjust.

I would argue your last point - I'm not sure many of the changes in PvP specifically have helped the majority of the player base. True Healing changes only helped those with larger rosters, removal of cupcakes depressed all the scores in PvP to some extent, increased health of characters at the 3* level meant more health packs and longer matches, messing with MMR messed with a lot of players climbing... Not saying some changes aren't good, but I don't think it's the majority.

Spudgutter

Kahmon said:

And to those who say all your feedback is ignored...
There are lots of us giving feedback about how much we like these changes.
Could it be improved? Definately.
Will they find a happy compromise to make everyone happy? Probably not.

Whatever PvP looks like in a few months, you can bet it is because they feel it is best for the majority of the player base. Some people will feel it hurts them, but they will adjust.

Trust me, the scenario you put forward is what i have been pushing for this whole time. When engagement is up, in theory, everyone wins.  The first test, before i champed some 5*, i enjoyed it without even hitting 40 wins.  I played when i wanted, and the teams were comprised of a variety of different characters not just the same three or four champed boosted 4*.  

The problem is that for almost 4 years now, the only constant with this game is that for every step forward, there are two steps back*.  You and others(and me previously) may enjoy it now, but the minute you take that leap forward, this game "rewards" you with penalty after penalty, with fewer and fewer actual rewards.

All they have to do is make the top two rewards points *or* win based and everyone wins.  Everybody. There exists a compromise that makes everyone happy, and they are either unable or unwilling to do it.  And since communication has only gotten worse as these 4 years have gone by, i doubt we will ever get an answer as to why.

*notable exceptions are the introduction of the ddq, and then champing.