Time Gem Season Updates *Updated (10/19/17)

ronin_san

To clarify. It doesn't matter to which side of the aisle you're on regarding PVP changes. IF you get half the information from the developer, from the community guy (as opposed to the dev team themselves), all while the dev guy takes off for the night, you enable the community to rage, here / there, due to the lack of concrete information.

We don't know the end result. We don't know the new reward structure. But when you change bedtime for the kids, when you knew they were reticent to change, you'd better come up with more than "we'll talk in the morning over cheerios".


That's my gripe, first-and-foremost. Pseudo-informed Brigby looks a dirtbag, because his boss or dev team said, "Please announce this controversial change then punch out for the night".

Milk Jugz

Xenoberyll said:

broll said:

Xenoberyll said:

That’s reasoning the 40 wins are a realistic number. It isn’t. 900/40 means 22.5 points per match. I average more than twice that for my matches and 20 wins is what i need at most for reaching the 900 points mark. I don’t need 40 matches to reach 1200 even with attacks coming in.

That math only works if you assume 0 losses.  It's easy to get -100 or -200 in a very short time the higher you go (sometimes minutes).  It's those defensive losses that keep people rising much above a certain level (unless the go nuts with shields).  

I mentioned attacks. They still don’t make me take 40 matches till 1200 points. I know that others may have it harder in that regard but i don’t think my experience is exotic either. There’s a lot of room between 20 and 40... Also it doesn’t adress my biggest gripe, the loss of the CP reward.

Yes, in Ravager Clan (I remember that specifically because I outlined it in forum) I hit 900+ in 20 matches, including 2 losses.

@broll
I would not consider my 4 champ 5s as a well developed (I like how you chopped well off my comment in your comment) 5* roster. Especially since only one is considered top tier (Thanos), two near top tier (Phoenix and Parker), and what's the majority consensus on Ock? I believe I've heard dumpster fire more than anything else, regardless of how I feel about him.

Milk Jugz

broll said:

Milk Jugz said:

Pants1000 said:

Vhailorx said:

Spudgutter said:

Vhailorx said:

Also, it's silly to suggest that this change lets you play whenever you want.  That's only true if you only care about progression; placement still works on the same schedule.  And if you really only care,about progression then PVP was already "play whenever you want" unless you got into shield hopping.

First off, its not silly, it makes more sense then the current system, you just cant or wont see it.

Ill give you a real world example.  Event starts, you join, play a few matches.  Put the kids to bed, play some more, hit maybe 400-600 points.  Wake up in the morning, play match while brushing your teeth or drinking coffee. Play a match while at the gas station standing in line on the way to work.  Play a match or two while on a break or in the restroom at work.  Get home, and play some more.

Now, in the current example, while at work during the day, you are flogged down 100-400 points, and never make that back up, and lose the progression.  Some people dont feel like making that climb again, because they know the outcome is the same.

In the new win based model, they are more then halfway to a 4*.  Encouraged to keep playing, one could almost day.

Too suggest that this game was already "play when you want for progression" is to be seriously detached from the casual player, no offense.  And the casual playerbase, i think we can more than agree on, is way, way, way more people then those getting over 1200.

If you only care about progression. I.e. playing to 900 points for the 4* and then putting the game down, then pvp was already basically play when you want.  

It's pretty unusal to take hits below 500-600 or so.  So the first part of any climb is absolutely play when you want.  Spend 30ish minutes at your convenience climbing to 600ish.  The riskier part of climbing to 900 is 600-900.  Getting 300-ish points takes 5-6 matches (unless you punch down with futile 20 point matches).  5 or 6 matches takes about 20-25 minutes.  So that is basically the only requirement for 900 in the old system: at some point during last 48 hours of an event (preferrably not during the last couple of hours) you must spent 20-25 minutes to rush from 600 to 900.  

That does't seem like an particularly strict schedule to me.  Especially not compared to an alternative that is: at any time the 60 hours of each pvp event you must spent approximately 140 minutes playing 40 matches.

It's not some vast quality of life improvement for players.  It's a modest-to-significant improvement for some players and a modest-to-significant steo backwards for others.

Your experience is that of a well-developed 5* roster who uses shield check rooms.  What you described is not true for the vast majority.  

Unusual to take hits below 500-600?  LOL!  It depends on the boosted characters, but if I push to 500-600 and don't shield, I'll usually be hit back to 300-400 in a couple hours.  I've hit 575 and been hit back below 250 on multiple occasions.

20-25 minutes to run from 600-900?  Again, that's not the case for most people.  Many people spend much longer than that, often not making it because they get hit repeatedly during the process.

Getting to 875, winning another match, but getting hit for -100 in the process is the most frustrating thing that happens in this game.  This change removes that pain point, which is why I like it.

I fully support making the CP more attainable for the top players.  I think it's dumb to have t10 get it in CL6-8.  Give constructive feedback and hopefully the devs will make adjustments/compromises for everyone. Giving it to t50 in CL9 seems like the most likely scenario.  

I don't have a well developed 5* roster and I don't use any shield check rooms. I hit the targets the game presents to me. I'll concede I skip a lot of low point targets and I skip alliance mates. I don't have an issue hitting 1200. Again, no coordination, no shield checks, just skip low point targets and alliance mates. I do it in less than 40 wins and I am guaranteed the 15 cp at the end.

You don't have a 'developed 5* roster' but you have have 4 of them champed.  From my understanding once you get your foot in the door of 3 5* champs 900 becomes a breeze and 1200 is usually relatively easy.  All this shows is how the level of your roster controls how far you can progress.  That's somewhat true in the new meta, but while it's definitely harder for people higher up on the totem poll than it was, it's still possible.  It wasn't possible for 2*/3* player before.  Period.  Now I totally think they need to work on fixing it so that it's not so much harder for vets than newer, that's pretty backwards, but accessible to all is good.

I wonder if accessibility is the key.  One of the major problems in this game is dilution and the length of the roster progression path.  This change will help to lighten 4* progression path getting new players into 4* land, which seems to be the main focus of the devs, faster.  A lot of effort right now seems to focused on getting rosters to improve faster: incentivizing 5*s for the first time, focusing Latest 5*s over old, 4* featured rates (and the vaulting fiasco), Shield Training event trying to strong arm people into champing or near champing 4* within a week of release.... and now this.

There's the one I was referring to, I was on mobile and couldn't find it easily

Jaedenkaal

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. I'm sorry I was only able to post this information late in the evening. I'll be sure to be in this thread tomorrow morning (9am PDT), but if you have any questions or comments then please post them below and I will be sure to answer them then. 

Thank you for understanding!

Anxiously awaiting ability comparison tables for Fury and Psylocke

corytutor

I have 6 champed 5s and wouldnt consider my roster a top roster. Not at all. 

broll

corytutor said:

I have 6 champed 5s and wouldnt consider my roster a top roster. Not at all. 

Then you don't understand the scope of players in the game...  Anyone with any 5* champs is a top roster, I'd love to see real data but I'd be surprised if more than 1% of the player base has any 5*s champed.  This is due to the fact that casuals will always out number the die hards, by a huge amount.  I'd guess the median roster is probably in the early 4* transition at best.

corytutor

I understand theres many below me. Theres also many above me. 

And to clarify i didnt say i wasnt in the top tier of players. Im simply saying 3 to 6 champs isnt a top roster. 

broll

corytutor said:

I understand theres many below me. Theres also many above me. 

And to clarify i didnt say i wasnt in the top tier of players. Im simply saying 3 to 6 champs isnt a top roster. 

What the tinykitty do you mean by top roster if not top tier?  Do you mean you roster is hidden in a warehouse somewhere along with the ark of the covenant?

GrumpySmurf1002

corytutor said:

I understand theres many below me. Theres also many above me. 

And to clarify i didnt say i wasnt in the top tier of players. Im simply saying 3 to 6 champs isnt a top roster. 

I too have 6 champs.  You're overestimating how many players have more. 

It's maybe 0.1%, 0.2% of the player base, tops.

wymtime

Brigby said:

I'm afraid my original comment may have appeared a bit disengenuous. The original reason for this implementation was because the developers determined there would actually be more players that achieved the CP reward if put in placement, than if they tried to acquire it in progression.

The reason I said that I didn't know the exact reasoning in the above comment, was more so that I wanted to reaffirm with the developers if this was still the case, after reviewing the results of the test. I apologize for the confusion.

Here is the biggest thing.  They are discouraging players from playing at the highest CL.  Yes from giving 15CP to top 10 in CL6-8 more cp will be awarded but it will be at the expense of CL8 players.  In this last off season event I just scored 1215 points and got top 25.  I received my 15CP.  In the new system I would have not received my CP nor would I have received my 4* cover because I did not play 30 matches.  You are telling me I need to play at lower CL to earn the CP.  if your goal is to get players to play at their highest CL you have to make the rewards they really want and need achievable.  Most players who score over 1200 right now only care about the CP to try and cover the newest 4* and get more 5*.  You are now encouraging us to play at lower CL to try and get the CP instead of playing at our top end CL which is sad.

ursopro

14 pages in and still not sight of aesthetocyst, consider me disappointed

corytutor

broll said:

corytutor said:

I understand theres many below me. Theres also many above me. 

And to clarify i didnt say i wasnt in the top tier of players. Im simply saying 3 to 6 champs isnt a top roster. 

What the tinykitty do you mean by top roster if not top tier?  Do you mean you roster is hidden in a warehouse somewhere along with the ark of the covenant?

Lolololol

Im further than 90% of players give or take. But of that top 5 or 10 % in which i reside, im at the low end of the scale. Just on my team alone theres 17 guys with better rosters.  Perhaps more. Not one of them is above 500. So yes. My roster is top tier. But bottom end top tier. Something like that. 

killerkoala

why can't progression be either points or win based, win win for both types of players?

killerkoala

Talus9952 said:

You're kidding right?  Wins based progression provides flexibility?  How so?  Explain how that works?  We have to win more matches to make progression.  You can't start later coz you can't make the 40 wins.  What exactly is flexible about this?

Talus9952 said:

You're kidding right?  Wins based progression provides flexibility?  How so?  Explain how that works?  We have to win more matches to make progression.  You can't start later coz you can't make the 40 wins.  What exactly is flexible about this?

they want you to play all 60 hours and waste heath packs as much as possible

broll

corytutor said:

broll said:

corytutor said:

I understand theres many below me. Theres also many above me. 

And to clarify i didnt say i wasnt in the top tier of players. Im simply saying 3 to 6 champs isnt a top roster. 

What the tinykitty do you mean by top roster if not top tier?  Do you mean you roster is hidden in a warehouse somewhere along with the ark of the covenant?

Lolololol

Im further than 90% of players give or take. But of that top 5 or 10 % in which i reside, im at the low end of the scale. Just on my team alone theres 17 guys with better rosters.  Perhaps more. Not one of them is above 500. So yes. My roster is top tier. But bottom end top tier. Something like that. 

So we can argue about % without any data but that's pretty futile.  I think 90% is pretty low, but sure let's go with that.

Let's try and inject some real data into this (best I can).  So according to this http://steamspy.com/app/234330 7,625 player played on steam in the last 2 weeks.  That's one of 5(?) platforms it's supported on, and I suspect one of the mid-range to smaller ones.  I would guess more people that play on iOS and Android and fewer on Google, Windows, whatever, else, but since I don't know that that let's just multiple the steam number by 5.  So we have about 38,125 (since it's a guess let's round up to 40K for simplicity).  So if this is better for most players below your level it's better for about 36,000 active players (remember that number was active, if you extend to people more causal or are on a break for the last two weeks it's even more...)

Now let's say 20% of those player adds VIP or makes an equivalent purchase.  That's $180K (not even factoring in exchange rates from other companies and people in that the buy more).  I don't think it's outragous to think that 20% of average players are VIP or paying $10 a month.  I don't know how to calculate how much whales spend but you say some have spent $100K, assuming that's true this rough math (if remotely correct) suggest this can be made in month by people not top tier players.

Vhailorx

corytutor said:

broll said:

corytutor said:

I understand theres many below me. Theres also many above me. 

And to clarify i didnt say i wasnt in the top tier of players. Im simply saying 3 to 6 champs isnt a top roster. 

What the tinykitty do you mean by top roster if not top tier?  Do you mean you roster is hidden in a warehouse somewhere along with the ark of the covenant?

Lolololol

Im further than 90% of players give or take. But of that top 5 or 10 % in which i reside, im at the low end of the scale. Just on my team alone theres 17 guys with better rosters.  Perhaps more. Not one of them is above 500. So yes. My roster is top tier. But bottom end top tier. Something like that. 

My best guess would be:

(1) there are a very small number of players with 550s or deep levels 500+ rosters.  Maybe a few dozen.  These are the real uberwhales.

(2) there are several hundred, or maybe between 1-2 thousand, players with deep 5* benches and high level 4* champs (i.e. 6 or more 5* champs, or lots of 330+ 4* champs that just wreck when boosted). This group makes up the core of the top 50 alliances

(3) there are many thousands of players with a small number of 5* champs and very deep 4* benches.  This group fills out the top alliances or headlines the top 51-200 alliances.

But of course additional factors like mmr and clearance levels group players together with their peers.  So it definitely feels like 6x 5* champs (or 3x 5* champs like i have) is only middling strong when mmr or the pve leaderboards regularly show you 490+ gambolt teams.  

Mustache1

huktonfonix said:

@Brigby

While I personally hate the "wins-based" progression, I understand the drive for it.  As someone who places in the top 5 of CL8 every PVP event, I understand that I represent a tiny minority of the player base and that for the vast majority being able to progress toward PvP rewards without any fear of losing progress is a very welcome change.  Heck, I probably would have welcomed it myself a year and a half ago.

That said, I think the new system is poorly-executed.  There HAS to be a better way to satisfy the people who want to earn rewards without fearing defensive losses.

The problem, as I see it, is that you've essentially split each PvP event into two entirely different games (placement and progression) with different and even competing objectives.  As a player, it is confusing enough trying to figure out how best to navigate this structure myself, and even moreso trying to figure out what the heck my opponents working toward.

I feel like I'm standing in the middle of the Oakland Coliseum with A's and Raiders games happening on the field simultaneously, and players switching back and forth between the two games on a whim.  I barely know which ball to try to catch myself, let alone what the players around me are going to do, and there is no clear direction to win the placement game.  You've turned PvP into a joyless game of Calvinball.

YES. This is the problem. Cp and all like issues aside this is the problem that I see as someone who loved pvp the way it was. You are fundamentally changing pvp. It is now a totally different game. Win based game play is tantamount to pve+. Progression (t10 anyway) will be more cut throat and the masses will have to just accept hitting weaker rosters 40x for 1 4* cover and be content with it. There is no risk. Before you didn't want to get hit so you had to be strategic. Now hits literally mean nothing unless you are someone who can legitimately make it to top 10. I hate pve because it's mindless. You have taken the only strategy left in this "puzzle" game away. 

killerkoala

i've been in brackets where 1200 wasn't enough to get t25.  now only way to get those extra cp is t10 is bad bad idea like it been said many times

madok

The funny thing to me is the removing of CP as a viable progression goal actually limits the options of those lower level rosters.

A single 4* cover is a very narrow reward. It means that some if not the majority of events would do absolutely nothing to progress someone's roster. Say they have horrible luck and have all their 4* characters at 5/5/0 and almost every event is in one of those fully covered colors. That would suck. Plus the sheer number of 4 stars means you can expect cover number 2 from progression in about 6 to 7 years (feels like that). 

I remember back in the 3* days, printing out the deadpool daily schedule and highlighting all the days I was looking forward to to expand my roster. Slowly over each month more and more days would go unhighlighted because I didn't need a color.

Now with CP, as long you get at least one cover you have that option of buying more covers to help champ a character. Giving those lower level rosters the additional option of working extra to get additional CP just makes sense. I finished a couple 4 star characters back in the day so I wouldn't waste covers dying on the vine.

It's strange that the better solution is less possible rewards.

D4Ni13

Mustache1 said:

huktonfonix said:

@Brigby

While I personally hate the "wins-based" progression, I understand the drive for it.  As someone who places in the top 5 of CL8 every PVP event, I understand that I represent a tiny minority of the player base and that for the vast majority being able to progress toward PvP rewards without any fear of losing progress is a very welcome change.  Heck, I probably would have welcomed it myself a year and a half ago.

That said, I think the new system is poorly-executed.  There HAS to be a better way to satisfy the people who want to earn rewards without fearing defensive losses.

The problem, as I see it, is that you've essentially split each PvP event into two entirely different games (placement and progression) with different and even competing objectives.  As a player, it is confusing enough trying to figure out how best to navigate this structure myself, and even moreso trying to figure out what the heck my opponents working toward.

I feel like I'm standing in the middle of the Oakland Coliseum with A's and Raiders games happening on the field simultaneously, and players switching back and forth between the two games on a whim.  I barely know which ball to try to catch myself, let alone what the players around me are going to do, and there is no clear direction to win the placement game.  You've turned PvP into a joyless game of Calvinball.

YES. This is the problem. Cp and all like issues aside this is the problem that I see as someone who loved pvp the way it was. You are fundamentally changing pvp. It is now a totally different game. Win based game play is tantamount to pve+. Progression (t10 anyway) will be more cut throat and the masses will have to just accept hitting weaker rosters 40x for 1 4* cover and be content with it. There is no risk. Before you didn't want to get hit so you had to be strategic. Now hits literally mean nothing unless you are someone who can legitimately make it to top 10. I hate pve because it's mindless. You have taken the only strategy left in this "puzzle" game away. 

Anyone with enough points was hit in PvP. What strategies ? There were alliances on third parties from what I heard and people would not hit the ally of the ally of the ally. If that's what you mean by strategy, then fear no more. Surely this things will happen in the future as well. 

Please don't use strategy for the real reason most of you complain around here: a bunch of CP. Nobody cares of so called strategy. If strategy was what people wanted nobody would have complained about 5* req in PvE or the hard boss battle against Kaellicius. But guess what, they did complain.

Furthermore, nobody pays anything for PvP progression. It's a free of charge content, and the same for everybody. If they want to erase all the rewards and give us just 20 HP, then they have the right to do so. Granted some people would not play, but still a lot would. Why ? Because we play the game because we like it. We are returning everytime because we enjoy playing with our favorite marvel heroes. 

I rather think that all this race for CP & high rewards made us miss the most important reason we play the game: enjoyment. We don't play for CP, we play for our favorite heroes. There is a thin line between the two, and it seems most of the guys here crossed it. And it is sad man... pretty sad.