Sacrifice the present for a better future

The rockett

how can I get more data?   I am not in S1-2-3-5.  I can only see this slice and its not easy to get this together.  I only play S4 pvp and if another big ally wants to try and get this for S1/2/3/5, then I can add it to it. 

madoctor

Alsmir said:

The rockett said:

Alsmir said:

The rockett said:

D4Ni13 said:

(...)

Thank You for answering and Yes it does.  I see a lot of people commenting on what needs to be done to the PVP system to find out they have 2 champed 4* an play causally.  My point is if you play causally why should your causal play dictated the change in PVP when it effects the hard core top 10/25 ally's.  That is the point I have been trying to make time and time again.  The people complaining and wanting the change are hurting the high end 4*/5* players more than you know.  I will post some TRUE data here very soon to show my point.  I am fine trying to expand the game to get more to play PVP, but this is not the way.  in fact, they wanted to increase the usage of Shields and HP and this will have the direct opposite of it. 

True data? Numbers pulled from the forum and Line? Perhaps do you have a data about all player base?

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/68392/category-5-pvp-information-from-s4#latest

It's a start, but right now you have some info about just S4 and you ignore everyone who didn't make 1200. That's quite bad.

Maybe someone in other slices can help gather the info. Also it's pretty difficult to tell who could have/would have hit 1200 but didn't because of the new system unless they actively come forward

Alsmir

You can't, therefore you can't get a full image or make any reasonable assumptions.

Rod5

Vhailorx said:

broll said:

xKOBALTx said:

broll said:

Vhailorx said:

The top tier players used all the vintage 4* covers they got from finishing top 10 regularly, PLUS they got all the super powerful current 12 4*s up to 350+.  

I completely disagree with your post.  I was pretty early in my 4* transition when vaulting came out and I feel it skyrocketed me to the point where I’m already knocking on the 5* door. I didn’t have to sell anything, no clue where that notion comes from. It gave me months of time where I got 0 4* cover / CP cover waste. Yes my vintage rates slowed but through other means (BH, 3* champ rewards, H4H, event rewards, etc) they continued to move forward at a much more predictable rate that was easily manageable. 

The theory is interesting. I personally don’t give the devs that much credit that vaulting was always temporary. 

In your complete disagreement, I think you're overlooking the most important piece to the counterargument. So, you made good progress on champing the latest 

It's great that lots of 4* transitioners got their carol or Medusa up to 275.  Those characters have about 33k when boosted, and carol does maybe 25k with her black.  The top tier players got their carol and medusa up to 370, when boosted to 450+ Carol has  something closer to 60k health and does 50k with her black (those of you that have her that high please correct my numbers since I am sure that I am off a bit).  Do you really think you made progress by adding some 270 champs?

100% this. Boosted C4rol is badass, but there’s boosted and BIG boosted. I didn’t have lots of characters over 300, but I now have a lvl 367 C4rol, and she’s obscene. Passive boosted hits for 10k AOE, and her black hits for 54k iirc, the strikes are horrible also.

Medusa, Bl4de, HoboFist and Mordo are also very, very strong when high-level.

BearVenger

D4ni13 wrote - "First of all, I won't see you if I'm a 4* player and you have a Thanos & Hawkeye champed. So we are not even competing, so it is normal to have a wider gap between us."

I don't agree with that statement. I have a champed 4 star roster, and for my first 28 non-seed matches in Cat5, I got four-star champed teams. Once I exceeded 1400 points, all I saw were double-champed five star teams. This led me to spend time and ISO averaging about 20 skips each until I could pull up a team with only one five-star champ on it.

If I had thought about it, I should have blown off the tokens, ISO, and Mr. F cover and kept my points. Instead, I slogged through uphill matches and lost half my score to get those 40 wins. On the plus side, my score freefall made finding even matchups less expensive.

If I have a fully healthy team and a favorable board, I CAN scrape out wins against champed five-star teams. But I can't do 10 of those in a row AND play new release PvE without spending hundreds of HP on health packs (and being a grumpy cuss in the process).

In the Dark Vortex PvP, I was able to jump from 275 to 900 in 45 minutes, and with minimal stomping on players with worse rosters than me. This new format cannot be sprinted, and it becomes a soul-sucking grind if one gets too many points too soon. In chat, I vented to my group: "I'm sorry, MPQ, for not knowing my place and trying to rise above my station. All I wanted was my measly Mr. F cover."

I dislike these "what the devs were going for" quasi-philosophical threads where we take a hoped-for premise and torture the facts to fit them, because understanding devs' motives shouldn't be this difficult. We're not excavating ancient scrolls here. If the devs wanted to be straightforward about what changes they wanted from the playerbase, they could have had @Brigby post a release.

If I could speculate on the motives behind my "Icarus Experience," it would be the following:
- Slow down free resources (4* covers, ISO, CP)
- Not recalibrating matchup algorithms to reflect roster strength at higher scores.
- Keep players feeling the need to buy resources into success.

Anyway, as much as it pains me, until there is some points-based scoring system that can replicate what I would have won in a similar timeframe and effort, I will not make any purchases from d3/demi. Shame, as I really wanted to drop some HP on Rogue and Nightcrawler covers. 

D4Ni13

BearVenger said:

I dislike these "what the devs were going for" quasi-philosophical threads where we take a hoped-for premise and torture the facts to fit them, because understanding devs' motives shouldn't be this difficult. We're not excavating ancient scrolls here. If the devs wanted to be straightforward about what changes they wanted from the playerbase, they could have had @Brigby post a release.

Fair enough. I would have liked an official explanation too, but unfortunately we didn't get any. 

(Don't worry though, I will refrain from posting this kind of things in the future)

Spudgutter

The rockett said:

how can I get more data?   I am not in S1-2-3-5.  I can only see this slice and its not easy to get this together.  I only play S4 pvp and if another big ally wants to try and get this for S1/2/3/5, then I can add it to 

Can you update the format?  On mobile and it is juat a mess of numbers, so i can't make heads or tails of it.  Can you ise a spreadsheet or something? 

And no offense, i know you aren't trying to cherry pick because it is the slice you normally play, but isn't choosing the slice that has always had abnormally high points, for a new xman release for t5, going to give you skewed data?  

The rockett

Yea I did this on my computer. Let me try something else. I will try to do this again if possible. 

Ruinate

Title of the thread is a "...a better future".  Most of the folk here, and certainly most of the folk happy with this change are the 4* players.  Their future is 5* level play where CP has been placed out of reach for many.  So when vets say something like - "you won't like this change in the future because CP has been removed from prog", the rebuttal is something along the lines of "well I have no interest in t10 or 5* level play so it doesn't affect me."

Can somebody walk me through OP's terrible logic?

BearVenger

D4Ni13 said:

BearVenger said:

I dislike these "what the devs were going for" quasi-philosophical threads where we take a hoped-for premise and torture the facts to fit them, because understanding devs' motives...

Fair enough. I would have liked an official explanation too, but unfortunately we didn't get any. 

(Don't worry though, I will refrain from posting this kind of things in the future)

D4ni: Much respect for your response. I can't address the larger post now, but I just wanted to add that my experience wasn't lacking 5*-champed teams.

BoyWonder1914

Ruinate said:

Title of the thread is a "...a better future".  Most of the folk here, and certainly most of the folk happy with this change are the 4* players.  Their future is 5* level play where CP has been placed out of reach for many.  So when vets say something like - "you won't like this change in the future because CP has been removed from prog", the rebuttal is something along the lines of "well I have no interest in t10 or 5* level play so it doesn't affect me."

Can somebody walk me through OP's terrible logic?

I've argued this point to death, and it's exhausting. My personal irritation with people who aren't on the high end of the 4* roster scale or in 5* land thinking they have a place to speak on the issues that affect those tiers aside, people somehow fail to realize that the end game here is improving your roster. This by default means that your roster will eventually breakthrough to a higher tier, and all these concerns that you consider far and away right now, will eventually affect you. Therefore, you're actually getting a better "now", for a worse "future".

But people are so happy to mindlessly slog to their 40 wins, for the simple fact that 900 points felt "out of reach". Now you finally get your 900 points, or hell, even your 1200 points, and what does it mean? NOTHING. No CP, and you better hope that you hit your 40 wins already on the way there (most vet players will have not), or you've got some more grinding to do. And if you've got that many points, good luck finding something "easy". If all these people had even ONE taste of what it's like to get those same rewards for half the effort, I can guarantee they wouldn't be raving about how great this is. Or better yet, if they even realized how insignificant that one cover is in the grand scheme of their 4-star development. Say it does actually end up being that one cover they need to champ a 4-star character.......ok? You champ that 4-star character, and now you're one step closer to sharing in the collective misery of boosted 4-star MMR. The lack of foresight is frustrating to say the least. 

Spudgutter

aesthetocyst said:

Spudgutter said:

The rockett said:

how can I get more data?   I am not in S1-2-3-5.  I can only see this slice and its not easy to get this together.  I only play S4 pvp and if another big ally wants to try and get this for S1/2/3/5, then I can add it to 

Can you update the format?  On mobile and it is juat a mess of numbers, so i can't make heads or tails of it.  Can you ise a spreadsheet or something? 

And no offense, i know you aren't trying to cherry pick because it is the slice you normally play, but isn't choosing the slice that has always had abnormally high points, for a new xman release for t5, going to give you skewed data?  

More data sets can be produced 3x a week.

I randomly jumped in a bracket in the slice i am most familiar with for this event. Scores were 10-20% higher, there were several unfamiliar names and some of that was the new toon horse race.

What was very different was how deep the higher scores went.

This will continue, as placement is more contested under this system. Under the old system, many strong players were satisfied via progression alone. So long as CP is The Only Resource That Matters, and The Only Resource That Matters is found in placements, competition will be up, burnout will be up.

The candle that burns twice as bright and at both ends ... Short term gain for loss of longterm players. Avg acct age and lifetime value of accts are key metrics in this model.

Sure, and when i see those numbers, the point still stands.  From the outside, it looks like confirmation bias.  Not only that, but you dont have the data from seasons past, so it is still somewhat distorted.

Not to mention, how many will decide to go to a different slice to increase the odds of a t10 finish?  That will also change the data set. 

If cp is the end all resource (it is) and people will go to great lengths to get it (they do), if we see the pattern above stay true, wouldnt that show the opposite?  You have dozens and dozens of obviously top teir pvp players still spending the same amount of time, energy and resources to get less?

I wont argue less people will get the cp this way, we are on the same page here.  I'm just not sure what we do with the information

Vhailorx

Alsmir said:

Vaulting introduced-  vets with fully champed classic 4* "The change is great, stop whining."
CL based level scaling in PvE - vets with champed 5* who now make clears in 50% time in CL7 "Great change, stop whining".
5* essentials in CL7 - vets "Great change"

PvP change that benefits 3*-4* players, but is bad for vets "Horrible!/Will quit!/Will not spend!/The game will die!" paired with "You like it? What's your roster? How much do you play? How often did you reach full prog in PvP? Never? Then your opinion is irrelevant, hush!"

MPQ sure has a special kind of community. Honestly, despite so many changes that we had, that benefited vets/5* players, I felt sorry for them when win-based got introduced. I was well aware that top players in PvP earned 1200 points with less effort than 40 wins. Now they have to grind way more.
My sympathy was gone about 5 minutes after reading the forums. There is very little real discussion. Plenty of screams and threats, but most importantly: levels of egoism that I've never seen before.

Let's assume that your characterization of the vet response to all those changes is accurate (I personally think the response was a lot more nuanced than you suggest).  Wow, you have discovered that humans are hypocritical and tend to like things that favor them more than things that don't.  what a deep insight! /snark

Vhailorx

BoyWonder1914 said:

Ruinate said:

Title of the thread is a "...a better future".  Most of the folk here, and certainly most of the folk happy with this change are the 4* players.  Their future is 5* level play where CP has been placed out of reach for many.  So when vets say something like - "you won't like this change in the future because CP has been removed from prog", the rebuttal is something along the lines of "well I have no interest in t10 or 5* level play so it doesn't affect me."

Can somebody walk me through OP's terrible logic?

I've argued this point to death, and it's exhausting. My personal irritation with people who aren't on the high end of the 4* roster scale or in 5* land thinking they have a place to speak on the issues that affect those tiers aside, people somehow fail to realize that the end game here is improving your roster. This by default means that your roster will eventually breakthrough to a higher tier, and all these concerns that you consider far and away right now, will eventually affect you. Therefore, you're actually getting a better "now", for a worse "future".

But people are so happy to mindlessly slog to their 40 wins, for the simple fact that 900 points felt "out of reach". Now you finally get your 900 points, or hell, even your 1200 points, and what does it mean? NOTHING. No CP, and you better hope that you hit your 40 wins already on the way there (most vet players will have not), or you've got some more grinding to do. And if you've got that many points, good luck finding something "easy". If all these people had even ONE taste of what it's like to get those same rewards for half the effort, I can guarantee they wouldn't be raving about how great this is. Or better yet, if they even realized how insignificant that one cover is in the grand scheme of their 4-star development. Say it does actually end up being that one cover they need to champ a 4-star character.......ok? You champ that 4-star character, and now you're one step closer to sharing in the collective misery of boosted 4-star MMR. The lack of foresight is frustrating to say the least. 

(emphasis added)
I don't think it's a problem for 4* players to have opinions about 5* play.  Opinions are great.  What irritates me is people who seem to think that any negatives for 5* play don't matter because that person isn't a 5* player.  That's silly.  5* players need new players keeping the playerbase large and active, and new players need 5* players continuing to support the game with $.  balance changes should not pit Player v. player in a zero sum game. 

It's good to democratize the 3* and 4* rewards in PVP.  long overdue.  That game mode was impenetrable and punishing for new players.  But doing it as cover for screwing over 5* transitioners is a net negative for the game.  A 3* player who struggled to hit 800 consistently in the old pvp system could grind pve, get a better roster, read some guides on the forums and learn how to do well in PVP.  a 5* transitioner that could scrape 1200 in PVP before is going to have a much harder time finishing top 10 regularly now that almost every bracket in CLs 5-8 will be 10-15 deep in whales.

madsalad

Were you here when they introduced championing and intentionally nerfed the damage potential of the entire 3* tier

They like the gap exactly where it i$.

morgh

I came back into the game at day ~330 after what I think was a 2.5 year break if not longer - I left at a point when XF got nerfed hard but was still viable to be paired up with 4-Thor.

When I left I was able to easily get t5 whenever I wanted - all it required was a few shield hops. But now my best team (with ONLY two 4* at 270) became the rock bottom of the feeding pile I was (and still am) THE cupcake for everyone whenever I went over 700. In the last 2 months or so I got to 900 maybe 3 times... usually I got shot down hard around 860, when it was just a win away. I wasn't mad - I understood that my best team is a really easy and fast target for people with all the new, flashy teams (being either high champed 4*rocket+guardians or 2 from Medusa/Carnage/Carol + featured). Although I am able to defeat such teams with my 4or + Im40, it comes at healthpack cost, sometimes causes me a wipe and in best case scenario - is just too long - even for shield hopping. So I didn't shield hop... I couldn't even see "grills" at 800 so the Line rooms were not of any help...

Now - this change is like a breath of fresh air to me - I can at a leisure pace get to 40 wins by playing those ~13 games every day, and I am guaranteed progression better then my 2* farm progression
Sure - I am definitely locked out of t10 and CP, but I sure as hell was not able to get to 1200 previously.

I do understand that people with high champed 4*'s or maybe some 5*'s are not being able to get their 10 CP from 1200 every time now, but would dare saying that there are many more people who are now able to get that 4* and progress steadily... needs of majority vs minority? something like that...

What you are saying is "yeah, but you guys will hate this change in a year or two when you get your all 4*'s champed and get to champing 5's and stuff"... but really? 1 or 2 years? This game might not exist then anymore or might be totally and completely revamped... shouldn't we worry about that when we get there and rather enjoy what we have now?

And the highest tier just got their growth slowed A BIT - not halted completely... I see people with hoards consisting of a hundred or more LTs and >2000 CP... oh come on - I don't think you should be crying so loudly about a small decrease in speed of power gain... if anything - you do have the option to go into shield hopping wars so maybe try it - I know many people still get t10 and their CP...

Vhailorx

morgh said:

I came back into the game at day ~330 after what I think was a 2.5 year break if not longer - I left at a point when XF got nerfed hard but was still viable to be paired up with 4-Thor.

When I left I was able to easily get t5 whenever I wanted - all it required was a few shield hops. But now my best team (with ONLY two 4* at 270) became the rock bottom of the feeding pile I was (and still am) THE cupcake for everyone whenever I went over 700. In the last 2 months or so I got to 900 maybe 3 times... usually I got shot down hard around 860, when it was just a win away. I wasn't mad - I understood that my best team is a really easy and fast target for people with all the new, flashy teams (being either high champed 4*rocket+guardians or 2 from Medusa/Carnage/Carol + featured). Although I am able to defeat such teams with my 4or + Im40, it comes at healthpack cost, sometimes causes me a wipe and in best case scenario - is just too long - even for shield hopping. So I didn't shield hop... I couldn't even see "grills" at 800 so the Line rooms were not of any help...

Now - this change is like a breath of fresh air to me - I can at a leisure pace get to 40 wins by playing those ~13 games every day, and I am guaranteed progression better then my 2* farm progression
Sure - I am definitely locked out of t10 and CP, but I sure as hell was not able to get to 1200 previously.

I do understand that people with high champed 4*'s or maybe some 5*'s are not being able to get their 10 CP from 1200 every time now, but would dare saying that there are many more people who are now able to get that 4* and progress steadily... needs of majority vs minority? something like that...

What you are saying is "yeah, but you guys will hate this change in a year or two when you get your all 4*'s champed and get to champing 5's and stuff"... but really? 1 or 2 years? This game might not exist then anymore or might be totally and completely revamped... shouldn't we worry about that when we get there and rather enjoy what we have now?

And the highest tier just got their growth slowed A BIT - not halted completely... I see people with hoards consisting of a hundred or more LTs and >2000 CP... oh come on - I don't think you should be crying so loudly about a small decrease in speed of power gain... if anything - you do have the option to go into shield hopping wars so maybe try it - I know many people still get t10 and their CP...

a nice post and welcome back. 

But I kind of disagree with it for the following reasons:

(1) You took a 2 year break from the game, having quit in April 2015 when xfw was nerfed and returning some time in the past few months.  I don't think it is unreasonable for you to be unable to easily finish top 5 upon your return.  You skipped 2 years of roster development in a roster development game.  Of course you were significantly behind the curve. 

(2) It is fairly hard to hit 900 with just 2 champed 4*s these days (though you almost certainly could do it whenever one of them was boosted, and might have been able to do it with im40/Thor the rest of the time).  But given the regular supply of 4* covers (via both fixed prog covers and cp) from PVE and PVP up to 575, as well as the great supply of ISO and HP available these days, I can't imagine that building up your roster to regularly hit 900+  would have taken more than a few months.

(3) So in order to speed up the roster progress of players like you by just a few months, 45 cp a week have been locked down to just 2% of the playerbase.  forever.  That's a terrible trade off for the playerbase as a whole. 

(ps) This change doesn't slow down the very highest tier at all.  They regularly got top 10 finishes anyway, the front runners, who climb first and push scores up in all brackets already had to play more matches that most because they can never get any opponents above 38 points.  It's the tier tier just below them thay are hurt by this.  The players who cpuod get 1200, but cannot regularly top 10.  The 5* transitioners mostly.

morgh

So this speeds up a bit people from 3->4 and maybe those developing their 4*, but slows down progress to 5* and development of 5*... well that would mean that they have no intention of going to 6* which is a good thing.

I understand that in the long run I might come to look at this change with sorrow and miss that 45 CP a week, but to be honest - even without that reward the CP intake ain't that terrible... and it seems a good reward for those who are willing to spend a lot on shield hopping (which I bet was the reason it was not put into simple progression at for example 55 wins or more) - when we aint sure what the deal is about, we can be sure it is about money

Vhailorx

morgh said:

So this speeds up a bit people from 3->4 and maybe those developing their 4*, but slows down progress to 5* and development of 5*... well that would mean that they have no intention of going to 6* which is a good thing.

I understand that in the long run I might come to look at this change with sorrow and miss that 45 CP a week, but to be honest - even without that reward the CP intake ain't that terrible... and it seems a good reward for those who are willing to spend a lot on shield hopping (which I bet was the reason it was not put into simple progression at for example 55 wins or more) - when we aint sure what the deal is about, we can be sure it is about money

This is generally the argument that people are making in favor of this change and i just don't understand it.  

(1) there is never enough cp. It takes thousands to cover even a single 5* and there is no other path to 5* land.  The cp is better thn the 4* cover because it reuslts in both 4*  and 5* roster progress.

(2) Moreover, most cp turns into 4* covers even when used for building 5*s. So you literally cannot get good 5* bench without also getting enough covers to build an awesome 4* roster.

(3) 6*s are probably comong at some point.  Demi geberally seems to be getting ready to switch from a 4* to a 5* endgame (rolling out cl9, adding 5* essentials, etc).  It all seems reminiscent of the moves they made with 3*s in spring 2015 right before they jumped to a 4* end game.  That's why this stupid cp move stands out like a sore thumb.

meekersX

I disagree with the arguments put forward in the original post. The PvP changes only slow progression in the 5* tier. We should judge the changes based on the game as it is currently, not what we hope for the future.