Story Event Minimum Points - Trial Run (3/9/18)

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Comments

  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Let's suppose that D3 implemented some kind of timing mechanism. The stopwatch is going to start from their server end and not from the players' end to to prevent any possible cheating or hacking. You enter the match and D3's stopwatch starts. Your internet connection is lagging for some reasons and the stopwatch is not going to stop running just because of that and it continues to run until you win the match. What happens if players lose the match due to RNG or other factors? Should D3 add in the time taken by players who retreat matches or lost matches due to lost connection or bad RNG? If not,  would it be fair to other players?

    Another potential abuse is players retreating the match until they find a favourable board that can help them win the game. The drawback is they take damage from retreating. The thing is they have 24 hours or up to 48 hours depending on the sub to recover their health since speed is determined by in-game clear time. Top players usually take about 15 to 30 minutes to clear all 4 nodes. 
  • LifeofAgony
    LifeofAgony Posts: 690 Critical Contributor
    edited March 2018
    I agree re: top end cl9 play,  Its the one game feature I believe truly rewards skill as I see non-550 rosters beat 550s in the race on a regular basis.  Tapping completely negated the one facet of the game that I believe had ever been tied to skill, so kudos on the the hopeful death of tapping and hooray for competition.
  • ZeroKarma
    ZeroKarma Posts: 513 Critical Contributor
    @fight4thedream.

    I think you have an interesting idea, and people have suggested alternative win conditions on a few occasions or pure progression PvE that you can enjoy at your own pace for years.

    However, what you’ve described above is a completely reimagined game mode that requires tons of work and would perhaps not do anything to improve the company’s bottom line. They could re-open prologue and implement it and I would totally play it.....and happily never spend a dime on it since the only monetary requirements of high level PvE are the latest 5’s (good luck getting Classics) and health packs (thus no Thanos fix ever)

    Killing tapping might not be the best answer to the question of how PvE should look if we could start from scratch. But at least now the factors that affect your success are team planning, speed in-game and especially game planning your final grind which requires knowledge of your play capability, the sub nodes and your roster strength. 

    So I’ve listed several items that are attributable to skill, which is several more than the previous be-all-end-all requirement of.....free time.
  • dlegendary0ne
    dlegendary0ne Posts: 93 Match Maker
    Absolutely a step in the right direction.  This addresses the tapping problem, but still makes for long play sessions at the end and beginning of each pve (sub)event. Are there any tests planned to address this problem as well? 
  • fight4thedream
    fight4thedream GLOBAL_MODERATORS Posts: 1,976 Chairperson of the Boards
    ZeroKarma said:
    @fight4thedream.

    I think you have an interesting idea, and people have suggested alternative win conditions on a few occasions or pure progression PvE that you can enjoy at your own pace for years.

    However, what you’ve described above is a completely reimagined game mode that requires tons of work and would perhaps not do anything to improve the company’s bottom line. They could re-open prologue and implement it and I would totally play it.....and happily never spend a dime on it since the only monetary requirements of high level PvE are the latest 5’s (good luck getting Classics) and health packs (thus no Thanos fix ever)

    Killing tapping might not be the best answer to the question of how PvE should look if we could start from scratch. But at least now the factors that affect your success are team planning, speed in-game and especially game planning your final grind which requires knowledge of your play capability, the sub nodes and your roster strength. 

    So I’ve listed several items that are attributable to skill, which is several more than the previous be-all-end-all requirement of.....free time.
    No doubt what I am proposing is quite ambitious and I don't expect such changes to be implemented any time soon. Having thought over what you have stated in regards to skill, I do think being at the top end of the player spectrum has somewhat skewed my view on the issue and I am curious to hear from players who are running with 3* and 4* roster what kind of experience they have with PvE. I can imagine PvE being a rather different affair for a 3* roster but I am not so sure about the 4* player experience.

    I just feel that the problem with the current PvE model is that it focuses too much on speed which basically limits the amount of viable teams to be used if a player wants to play competitively.  Additionally, because it is time focused, certain segments of the player base are put at a disadvantage if the start/end times of events do not work into their schedule. And it also does not deal with the issue of bracket sniping. And while most of us have come to accept these flaws because we gain an advantage from them that doesn't mean these are issues that should not be addressed.

    Don't get me wrong, I am looking forward to the coming changes. I think it will be fun. But I am hoping this is only a tentative step towards bigger and better things.

  • maguirenumber6
    maguirenumber6 Posts: 457 Mover and Shaker
    edited March 2018
    killerkoala said:
    i never saw anything wrong with tapping, if someone want to play that much let them reap the rewards.
    Tapping is not a healthy way to play the game. The devs themselves have said this. This isn't a game that's designed to be played for hours on end. It's played in bursts, like when you do your initial clears in PvE, and then come back to it later in the day to do the rest of the clears once the points and/or health packs have recharged. Playing the same nodes over and over again just to ensure you get one extra cover than someone else is not the right way to play. I'm happy to see this experiment taking place, and I'll be interested to see the results.

    I do agree with others who say that PvE should be progression only. The devs, to my mind, could fairly easily make small changes to the PvE reward structure in order to integrate the placement rewards.
  • Kevmcg
    Kevmcg Posts: 122 Tile Toppler
    You want to add some variety and challenge, give a 25% increase to the node score if no 5* is used. Give 50% if no 4* or 5* used. Post above is correct, many (including me) would do time studies to see if a point boost merits the extra time taken to clear. Optimizing rewards over minimum time is what we do. (Except for tappers, they optimized rewards over unlimited time.)
  • LifeofAgony
    LifeofAgony Posts: 690 Critical Contributor
    I want variety.  

    #bringbackheroics
  • adamdivine
    adamdivine Posts: 136 Tile Toppler
    Anything that introduced variety would be welcome imo.
  • tiomono
    tiomono Posts: 1,654 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2018
    Well for everyone excited for this, I hope they don't run 2 tests without changing anything, then push it to the norm for a season, then revert it.

    I still want versus adjustments of some kind. 
  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,501 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    Speed = skill, mostly.  At the top end everyone is just racing to court death anyway (Thor may save you moves but he is provably not faster than Thanos/Starlord/Rocket), so the most skillful player is the one who can court death fastest.


    I think this point is debatable.  After a certain health threshold,  Court death is definitively slower than Thor/America.  To be competitive for scl9 T5,  you need some sort of damage /ap acceleration.  The health pools are so massive at 515, that the issue isn't whether you win its how much slower is your team compared to the other 8 guys racing for t5.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,850 Chairperson of the Boards
    There's only one fight with nontrivial health per cl9 sub, and you use some other team for that one.
  • Blergh
    Blergh Posts: 159 Tile Toppler
    tiomono said:

    I still want versus adjustments of some kind. 
    What I'm surprised at most with seasons, is they haven't tried to thematically link them to the gems they are named after at all. Thought the name change would have been leading to something conceptually. 

    I mean - Soul Season could be current PVP season without tweaks. And be the heart and soul of PVP with a longer season and more frequent runs. 

    Followed by a shorter power season that is based off a tweaked win system. I still say the downfall of the win system was the dual points and wins. Think all it really needed to do to work was to change wins to points, and introduce some kind of bonus system to the wins - high-level takedowns/streak 5 in a row wins 1.25 points - 10 wins 1.5 points bonus that shatters with a defence defeat or link the streak to health pack usage - run your low health A team or switch to a B team? Or something...  Hell, they only had to introduce win streak bonus for more advanced rosters anyway to reduce the 40 win slog and put the CP back in progression. They could have linked matches to the streak multiplier, higher that gets the more difficult teams you face - big rosters get progression easier, while lower ones have to grind more - making an extremely high CP win accessible to those that should get it. Could even introduce some kind of mechanic that limits star level until you've accrued enough power - either tier (1 star and 5)  or as a team (3 and 15) or a combination of both...  and give people a reason to use their lower star characters again.

    Back to the soul season.

    Then a smaller mini-mind season that is more strategic - limit shield or shields that vary in what they do or even optional (just in case you're on a hop) random puzzle boss stuff like Kaecilius that offer extra rewards.  Options are endless. 

    Back to the soul seasons. 

    Reality/Space/Time - am sure there are numerous like tweaks and stuff they could do. 

    It'd give the game greater variety, the main core of Versus would still be the longer soul season and PVP as it is now, and the newer stuff could be an extended offseason for the more casual/weaker rosters that want an easy win system. Could get gimmicky though. 

    I know my ideas are rubbish and are ill thought out.  I am not trying to create the system just saying it seems like a waste of potential - they could be doing so much more with that setup. Just take a huge chunk of time to develop I suppose. 
  • leoperez90
    leoperez90 Posts: 66 Match Maker
    I think it's best if you decrease the amount of times one has to clear the missions from 6 to 4 this would give players more time to enjoy the game and have time to do some PvP. 
  • killerkoala
    killerkoala Posts: 1,185 Chairperson of the Boards
    maguirenumber6 said:
    killerkoala said:
    i never saw anything wrong with tapping, if someone want to play that much let them reap the rewards.
    Tapping is not a healthy way to play the game. The devs themselves have said this. This isn't a game that's designed to be played for hours on end. It's played in bursts, like when you do your initial clears in PvE, and then come back to it later in the day to do the rest of the clears once the points and/or health packs have recharged. Playing the same nodes over and over again just to ensure you get one extra cover than someone else is not the right way to play. I'm happy to see this experiment taking place, and I'll be interested to see the results.

    I do agree with others who say that PvE should be progression only. The devs, to my mind, could fairly easily make small changes to the PvE reward structure in order to integrate the placement rewards.



    they used that excuse for tappers using the low nodes for tapping that is why they made that way go away cause no one was using health packs.
  • Daredevil217
    Daredevil217 Posts: 3,967 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited March 2018
    aesthetocyst said:
    just started event and looked at rewards.

    I sure am glad they saved us from tapping for those sweet Drax covers :tongue:
    It’s my understanding that the tappers are in CL9 and do so for the Legendary; not the 4* covers that they are beyond, though I could be wrong. 

    leoperez90 said:
    I think it's best if you decrease the amount of times one has to clear the missions from 6 to 4 this would give players more time to enjoy the game and have time to do some PvP. 
    I believe you only need 5 clears, not 6 for max progression. And perhaps only need 4 if you include the 5* node and clear optimally. 

    maguirenumber6 said:

    I do agree with others who say that PvE should be progression only. The devs, to my mind, could fairly easily make small changes to the PvE reward structure in order to integrate the placement rewards.
    I strongly disagree with those folks. You can play for progression only and clear at your own pace now. PVP that’s not an option because progression is often met with even greater regression if you aren’t putting up shields regualrly. But you can absolutely play to max progression in PVE no problem. People asking for PVE to be progression only either want to remove rewards (which I completely don’t get) or make it so everyone gets the top placement rewards (which the developers won’t do as it severely lessens the value of said rewards). So I cringe every time I hear this statement. PVE is fine as is. After removing roster based scaling and tapping, I hope they leave it alone. PVP is where the work needs to be done IMO. 
  • acescracked
    acescracked Posts: 1,197 Chairperson of the Boards
    We need to get rubberbanding back!
  • broll
    broll Posts: 4,732 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    Speed = skill, mostly.  At the top end everyone is just racing to court death anyway (Thor may save you moves but he is provably not faster than Thanos/Starlord/Rocket), so the most skillful player is the one who can court death fastest.

    The problem with redesigning PvE to reward specific node objectives or something is that this playerbase is such a bunch of degenerate minmaxers that everyone would immediately figure out how to get the most points with the least effort, then do that every time.  I don't think variety is ever going to be a part of the meta because most people have no interest in actually playing the game, they just want the maximum rewards with minimum effort.
    No it doesn’t, at least not in this game. As @fight4thedream said it’s mostly a factor of having a certain set of core speed characters. Add to that being able to play at one of 5 key times in the day.  Neither of these have anything to do with skill and both are largely luck. 

    Like most of the game RNG is the largest factor for having a good shot at placement.  However this RNG doesn’t change event to event and those who got the good rolls are handed better rewards every event. It’s a tinykitty system that needs to be overhauled or removed. 

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