On Win Based Rewards vs Point Based Rewards in Versus.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

A few points of discussion as of now regarding this topic are:

1) the definition of what PvP means to each player

2) What "Progression Rewards" means within the context of PvP

3) What "Placement Rewards" means within the context of PvP.

4) Who the targeted segment(s) are.

One of the main benefits of what proponents of win-based or non-regressive based point systems usually pitch, based on what I observed, are a guaranteed way or a much easier way to get "Progression Rewards". Rarely, would they talk about "Placement Rewards", and how shield won't lose its importance in their proposals. Based on what I see so far, many of the proposals tend to achieve the effects of less shield or even no shield being used, depending on the goal(s) of players.

In a PvP, on average, there are at least 20 players using shield, with the higher SCL (7 and above) hitting 30 players. Using a conservative guess, each player uses an average of 100 Hero points for shield. If we were to calculate the number of Hero Points used for the purchase of shield in a PvP, the formula would be: no. of SCL * no of time slices * no of brackets * no of players using shield * average HP used per shield. Again, using a conservative estimate, it would be: 5 * 5 * 3 * 20 * 100 = 150,000 HP per PvP. On average, a new PvP runs once every 3 days. In a year, the number of HP used per PvP is potentially: 365/3*150,000 = 18.25 millions.

Let's re-visit what the shield was designed to do in a PvP: to protect your points from other players' attacks.

With a 0 point defensive loss solution, a +1/-1 win-loss solution, or a fixed win/lose point system that allows players to have a net gain of positive points for every one win and one loss, shields are made close to irrelevant and PvP is going to be 100% grinding in the sense that whoever plays the most match win (similar to tapping in PvE) rather than whoever plays more "strategically" using the elements (such as observation of when attacks happen most frequently, how certain team of characters discourage attackers from attacking them, how certain team composition generate more defensive win, choices of time slice, the best time to shield etc) available in PvP wins.

PvP scoring system is based on Elo rating system and the higher your ranking, the more players want to attack you. The more points you have over other players, the more points you lose. While climbing up to the top, you'll noticed that progression rewards get better: starting from Standard Token (25 points/reward no 1)and ending with 15 CP (1200 points/reward no 15). Quite obviously, at least to me, PvP is a competitive and a high risk high reward game. If you are a casual player, yet you expect to get the top progression reward as easily as a serious/competitive player, wouldn't it defeat the meaning of "competition" or a "high risk-high reward" environment?

In my opinion, as long as shields are made irrelevant or close to irrelevant in any proposal to change how PvP works, I doubt that it would be implemented long term. The other logical solution is that the developers decided to make shield irrelevant in PvP and introduce new resource to replace shield or to make up for the lack of usage of shield.

hunky_funky · April 2018

Smart80 said:

hunky_funky said:

Haha... Oh this debates, that got to far. Stop lying to yourself people. If in win-based there was cp or LT prize at the end, nobody never sad a word and we played win-based now. It's all about rewards, the rest is excuses.

This just shows you shouldnt speak for other people...

I'm saying it only from my perspective. And considering your reaction, I'm pretty much right...

Smart80 · April 2018

hunky_funky said:

Smart80 said:

hunky_funky said:

Haha... Oh this debates, that got to far. Stop lying to yourself people. If in win-based there was cp or LT prize at the end, nobody never sad a word and we played win-based now. It's all about rewards, the rest is excuses.

This just shows you shouldnt speak for other people...

I'm saying it only from my perspective. And considering your reaction, I'm pretty much right...

There truly is no conclusion further from the truth.. First of all, you assume what everyone else would say, and are wrong cause i dont agree for one. And secondly, you assume my reaction supports your thesis? *mind blown*

Again, dont try to speak for others, just because you think you are right.

hunky_funky · April 2018

Smart80 said:

hunky_funky said:

Smart80 said:

hunky_funky said:

Haha... Oh this debates, that got to far. Stop lying to yourself people. If in win-based there was cp or LT prize at the end, nobody never sad a word and we played win-based now. It's all about rewards, the rest is excuses.

This just shows you shouldnt speak for other people...

I'm saying it only from my perspective. And considering your reaction, I'm pretty much right...

There truly is no conclusion further from the truth.. First of all, you assume what everyone else would say, and are wrong cause i dont agree for one. And secondly, you assume my reaction supports your thesis? *mind blown*

Again, dont try to speak for others, just because you think you are right.

Wow, chill out. I'm just fooling around. No matter what we discuss here or what point of view you like the most, it doesn't change state of thing. I'm just looking aside on all this situation and see, that people want to play pvp, but they not comfortable with current system. On top of that, they had shown better for them version and then it was thrown away, cause some say: "Yah, it's slow and have less rewards. We don't like it". What about those who liked it? My point is - stop argue for nothing and change something! If it's unchangeable, well, c'est la vie...

SpecSpecter · April 2018

HoundofShadow said:

A few points of discussion as of now regarding this topic are:

1) the definition of what PvP means to each player

2) What "Progression Rewards" means within the context of PvP

3) What "Placement Rewards" means within the context of PvP.

4) Who the targeted segment(s) are.

---

In my opinion, as long as shields are made irrelevant or close to irrelevant in any proposal to change how PvP works, I doubt that it would be implemented long term. The other logical solution is that the developers decided to make shield irrelevant in PvP and introduce new resource to replace shield or to make up for the lack of usage of shield.

Right off the bat I guess I would have to say there's a clear use of shields in win-based, that is to say for Placement purposes. The win-based system shouldn't influence that at all. That being said, the notion of having to shield up just to get through Progression is arguably at the core of what people who dislike the point-based system like the win based system I think.

The win-based system does make shields irrelevant for the sake of progression, but they are arguably more important in the win-based system when it comes to placement because you are fighting more, putting yourself out there more, all of which makes you more of a target. It's not as easy to, say, quickly get to a comfortable rank in placement after just a dozen or so high-point fights and then just shield up and be done with it. I doubt many people just go all-out and grind out some 40+ fights at once in one sitting so, provided placement is important to you, you would have to use shields to protect your climb in the ranks just as much as protecting whatever rank you ultimately get to.

Actually, I frequently hear people mention the win-based system being 'easy' when criticizing it. Like... a lot. Is it? I mean to a degree I suppose, but enough that it's the system's primary characteristic? To reach the same progression in win-based as compared to point-based you have to complete over twice as many fights. Now granted one of the benefits of the win-based system is that you can easily just stick to the fights you feel are easier to complete rather then going for harder ones because that's where the points are, that doesn't change the fact that those fights are (or at least should be) getting harder and harder as you move along and (to repeat myself) you have to get though twice as many. I guess you can say it's a system of effort over skill.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

Generally speaking, another way of grouping players into three is:

1) players who go for placement rewards
2) players who go for progression rewards
3) players who go for both

I believe many players won't have much problem hitting 725 without shielding, if they try a little bit harder. Based on my personal experience, I was able to achieve this even when I was in 2* land. If you are playing PvP less than 3 hours before it ends, then it's another story. I believe it's better to concentrate on the difference between using shield and not using shield beginning from 725 points onwards. We have:

11. 800: 3* covers
12. 825: iso
13. 850: PvP token
14. 900: 3*/4* covers
15. 1200: 15 cps

The strategy in the current system is shield hopping and/or outside coordination. You queue up 2 or 3 teams for high enough points (50 to 70) and then shield again. Using an average of 60 points * 3 opponents = 180 points, you would need to shield hop about 3 times to hit 1200 cp, and that is provided that you are not being attacked. Each shield of different tiers (3hrs, 8hrs, 24 hrs) has a fixed cooldown of 8 hour. Optimistically speaking, your shield usage would look like this:

1st shield after hitting 725 at 8am-4pm: 150HP
2nd shield: 725 + 180 = 905 @ 1pm-4pm: 75HP
3rd shield: 905 + 180 = 1085 @ 4pm-12am: 150HP
Last shield: 1085 + 180 = 1265 @ 9pm: 75 HP
Total HP used for shield = 450HP

This is looking from an optimistic point of view and chances are, it could take more than 450HP to hit 1200 depending on your roster strength, and the characters that you have and how fast you finish each match.

The developers are aware of the shortcoming(s) of the Elo system and shield was designed to soften the impact of points dropping "drastically".

I guess the decreased number of shields used in the previous win-based system could be one of the reasons why it was taken out. Afterall, it translates to less HP being used in the game as a whole. What this means that you could use each HP saved in PvP to buy tokens or roster slots for those wanting to reach only the 15cp progression reward in the current system. If we were to calculate the number of HP used for this group of players, it could be: 3 SCL (SCL 7 to SCL 9) * 5 time slices * 3 brackets * 10 players * 450 HP= 202,500 HP. It looks like I was too conservative about the previous calculation. Changing the number of players to 5 would reduced the number by half.

Using the least and the most amount of HP purchased in game, each HP is worth:
200 = ~ $2 or 0.01/HP
20,000 ~ $100 or 0.005 /HP

So, 202, 500HP is worth between $1012 to $2025 per PvP or in a year's worth of PvP, 365/3*1012 or * 2025 = ~$123,287 to ~ $246,375.

Of course, not all players use money to purchase HP since it could be gotten for free. The point is not that D3 would lose a few hundred thousand of dollars of potential earning, but there's still some kind of monetary value (real money) attached to each HP.

I suppose a better compromise could be allowing players to attack not more than 3 times while being shielded, if the current progression rewards are not changed. This could mean introducing new element into PvP that requires additional HP usage, or remove progression rewards totally, which would cause the developers to suffer verbal assaults from many other players in the forum, as well as players not in the forum.

Bowgentle · April 2018

HoundofShadow said:

Generally speaking, another way of grouping players into three is:

1) players who go for placement rewards
2) players who go for progression rewards
3) players who go for both

I believe many players won't have much problem hitting 725 without shielding, if they try a little bit harder. Based on my personal experience, I was able to achieve this even when I was in 2* land. If you are playing PvP less than 3 hours before it ends, then it's another story. I believe it's better to concentrate on the difference between using shield and not using shield beginning from 725 points onwards. We have:

11. 800: 3* covers
12. 825: iso
13. 850: PvP token
14. 900: 3*/4* covers
15. 1200: 15 cps

The strategy in the current system is shield hopping and/or outside coordination. You queue up 2 or 3 teams for high enough points (50 to 70) and then shield again. Using an average of 60 points * 3 opponents = 180 points, you would need to shield hop about 3 times to hit 1200 cp, and that is provided that you are not being attacked. Each shield of different tiers (3hrs, 8hrs, 24 hrs) has a fixed cooldown of 8 hour. Optimistically speaking, your shield usage would look like this:

1st shield after hitting 725 at 8am-4pm: 150HP
2nd shield: 725 + 180 = 905 @ 1pm-4pm: 75HP
3rd shield: 905 + 180 = 1085 @ 4pm-12am: 150HP
Last shield: 1085 + 180 = 1265 @ 9pm: 75 HP
Total HP used for shield = 450HP

This is looking from an optimistic point of view and chances are, it could take more than 450HP to hit 1200 depending on your roster strength, and the characters that you have and how fast you finish each match.

The developers are aware of the shortcoming(s) of the Elo system and shield was designed to soften the impact of points dropping "drastically".

I guess the decreased number of shields used in the previous win-based system could be one of the reasons why it was taken out. Afterall, it translates to less HP being used in the game as a whole. What this means that you could use each HP saved in PvP to buy tokens or roster slots for those wanting to reach only the 15cp progression reward in the current system. If we were to calculate the number of HP used for this group of players, it could be: 3 SCL (SCL 7 to SCL 9) * 5 time slices * 3 brackets * 10 players * 450 HP= 202,500 HP. It looks like I was too conservative about the previous calculation. Changing the number of players to 5 would reduced the number by half.

I suppose a better compromise could be allowing players to attack not more than 3 times while being shielded, if the current progression rewards are not changed. This could mean introducing new element into PvP that requires additional HP usage, or remove progression rewards totally, which would cause the developers to suffer verbal assaults from many other players in the forum, as well as players not in the forum.

Your assumptions about shield usage are wildly off for CL8 and 9.
Pretty much the whole of T25 will be shielded at the end, having used anything between 1 and A LOT of shields (up to 12 and more).
Depends on slice, goals, roster, etc.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

I'm aware of that and I was being really conservative about it, and I just added in some details regarding monetary value of HP while editing my post and you happen to quote my older post, so it doesn't reflect that.

SpecSpecter · April 2018

Well here I guess the disagreement would be that every decision in the game on the part of the devs is purely driven by greed and monetary profit, call me naive but I I really don't believe that (though funny how often this card gets pulled on me whenever I try to suggest game improvements. I mean not just here but in many other games of this type.). I mean sure, maybe I could see it if the win-system eliminated shield usage entirely and/or if using shields was the sole uses for HP, but seeing how nether of those things are the case I really can't see it weighing in that heavily in the decision on weather to use the win-system over the point-system. If this was such a factor I would think they wouldn't have put the win-system out there in the first place, much less still be considering using it again (however small), because you think they didn't crunch those numbers long beforehand? Just making such a system and implementing it into the game probably dwarfs those costs.

Bowgentle · April 2018

SpecSpecter said:

Well here I guess the disagreement would be that every decision in the game on the part of the devs is purely driven by greed and monetary profit, call me naive but I I really don't believe that (though funny how often this card gets pulled on me whenever I try to suggest game improvements. I mean not just here but in many other games of this type.). I mean sure, maybe I could see it if the win-system eliminated shield usage entirely and/or if using shields was the sole uses for HP, but seeing how nether of those things are the case I really can't see it weighing in that heavily in the decision on weather to use the win-system over the point-system. If this was such a factor I would think they wouldn't have put the win-system out there in the first place, much less still be considering using it again (however small), because you think they didn't crunch those numbers long beforehand? Just making such a system and implementing it into the game probably dwarfs those costs.

They tested in the off-season, where shielding always is much lower than during the season.
Then rolled it out as-is for the season.

They probably did crunch numbers, but the numbers were wrong.

First full season showed different numbers, and something spooked them enough that they pulled the plug immediately.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

I'm not saying I'm right about my opinions. I could be completely wrong. Off the top of my head, some of the reasons why they pulled it off could be because:

1) They couldn't find a good compromise on an acceptable no. of win and the rewards to be added in.

2) More players are getting 4* covers compared to previous system.

3) less shields being used because shielding was sort of necessary from 725 to 800 onwards but it wasn't necessary any more in win-based if you want to get 4* covers.

4) there isn't much actual difference between win-based PvP and PvE.
Similarities:

a) both gives you guranteed progression rewards in a way.
b) placement are determined by players with the highest points
c) both have certain specific character(s) in each events, and not having specific character(s) doesn't mean you can't get full progression reward.

Differences:
1) There are shield in PvP. However, it's only a difference if those players use shields in PvP. If not, it's not a difference to them.
2) One is fighting AI controlled players' team vs henchmen/goons/some special characters and the usual Dark Avengers

and more reasons...

I believe they do crunch data but sometimes, they do get certain things wrong. Mega-corporations still get things wrong from time to time, despite the amount of data they have collected. You can read it in the news. Having done research or data crunching doesn't mean that they are free from errors, human or non-human. That's why players' feedbacks and data are part of their decision making process.

However, my view is that because they are a company and I suppose a subsidiary of a listed company Disney>Marvel>MPQ, they have to pay expenses and make profits. As a result, they have to balance between giving everything freely and easily and controlling the speed of certain outflow of in-game resources which have monetary values to them.
From my point of view, their pulling of 15cp out from win-based progression rewards shows that they want to have certain control on how many players can get certain resources. In my opinion, DDQ looks like a summarised version of control of resources given out to players. They could allow you to use any team to fight all nodes to get those rewards but they chose to make it progressive and * level based. If you are a 2* or 3* players, you aren't going to get the extra 2 CP and LT frequently unless you are firmly in 4* land.

Besides this, I believe they also want players to use up resources such as cp and hp that they made available "easily" in the game as a whole. If not, F2P players will find no incentives to spend if they could amass resources in the game easily to advance. It's fair to say, you can advance and get resources freely in MPQ without spending a single cent, compared to many other games, which actually put a certain paygate if you want to advance. Reduced usage of certain resource doesn't necessary mean only reduced profit, but it could mean other things like diversion of that resource to other areas of the games. Using a hypothesis of reduced usage of shields in PvP, it actually means a diversion of HP usage in PvP to other areas of usage like packs, vaults or roster slots. Because you are using less HP in PvP, it means you could use it on packs or roster slots more frequently.

Somewhere down the road, they could run win-based system or a modified version of it. It's fair to say that win-based system and point-based system have a fair share of proponents of each system. There would be a compromise and the compromise won't satisfy both parties as well. The compromise could be in terms of time spent and/or resources gained that they deemed acceptable. It's definitely not something easy to fix, regardless of how many players think that their solutions are an easy fix to the PvP "problems".

I'm neither for or against each system, but given that that MPQ is created by a corporation, and not by a group of hobbyist, my thoughts usually involved my thinking that the decision or changes that they made have to align with their business objective in the long run. If certain ideas come at the expenses of business objectives or continued decreased profits etc, chances are, they are unlikely to be implemented in the long term.

SpecSpecter · April 2018

I never said profits don't factor into their decision making process at all, I'm not that naive, merely that even based on the numbers Hound quoted I have a hard time believing that that alone would be the tipping point to scrap a whole new system they only just made. After all, if the bottom-line profit was all they cared about why would they bother asking players about the Win-based system well after its trial run? But seeing how that's a factor you are keen on, how about this? I know more then a few players that flat-out don't bother with Verses because of how frustrating they find the point-system, players that actually put money into the game even and players that would flock back if went back to a win-based system. I wonder what the comparative loss of profit is between losing out from shields from players that just play with progression in mind versus losing out on players that no longer play at all.

Personally though this line of thought seems a bit off topic to me because, provided none of you are secretly d3 accountants, it's less about what the players think of the two systems and more pure speculation into the minds of the devs and the inner workings of the game as a product.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

That's one of the factors, but there are also many other non-profit/non-business related factors I stated in other posts. I believe that making change(s) to PvP doesn't affect PvP only, but it could affect the game as a whole (speed of gaining resources and progressing etc) in a way. It might look like a 4* cover or 15cp to you as an individual player only, but it means more than that to the developers.

One agreement I believe that we could reach is that there's not a single perfect solution to put an end to the "problems" perceived in PvP, as seen in the previous feedbacks between win-based and point based system and the result seems like a split. The developers could fine-tune things as more features or changes are happening, but they can still never satisfy every single players. There's going to be a certain group of players who are going to be dissatisfied with the decision that the developers made, and managing human expectations is definitely more difficult than making changes to PvP.

Jwallyr · April 2018

So here's why win-based progression players don't talk about placement, other than recognizing it as a valid, hyper-competitive mode of rewards: it should be completely irrelevant to progression rewards structure.

The post above talking about shield tactics and rewarding "tactical" selections of play is perfectly reasonable when discussing placement, but is completely irrelevant to any reasonable discussion of progression. Progression looks to clearly be intended as the "more casual" reward structure for Versus, but in its current implementation requires very similar levels of play and/or use of shield tactics to achieve, thereby essentially turning into a "Placement Lite" reward structure, which is why people like myself have a problem with it.

Here's the thing- I'm not gonna buy shields. Nope, just not gonna do it. I've made my peace that I won't be competitive on placement, due to a number of factors like my still-growing roster and refusal to buy HP with real money in any significant volume. I could be incentivized to participate in Versus other than the bare minimum (get to 400 for HP rewards and whatever placement I get, great) if there were actual achievable rewards for doing so, but the existing progression system with its backsliding gives me ever-declining incentive to continue playing beyond that 400ish points as my "progress" gets blown away by people with better rosters anyway.

So that has been my experience, and from everything I've read on the forums and my personal friends/alliance, it seems to be pretty widespread. The prescription for the casual player seems to be to either 1) Play a short bit for some minimal rewards and then quit, because further effort is not rewarded anyway or 2) Just don't bother with Versus at all.

The negative results of non-participation of casual players for competitive players seems obvious- with less participation from casual players, there's a reduced pool of points, so climbing to higher point totals is harder for all players. Additionally, there are fewer populated brackets, and there's a higher percentage of "competitive" players filling them.

The conclusion seems obvious to me- even competitive players benefit from increased participation of casual players, and casual players expect a rational progression reward structure. What I don't get, then, is why there seems to be so much resistance to the idea of revising the Versus progression rewards scheme. Properly implemented, non-backsliding progression rewards should have no impact on placement mechanics, other than the aforementioned increase in casual participation (and therefore increased point pools and reduced concentrations of competitive players).

Bowgentle · April 2018

Jwallyr said:

So here's why win-based progression players don't talk about placement, other than recognizing it as a valid, hyper-competitive mode of rewards: it should be completely irrelevant to progression rewards structure.

The post above talking about shield tactics and rewarding "tactical" selections of play is perfectly reasonable when discussing placement, but is completely irrelevant to any reasonable discussion of progression. Progression looks to clearly be intended as the "more casual" reward structure for Versus, but in its current implementation requires very similar levels of play and/or use of shield tactics to achieve, thereby essentially turning into a "Placement Lite" reward structure, which is why people like myself have a problem with it.

Here's the thing- I'm not gonna buy shields. Nope, just not gonna do it. I've made my peace that I won't be competitive on placement, due to a number of factors like my still-growing roster and refusal to buy HP with real money in any significant volume. I could be incentivized to participate in Versus other than the bare minimum (get to 400 for HP rewards and whatever placement I get, great) if there were actual achievable rewards for doing so, but the existing progression system with its backsliding gives me ever-declining incentive to continue playing beyond that 400ish points as my "progress" gets blown away by people with better rosters anyway.

So that has been my experience, and from everything I've read on the forums and my personal friends/alliance, it seems to be pretty widespread. The prescription for the casual player seems to be to either 1) Play a short bit for some minimal rewards and then quit, because further effort is not rewarded anyway or 2) Just don't bother with Versus at all.

The negative results of non-participation of casual players for competitive players seems obvious- with less participation from casual players, there's a reduced pool of points, so climbing to higher point totals is harder for all players. Additionally, there are fewer populated brackets, and there's a higher percentage of "competitive" players filling them.

The conclusion seems obvious to me- even competitive players benefit from increased participation of casual players, and casual players expect a rational progression reward structure. What I don't get, then, is why there seems to be so much resistance to the idea of revising the Versus progression rewards scheme. Properly implemented, non-backsliding progression rewards should have no impact on placement mechanics, other than the aforementioned increase in casual participation (and therefore increased point pools and reduced concentrations of competitive players).

And there's the problem.
No. Competitive players don't benefit from casual players.
Because MMR hides these players from competitive rosters.
Remove every casual player from pvp right now. It won't make a any difference.
5* players didn't see anyone else during the win based season - it was still the same 5* MMR for us.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

Another way of looking at PvP is because it uses Elo rating for matchmaking, it also translates to a high risk high reward structure. The essence of high risk high reward applies to PvP as a whole, not to each of its individual part. So, it appears to be irrational if you were to dissect PvP into two parts: competitiveness is meant for placement and casual for progression.

Because PvP has an element of high risk high reward structure as one of its core essence, it also means the further you can advance, or the higher you go, the better rewards you are expected to get. It would then be irrational for casual players to get high rewards with low level of risk.

Jwallyr · April 2018

Bowgentle said:

Jwallyr said:

So here's why win-based progression players don't talk about placement, other than recognizing it as a valid, hyper-competitive mode of rewards: it should be completely irrelevant to progression rewards structure.

The post above talking about shield tactics and rewarding "tactical" selections of play is perfectly reasonable when discussing placement, but is completely irrelevant to any reasonable discussion of progression. Progression looks to clearly be intended as the "more casual" reward structure for Versus, but in its current implementation requires very similar levels of play and/or use of shield tactics to achieve, thereby essentially turning into a "Placement Lite" reward structure, which is why people like myself have a problem with it.

Here's the thing- I'm not gonna buy shields. Nope, just not gonna do it. I've made my peace that I won't be competitive on placement, due to a number of factors like my still-growing roster and refusal to buy HP with real money in any significant volume. I could be incentivized to participate in Versus other than the bare minimum (get to 400 for HP rewards and whatever placement I get, great) if there were actual achievable rewards for doing so, but the existing progression system with its backsliding gives me ever-declining incentive to continue playing beyond that 400ish points as my "progress" gets blown away by people with better rosters anyway.

So that has been my experience, and from everything I've read on the forums and my personal friends/alliance, it seems to be pretty widespread. The prescription for the casual player seems to be to either 1) Play a short bit for some minimal rewards and then quit, because further effort is not rewarded anyway or 2) Just don't bother with Versus at all.

The negative results of non-participation of casual players for competitive players seems obvious- with less participation from casual players, there's a reduced pool of points, so climbing to higher point totals is harder for all players. Additionally, there are fewer populated brackets, and there's a higher percentage of "competitive" players filling them.

The conclusion seems obvious to me- even competitive players benefit from increased participation of casual players, and casual players expect a rational progression reward structure. What I don't get, then, is why there seems to be so much resistance to the idea of revising the Versus progression rewards scheme. Properly implemented, non-backsliding progression rewards should have no impact on placement mechanics, other than the aforementioned increase in casual participation (and therefore increased point pools and reduced concentrations of competitive players).

And there's the problem.
No. Competitive players don't benefit from casual players.
Because MMR hides these players from competitive rosters.
Remove every casual player from pvp right now. It won't make a any difference.
5* players didn't see anyone else during the win based season - it was still the same 5* MMR for us.

MMR is its own problem, but my understanding remains that if there are more engaged players in the pool, there will be more points available to be earned. Maybe the more casual players are not presented as matches for the higher MMR players, but the increase of the pool as a whole means that the players *just below* the 5* players will be worth more points, because they will to some degree have gotten more points from the players below them, etc. etc. etc.

The interaction is deeper than just "can I attack the casual player for easy points".

Jwallyr · April 2018

HoundofShadow said:

Another way of looking at PvP is because it uses Elo rating for matchmaking, it also translates to a high risk high reward structure. The essence of high risk high reward applies to PvP as a whole, not to each of its individual part. So, it appears to be irrational if you were to dissect PvP into two parts: competitiveness is meant for placement and casual for progression.

Because PvP has an element of high risk high reward structure as one of its core essence, it also means the further you can advance, or the higher you go, the better rewards you are expected to get. It would then be irrational for casual players to get high rewards with low level of risk.

And reasonably enough, the placement rewards are typically vastly better than the progression rewards, because those are the rewards that involve the higher risk.

Your logic doesn't make any sense outside the simplistic supposition that "versus" is "high risk/high reward". I suppose the "low risk/low reward" part of the game then would be Story mode, right? With its similarly high reward structures for placement, cutthroat tactics to get advantages (bracket flips, tapping, etc) in achieving them?

You seem to be of the opinion that "versus" = "super competitive", and that there should be no significant rewards from progression. Fine, if progression in Versus mode is not supposed to be a reasonable path for semi-casual rewards, wouldn't it make more sense to eliminate them entirely, focus what rewards are appropriate in the placement rewards (high risk, high reward!) and quit taunting casuals like myself with the idea that we are welcome to participate for any purpose other than being cannon fodder for our betters?

Like, seriously, what's the point of "progression" rewards that are gated behind the exact same competitive tactics/roster dynamics that are required for placement? Ultimately I'd rather there be no progression rewards at all if they're going to be nonsensical, because then at least I'd know not to bother.

HoundofShadow · April 2018

I somewhat agree with what aesthetocyst mentioned. SCL 8 is where I hit 900 points.

I'm not sure why you have so much trouble going beyond 400ish point. I'm going to presuppose a few things:

1) you are a casual player (this could be a fact since you speak for casual players and use the word "casual" frequently to support your idea).

2) chances are you don't use shield and you expect nobody to hit you for points in a competitive environment.

3) Probable inappropriate choice of characters used in each PvP.

4) mismatch of expectation: you expect to get full progression rewards even though you are a casual player.

In a competition, there are top prizes and consolation prizes. I would say top prizes are like placement rewards and consolation prizes are like progression rewards. There are also different tiers of consolation prizes. Then, you have expectation and you have goals. How far you can advance in a competition and the type of consolation prizes you can get depends on how well you can compete with other players. Looking at the current progression rewards in PvP:

1. 25: Standard Token
2. 50: Iso-8
3. 100: stockpile
4. 200: elite token
5. 300: heroic token
6. 400: 50 HP
7. 500: iso-8
8. 575: 10 cp
9. 650: PvP token
10. 725: 50 HP
11. 800: 3* covers
12. 825: iso
13. 850: PvP token
14. 900: 3*/4* covers
15. 1200: 15 cp

We have a few thousand iso-8, a few tokens,100 HP, 25CP and a few other small prizes up for grab. 25CP is equivalent to a Latest Legend Token. 10CP is half a Classic Token. If you are a casual player and expect to swipe all these rewards without much resistance, I believe there's a mismatch of expectation.

What D3 could do is to allow players to define themselves as "Casual Players" or "Competitive Players" before they select SCL in PvP. Under this system, the progression rewards for Casual Players would be capped at the 8th reward. They will get back their previous win+point based system. Their placement rewards would be fixed for all 500 players, which would be a PvP token, some iso and 1 or 2 Elite Tokens for the higher SCL. Competitive players would continue with the current system, with the original progression and placement rewards.

If you define yourself as a casual player, then it would be unreasonable to expect the same amount of progression rewards as Competitive Players simply because Competitive Players have to deal with point regression, and casual players, being casual, naturally don't have to deal with point regression. In this system, players consciously make a choice, and the differences have been spelt out clearly, so players have no reason to complain about unfairness. Casual players can get their guaranteed rewards and enjoy playing against other players as well. This applies to season progression and placement rewards as well. There's a cap and there's a fixed reward for all casual players.

Jwallyr · April 2018

Lol. What a load of condescension.

1) I'm not an idiot, I fully expect to get hit by other players in PvP. If I though I could avoid getting hit in PvP why would I expect to have trouble getting the full progression rewards? After all, I'm never losing any points! (lol)

In reality the entire reason this conversation is happening is the somewhat widespread frustration at the verbiage behind "progression" rewards plus the backwards "progression" of getting hit in PvP. Like, that's the entire point.

3) Also, naturally I'm fielding "inappropriate" (aka bad teams) in pvp, because I'm not a hyper-competitive player. That means I can't do basic reasoning and try to find teams that work well with the boosted list and required character.

Is there a point to this assumption other than to just assume I'm a bad player for disagreeing with a particular part of the reward structure?

4) "you expect to get full progression rewards even though you are a casual player."

Um, yeah, I expect to be able to get full progression rewards if I put in the effort despite being a casual player. That's exactly what I expect. I don't expect it to be quick, or necessarily easy, but if I play enough games I expect to be able to achieve the full progression rewards.

This expectation is 100% supported by Story reward structure, where a player can complete 5 clears of each node (assuming essential characters are present), disregard placement entirely, and achieve the full progression reward scheme. No particular timing or strategy required, just putting in the time.

"If you are a casual player and expect to swipe all these rewards without much resistance, I believe there's a mismatch of expectation."

Is 40 wins "without much resistance"? Nobody is asking to be able to achieve these rewards in a trivial amount of time, but if the top-end players are complaining about 40 wins being "too much" for these exact same rewards while maintaining their high placement, how exactly can I be faulted for expecting SOME sane scheme to allow me to grind out what progression rewards are offered?

Obviously there are different tiers of progression rewards, and these could reasonably scale with the amount of effort (time) involved in a no-lost-ground progression system. In reality, they break down entirely when the actual rewards are compared with the achievable point totals for a given tier of play.

Your proposal for a "casual" and "competitive" bracket of PvP would address the optics of the difference but it looks to me like it would ultimately gate the "casual" players even further away from the rewards of the "competitive" players. IOW, casuals get even fewer actual rewards while the existing competitive players get the full progression system with comparative ease (as compared to needing 40 wins) while still getting non-nerfed placement rewards.

On Win Based Rewards vs Point Based Rewards in Versus.

Comments

Categories