Idea for avoiding burnout.

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

sup123 wrote:

But then the rest of the playerbase isn't lumped together in the pissing contest while some people can still be ultra-competitive if they want, I think that's the point.

Pretty much

I wouldn't make them mutually exclusive though for precisely the reason Spoit made - people who need covers have the opportunity to win them and compete for season points at the same time. I'm not going to suggest doing both would be easy but locking you out of either seems harsh.

Both events would give season points but the one without covers would give more. Like converting rewards into points. Top people going for the occasional cover could still catch up while the min/maxers would leave the event with covers alone. But you'd need to choose which one when you enter the event.

Granted it wouldn't do much for burnout at the top, but then you use one of the other suggestions like only considering your highest 10 or whatever event scores for the season. This way competitive people could keep trying to improve their score or have some leeway to take a break or go for covers.

HairyDave

sup123 wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

sup123 wrote:

But then the rest of the playerbase isn't lumped together in the pissing contest while some people can still be ultra-competitive if they want, I think that's the point.

Pretty much

I wouldn't make them mutually exclusive though for precisely the reason Spoit made - people who need covers have the opportunity to win them and compete for season points at the same time. I'm not going to suggest doing both would be easy but locking you out of either seems harsh.

Both events would give season points but the one without covers would give more. Like converting rewards into points. Top people going for the occasional cover could still catch up while the min/maxers would leave the event with covers alone. But you'd need to choose which one when you enter the event.

That works.

reckless442

HairyDave wrote:

sup123 wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

sup123 wrote:

But then the rest of the playerbase isn't lumped together in the pissing contest while some people can still be ultra-competitive if they want, I think that's the point.

Pretty much

I wouldn't make them mutually exclusive though for precisely the reason Spoit made - people who need covers have the opportunity to win them and compete for season points at the same time. I'm not going to suggest doing both would be easy but locking you out of either seems harsh.

Both events would give season points but the one without covers would give more. Like converting rewards into points. Top people going for the occasional cover could still catch up while the min/maxers would leave the event with covers alone. But you'd need to choose which one when you enter the event.

That works.

If I'm following your suggestion, you would have a system that has double the PVP. How will that help avoid burnout? You would have a system where members of alliances would have to play the one with season points for their alliance, and then would have to play the other one if they wanted the cover rewards. Plenty of members of alliances -- even competitive ones -- do still need covers, particularly when MPQ adds new characters. That just doesn't seem like a viable solution.

I also am dubious about the notion of only counting x% of the total results being a solution. It still presents the problem of players feeling compelled to score high to help their alliances. Even if only a percentage of the results count in the end toward the season, players still may feel that they need to compete so that the alliance can get the best possible event rewards. It would be far better to simply have a limited number of events each month that count toward the season score and a some events that don't. That would especially make sense if they plan on doing the same PVP events multiple times in a season, ala God of Lies and Top Gun.

Unknown

All I have been seeing is SHIELD guys posting about ideas to try to neutralize the numerical advantage of 5DV and probably X-Men (I think they got 40 guys?) You guys will likely win the first season in some kind of scorched earth warfare but barring an internal collapse by 5DV or X-Men (which is actually quite likely) you'll almost certainly fall out of top 2 next season simply because it's easier to find 20 guys crazy enough to keep doing the insanity that's going on out of 40/100 guys than out of 20. The SHIELD guys likely outspend, at least in terms of HP expenditure, than the 2 alliances behind them and apparently that's totally okay with you guys but it's not okay the 2 alliances behind you leverage their superior numbers to grind you down.

The funny thing is you guys are still #1 and even though I doubt you guys can keep up another month of insanity of season 2, preemptively trying to put down the competition when you're still #1 just looks sad. Sorry, you guys are not thinking about the people here. You're just thinking about how to maintain #1 without going through another month of scorched earth gameplay that is currently happening right now. If it's not worth the insanity to stay ahead of them, you can always drop to the #3 alliance. The season reward goes to 1-5, and the difference for top 2 and #3 reward is hardly something significant compared to the HP expenditure observed in recent events. And you say you want to compete? Why shouldn't an alliance that have superior organization trump quality/spending? As far as I can tell there's a lot of turnover going on in 5DV/X-Men, whereas SHIELD's roster seems unchanged since its inception. Do you just assume all those turnover/recruiting takes no effort on your rival alliance's part? Such events can easily rip an entire alliance apart, which is why I said it's entirely possible one of your competition self-destructs too (most likely 5DV, just because they're bigger and bigger = more likely drama). But if they did not self destruct, who is to say superior organization/politics should not trump whatever you got?

Spoit

Wow.....Are you feeling ok phantron? THat's almost a ***** style rant

franckynight

franckynight wrote:

What bothers me is the extreme grind the season pushes for all of us.. I have no business in playing the god of lies event.. My loki and im40 are covered maxed.. I dont really need iw and wolvie as i dont invest in them atm.. But im gonna try to claim my bracket just for season purpose and prevent some 2-3* to make progress.. Thats not what is supposed to be..

You pretty sum up what i said in season thread.. I, like many of us dont think its on demiurge to adjust things.. Its just the competitive nature of the game.. I take a look at the alliance forum and i see how in a frenzy people are to compete with top alliances.. Requirements are up everywhere.. Though the rewards structure dont make difference between 3-50 people take pride in boasting their numbers and ranking.. Its like that and i dont see anything demiurge can do about it.. For us veteran players, its just a question to know if we can sustain that kind of grind and pressure to remain at the top of the chain food or take a step down and let young guns overtake us..

Clintman

Phantron wrote:

All I have been seeing is SHIELD guys posting about ideas to try to neutralize the numerical advantage of 5DV and probably X-Men (I think they got 40 guys?) You guys will likely win the first season in some kind of scorched earth warfare but barring an internal collapse by 5DV or X-Men (which is actually quite likely) you'll almost certainly fall out of top 2 next season simply because it's easier to find 20 guys crazy enough to keep doing the insanity that's going on out of 40/100 guys than out of 20. The SHIELD guys likely outspend, at least in terms of HP expenditure, than the 2 alliances behind them and apparently that's totally okay with you guys but it's not okay the 2 alliances behind you leverage their superior numbers to grind you down.

The funny thing is you guys are still #1 and even though I doubt you guys can keep up another month of insanity of season 2, preemptively trying to put down the competition when you're still #1 just looks sad. Sorry, you guys are not thinking about the people here. You're just thinking about how to maintain #1 without going through another month of scorched earth gameplay that is currently happening right now. If it's not worth the insanity to stay ahead of them, you can always drop to the #3 alliance. The season reward goes to 1-5, and the difference for top 2 and #3 reward is hardly something significant compared to the HP expenditure observed in recent events. And you say you want to compete? Why shouldn't an alliance that have superior organization trump quality/spending? As far as I can tell there's a lot of turnover going on in 5DV/X-Men, whereas SHIELD's roster seems unchanged since its inception. Do you just assume all those turnover/recruiting takes no effort on your rival alliance's part? Such events can easily rip an entire alliance apart, which is why I said it's entirely possible one of your competition self-destructs too (most likely 5DV, just because they're bigger and bigger = more likely drama). But if they did not self destruct, who is to say superior organization/politics should not trump whatever you got?

Wow, that was a cynical post

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Wow.....Are you feeling ok phantron? THat's almost a ***** style rant

I'm sure he's feeling fine, that's pretty much typical.

Spoit

But yeah, fairly sure all the top players already had a decent warchest of HP to begin with, and With the 250 prize, they could easily fund multiple shield hops while still being HP neutral

Unknown

I don't feel like this is an issue just for the top alliances. I'm in an alliance that is usually top 50 but the absence of one or two members from an event can suddenly make top 100 a challenge; and I know I hate letting down my alliance as I'm sure all of you do. I know my alliance chat has had discussions of burn out similar to what Clint has described, and we aren't even concerned with placement beyond the 3rd cover that is the only reason many of us joined alliances for in the first place. In an alliance like mine there is always someone who needs the alliance only reward cover even if many don't; and I don't think I'm alone in the desire for participating in the alliance experience without the feeling I need to grind this game daily until I snap, regardless of what my alliances goal is.

reckless442

Clintman wrote:

Phantron wrote:

All I have been seeing is SHIELD guys posting about ideas to try to neutralize the numerical advantage of 5DV and probably X-Men (I think they got 40 guys?) You guys will likely win the first season in some kind of scorched earth warfare but barring an internal collapse by 5DV or X-Men (which is actually quite likely) you'll almost certainly fall out of top 2 next season simply because it's easier to find 20 guys crazy enough to keep doing the insanity that's going on out of 40/100 guys than out of 20. The SHIELD guys likely outspend, at least in terms of HP expenditure, than the 2 alliances behind them and apparently that's totally okay with you guys but it's not okay the 2 alliances behind you leverage their superior numbers to grind you down.

The funny thing is you guys are still #1 and even though I doubt you guys can keep up another month of insanity of season 2, preemptively trying to put down the competition when you're still #1 just looks sad. Sorry, you guys are not thinking about the people here. You're just thinking about how to maintain #1 without going through another month of scorched earth gameplay that is currently happening right now. If it's not worth the insanity to stay ahead of them, you can always drop to the #3 alliance. The season reward goes to 1-5, and the difference for top 2 and #3 reward is hardly something significant compared to the HP expenditure observed in recent events. And you say you want to compete? Why shouldn't an alliance that have superior organization trump quality/spending? As far as I can tell there's a lot of turnover going on in 5DV/X-Men, whereas SHIELD's roster seems unchanged since its inception. Do you just assume all those turnover/recruiting takes no effort on your rival alliance's part? Such events can easily rip an entire alliance apart, which is why I said it's entirely possible one of your competition self-destructs too (most likely 5DV, just because they're bigger and bigger = more likely drama). But if they did not self destruct, who is to say superior organization/politics should not trump whatever you got?

Wow, that was a cynical post

It really is. But beyond the silly attacks on S.H.I.E.L.D, what I find amazing is that Phantron is basically saying that having a stable alliance is a weakness. He effectively admits that the current system requires too much grinding for a single alliance of 20 people to maintain that pace. So to remain competitive, we all should be swapping in new players. In essence, even though the developers designed the game for 20-person alliances, in his world, only super-alliances of 60-100 people (or more) should be competitive.

This is not a S.H.I.E.L.D-only issue. Plenty of other people have raised concerns about burnout and we have seen very strong players leave competitive alliances because they cannot continuously grind the game day-after-day. We have seen other players quitting the game because the current structure prevents them from progressing to the 3* ranks. Rather than lose those people for good, Clint suggested a way of keeping the alliance system and seasons without the negative drawbacks we're seeing.

As for S.H.I.E.L.D, we have nothing to prove to you. Even if we do cut back next season, that means nothing. So 5DVs or X-Men or some other super-alliance takes our place at the top of the leaderboard. When your membership changes daily, all it shows is that you can cherry-pick the highest scores from among 60-100 people and replace players when they don't score enough or get disgruntled with the leadership. You may call that superior organization; to me, it seems like you're admitting that you can't win with your best 20 people and need to find loopholes to get around the 20-person limit.

Tharos

As a "want to have a maxed 3*" player in a top 250 alliance, I don't care this "S.H.I.E.L.D vs the rest of the world". But I totally agree with the op.

I totally understand they take the covers I need, because the rewards are all packed together: they need the season points and don't care about the 3* covers. I need the 3* covers and do not care so much about the points (my alliance will end season with 4 heroic covers, 5 if we grind a lot, so it does not mean a lot for me these points).
If only the dev could think of a solution to split the rewards, it will be nice for everyone. Maybe a "sell this 3* cover to the next guy in leatherboard that want to pay a fixed price for this cover" option. Top ranked people that do not want to help lower people could still sell the cover as before, but the other may sell it to people in need.

There used to be a solution: the randomness of the brackets, were we could reach top 10, or at least top 50. Now, I am continuously in the same brackets as SHIELD and other top alliances, with no way to be in top 50. We need a solution, or it will be the death of mid-range players.

reckless442

Tharos wrote:

If only the dev could think of a solution to split the rewards, it will be nice for everyone. Maybe a "sell this 3* cover to the next guy in leatherboard that want to pay a fixed price for this cover" option. Top ranked people that do not want to help lower people could still sell the cover as before, but the other may sell it to people in need.

That's an interesting idea. I had wondered if there could be a "pass" option when it came to taking the 4* award so that the number two player could get that cover if it was already maxed-out by the winner of a bracket. The flaw in the idea is that there would have to be some way to ensure that the player in second actually took the cover and didn't sell it for ISO.

Actually selling covers is a slippery slope, because it could backfire and encourage people to go for rewards they don't need. But maybe there could be a mechanism where the winner of the bracket could keep the 4* cover, sell it to the game for 1000 ISO, or sell it to a player below him for 2000 ISO. The latter would be a good deal for the player in first, since it nets him more ISO than just taking the cover and selling it, and good for the players below him since they could get the cover for ISO, not HP. But it probably wouldn't be enough additional ISO to cause players to push for the win when they otherwise wouldn't. (You can earn 1000 ISO in 10 minutes of playing a LR.) Maybe the same system could be implemented for 3* covers by making them available to lower-finishing players for 750-1000 ISO.

Unknown

reckless442 wrote:

Clintman wrote:

Phantron wrote:

All I have been seeing is SHIELD guys posting about ideas to try to neutralize the numerical advantage of 5DV and probably X-Men (I think they got 40 guys?) You guys will likely win the first season in some kind of scorched earth warfare but barring an internal collapse by 5DV or X-Men (which is actually quite likely) you'll almost certainly fall out of top 2 next season simply because it's easier to find 20 guys crazy enough to keep doing the insanity that's going on out of 40/100 guys than out of 20. The SHIELD guys likely outspend, at least in terms of HP expenditure, than the 2 alliances behind them and apparently that's totally okay with you guys but it's not okay the 2 alliances behind you leverage their superior numbers to grind you down.

The funny thing is you guys are still #1 and even though I doubt you guys can keep up another month of insanity of season 2, preemptively trying to put down the competition when you're still #1 just looks sad. Sorry, you guys are not thinking about the people here. You're just thinking about how to maintain #1 without going through another month of scorched earth gameplay that is currently happening right now. If it's not worth the insanity to stay ahead of them, you can always drop to the #3 alliance. The season reward goes to 1-5, and the difference for top 2 and #3 reward is hardly something significant compared to the HP expenditure observed in recent events. And you say you want to compete? Why shouldn't an alliance that have superior organization trump quality/spending? As far as I can tell there's a lot of turnover going on in 5DV/X-Men, whereas SHIELD's roster seems unchanged since its inception. Do you just assume all those turnover/recruiting takes no effort on your rival alliance's part? Such events can easily rip an entire alliance apart, which is why I said it's entirely possible one of your competition self-destructs too (most likely 5DV, just because they're bigger and bigger = more likely drama). But if they did not self destruct, who is to say superior organization/politics should not trump whatever you got?

Wow, that was a cynical post

It really is. But beyond the silly attacks on S.H.I.E.L.D, what I find amazing is that Phantron is basically saying that having a stable alliance is a weakness. He effectively admits that the current system requires too much grinding for a single alliance of 20 people to maintain that pace. So to remain competitive, we all should be swapping in new players. In essence, even though the developers designed the game for 20-person alliances, in his world, only super-alliances of 60-100 people (or more) should be competitive.

This is not a S.H.I.E.L.D-only issue. Plenty of other people have raised concerns about burnout and we have seen very strong players leave competitive alliances because they cannot continuously grind the game day-after-day. We have seen other players quitting the game because the current structure prevents them from progressing to the 3* ranks. Rather than lose those people for good, Clint suggested a way of keeping the alliance system and seasons without the negative drawbacks we're seeing.

As for S.H.I.E.L.D, we have nothing to prove to you. Even if we do cut back next season, that means nothing. So 5DVs or X-Men or some other super-alliance takes our place at the top of the leaderboard. When your membership changes daily, all it shows is that you can cherry-pick the highest scores from among 60-100 people and replace players when they don't score enough or get disgruntled with the leadership. You may call that superior organization; to me, it seems like you're admitting that you can't win with your best 20 people and need to find loopholes to get around the 20-person limit.

.

The last paragraph kinda stoops to the level of his post and simultaneously vindicates it...so...I don't know if that last paragraph was a good idea. Up until then I agree though. Multiple alliances being able to swap is fine, but there should be a limiting time during an event or season when swapping cannot occur anymore. Its neither fair to the other players in the "sub" alliances nor is it really the direction I personally would hope the game went...as it pushes competition over companionship.....and I feel you lose the point of an alliance if its all about just swapping ppl out like cattle.

@tharos (totally thought u were thanos for a second) there isn't a simple answer without eliminating alliances in some way. That said, I didn't think it was originally the idea to do alliance rewards EVERY event...then something changed. Had it stayed that way then you wouldn't have the same problems to some extent as every other or every 3rd event would see all the higher up players (and its certainly not just those 3 orders. Of the top 100 scores in a given event, maybe 30-50 come from those alliances) hitting an easy threshold and then stopping. Only other "obvious" solutions are to increase reward tiers or decrease bracket sizes.

Also, no to any trading. It allows for rwt and adds a new lvl of problem to the game that until now has been avoided. In Some games trading is necessary, I don't believe this is one that will benefit as much as it will be hurt by it. Reckless's idea of a "pass" sounds much less of a problem (though it would need a few "are you suuuurrree?" Before happening).

Tharos

reckless442 wrote:

That's an interesting idea. I had wondered if there could be a "pass" option when it came to taking the 4* award so that the number two player could get that cover if it was already maxed-out by the winner of a bracket. The flaw in the idea is that there would have to be some way to ensure that the player in second actually took the cover and didn't sell it for ISO.

In the same way, an option "I want to buy a 3* cover". It will take your iso, and buy the cover at the end of the event (or found you back if nobody sells, or if your ranking is not high enough, or if you won the cover by achievine a high result). You will still need to reach a high rank to increase your chances of being well-placed in the "buy queue".

I know this system is like a dream, but it these kind of solutions that may make me stay in this game: this game becomes harder and harder to play, so they need to make the rewards worth the struggle.

Bowgentle

tl;dr: not only S.H.I.E.L.D is getting burnt out.


To give the perspective of someone in a borderline Top 100 alliance - this season thing is soul crushing.

Before seasons I'd go to 950 or something, which was good enough to win half of the brackets, and maybe even go unshielded the whole tourney if I didn't even need the covers. I've pushed to 1100 three times, for a Psylocke, a LazyCap and a Torch cover because they were shiny.

Now I'm putting 1100+ on the board in _every single darned tourney_ just because it would suck to lose out on Nick Fury. Even with those points my 20 people alliance is in the 90s for now, with no guarantee at all to get Fury after all that work. What's worse, those 1100+? They might not even get me top 10 anymore and require a buttload of HP because I usually need to shield for at least the final 8 hours, because Europe.
So, I have two choices: either stop playing so hard and accept that I will miss out on Nick Fury because my alliance won't make top 100 without my contribution.
Or keep up the grind through all 141s each tourney and re-evaluate my commitment to _a match 3 game_ after the season ends.

This has turned into a second job during the last month or so, without having any vacation time.
Making only X out of Y season events count would go a long way towards at least taking some of the (self-induced, of course) pressure off.

I'd also very much enjoy a month off from season play between seasons 1 and 2, but what I _do_ expect is to be launched straight into season 2 without any breaks, with the second Nick Fury colour being the prize for alliances.

Unknown

I tend to joke about a lot but what nonsense. On record I have never complained about anyone using their resources. I have used my hp stockpile because you know what I earned it. On covers not my fault they introduced alliances. People used to pound me when they had covers I didn't. You take the knocks and develop. There is enough chance to finish top 10 do you need first spot. A lot of people on the forums spend more time on the forum then the game and if you reversed it you may get rewards you desire because I mean xforce is the be all and end all. Seriously guys play the game and work to get what you want. No makes things easy for you in life.

Back to my normal don't take life seriously self

Edit: it's no one lol to much mpq chat

Bowgentle

beemand2g wrote:

I tend to joke about a lot but what nonsense. On record I have never complained about anyone using their resources. I have used my hp stockpile because you know what I earned it. On covers not my fault they introduced alliances. People used to pound me when they had covers I didn't. You take the knocks and develop. There is enough chance to finish top 10 do you need first spot. A lot of people on the forums spend more time on the forum then the game and if you reversed it you may get rewards you desire because I mean xforce is the be all and end all. Seriously guys play the game and work to get what you want. No makes things easy for you in life.

Back to my normal don't take life seriously self

You may have replied in the wrong thread, possibly?
Telling people to get to work in a thread complaining about burnout seems... off.

Unknown

Well it was for some of the points I read above. Think people have burn out from posting lol I know I have it from reading

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

All I have been seeing is SHIELD guys posting about ideas to try to neutralize the numerical advantage of 5DV and probably X-Men (I think they got 40 guys?) You guys will likely win the first season in some kind of scorched earth warfare but barring an internal collapse by 5DV or X-Men (which is actually quite likely) you'll almost certainly fall out of top 2 next season simply because it's easier to find 20 guys crazy enough to keep doing the insanity that's going on out of 40/100 guys than out of 20. The SHIELD guys likely outspend, at least in terms of HP expenditure, than the 2 alliances behind them and apparently that's totally okay with you guys but it's not okay the 2 alliances behind you leverage their superior numbers to grind you down.

The funny thing is you guys are still #1 and even though I doubt you guys can keep up another month of insanity of season 2, preemptively trying to put down the competition when you're still #1 just looks sad. Sorry, you guys are not thinking about the people here. You're just thinking about how to maintain #1 without going through another month of scorched earth gameplay that is currently happening right now. If it's not worth the insanity to stay ahead of them, you can always drop to the #3 alliance. The season reward goes to 1-5, and the difference for top 2 and #3 reward is hardly something significant compared to the HP expenditure observed in recent events. And you say you want to compete? Why shouldn't an alliance that have superior organization trump quality/spending? As far as I can tell there's a lot of turnover going on in 5DV/X-Men, whereas SHIELD's roster seems unchanged since its inception. Do you just assume all those turnover/recruiting takes no effort on your rival alliance's part? Such events can easily rip an entire alliance apart, which is why I said it's entirely possible one of your competition self-destructs too (most likely 5DV, just because they're bigger and bigger = more likely drama). But if they did not self destruct, who is to say superior organization/politics should not trump whatever you got?

An even funnier thing is you making assertions on topics you have absolutely no comprehension of. You appear to doubt our integrity, which is frankly quite laughable to me. You make predictions that are seemingly founded on opinion, rather than any real insight. And the bit about putting the competition down, come off it.

The original post from Clint was sincere, whether you like it or not.