On Bracketing and SHIELD Training

kensterr

Toxicadam wrote:

After suffering through this gameplay change for the past 2-3 weeks, I can safely say that sharding is the worst decision they've made thus far.

At least with nerfs, rubberbanding, mmr, Hood-style point systems, enemy level scaling etc etc you could 'play around' those decisions and lessen the frustrations. This one you have no choice by to sit in the tinykitty and like it.

You mean to say Demiurge **** everyone with the sharding system.

Bowgentle

Toxicadam wrote:

After suffering through this gameplay change for the past 2-3 weeks, I can safely say that sharding is the worst decision they've made thus far.

At least with nerfs, rubberbanding, mmr, Hood-style point systems, enemy level scaling etc etc you could 'play around' those decisions and lessen the frustrations. This one you have no choice but to sit in the tinykitty and like it.

Weren't you defending some changes in PVP and PVE and mocking people who felt burnt out up until a week go?
So MMR finally caught up to you, eh?

Unknown

MMR and sharding are two separate things. So, I have no idea what you are going on about.

Also, if you are going to accuse someone of doing something (ie. "defending changes in PvP and PvE") at least have some evidence to back it up.

Bowgentle

Toxicadam wrote:

MMR and sharding are two separate things. So, I have no idea what you are going on about.

Also, if you are going to accuse someone of doing something (ie. "defending changes in PvP and PvE") at least have some evidence to back it up.

Re-reading your post history, I remembered it wrong.

Can we leave it at that? This wasn't meant to start a flame war, which I thought my smilies indicated.

Unknown

Bowgentle wrote:

Toxicadam wrote:

MMR and sharding are two separate things. So, I have no idea what you are going on about.

Also, if you are going to accuse someone of doing something (ie. "defending changes in PvP and PvE") at least have some evidence to back it up.

Re-reading your post history, I remembered it wrong.

Can we leave it at that? This wasn't meant to start a flame war, which I thought my smilies indicated.

Ya, the smiley face is akin to saying "with all due respect..." and as we learned from Ricky Bobby, it means you get to say pretty much whatever the hell you want after that phrase

Unknown

I just wanted to follow up one last time on this post. I have quit now, and it is a direct result of this bracketing change. It has completely changed the reward structure of the game and has pretty much put any advancement out of my reach. Slow advancement is fine, no advancement is not. It's a shame, I was still having fun until this change.

I stuck around for a while hoping the devs would change things back, or at least acknowledge that this is more than a small nudge. The change is huge. Perhaps it was by design and they sent IceIX out here to lie to us. Perhaps it was accidental and they just decided that they like it better this way after the fact. Either way, the game is no longer conducive to my play style.

Unknown

Hausdorff wrote:

I stuck around for a while hoping the devs would change things back, or at least acknowledge that this is more than a small nudge. The change is huge. Perhaps it was by design and they sent IceIX out here to lie to us. Perhaps it was accidental and they just decided that they like it better this way after the fact. Either way, the game is no longer conducive to my play style.

Indeed it looks like the shield formula, it was wild experimenting, when they removed the shielded people from matchmaking -- inserting the side effect of everyone on top became public enemy #1 without shield -- it got fixed like that. Possibly this was some similar "try" level thing, but as the effect is clearly one that makes us cry and them with evil smile, it will stay that way.

Leaving makes perfect sense -- let those who enjoy this kind of treatment grind themselves to pleasure.

elvy75

Well done of the change, 2 people left our alliance, and 3rd is on his way of doing it as well... i am really glad that 'the system is doing exactly what is supposed to do'. How many people will you make leave the game with your 'funbalancing'?

Vohnkar

I suppose forum members are not a big % of their player base (or they do litle money from us maybe), otherwise they would at least explain some of the recent changes. Its not logical to have this many people posting ideas to "fix" the problems and everything being ignored while people is leaving.

Unknown

I have 3 2*'s at level 85 and the rest with max covers (or pretty close) but no real reason to spend iso on leveling them. The last three or four events in season 1 it was impossible for me to get into the top50 so no way for me to progress. My top 10's were all way over 1k and largely full 141 teams. I finished season 1 with just under 9k which was enough for top 500. All of my season 1 2star tokens were terrible. 30days for basically nothing....

Managed to get 817 points in the first pvp event of season 2 and amazingly that was good for top 25. Once I got into the 750-800 range I was getting attacked twice for every attack I could do so just shielded and hoped for the best.

Now looking at the top 10 in the heavy metal event it seems I am bracketed with a lot of people with 141's again so I don't think my chances are good. I'm just stuck with max 2*'s with very little way of progressing without spending an insane amount of money. I guess that's the point?

I get the occasional 3star from tokens (this seems to be getting rarer) and every now and again I can make top50 in the pvp but this also seems to be getting rarer.

The only 3star covers I seem to be able to reliably are the ones from PvE but getting 1 or 2 covers is pretty useless.

These recent changes have made my progression essentially stand still and it really makes me feel like quiting, which is a shame....

Vohnkar

I'm in a similar situation, I've been unable to place top50 confortably, las event took me 3 shields to place top50. on heavy metal I already climbed to 600+ 3 times and got owned and downed to 400-500. Tonight I'll do my last try to get top50. On PvE I've given up, I'm tired of grinding for 100 points and getting scaling go insane if I try to stay top. I'm at rank 600 with a couple of clears, seeing the minions go to 90 or so even without touching them is disheartening, personal scaling sux, but having comunity scaling does impossible to try anything.

I tried at the start of the event to get close to top 1, but not having daken placed me far away from top 50. Now that I have daken I can't do much, top 10 are past 30k while I am at 15k or so. Tried to climb a litle and as soon as I started to repeat clears my minions started to get near lvl 100, so I gave up the event. I'll do as much ISO as I can

Unknown

Lurking for some time, registered and logged in specifically to post this.
The recent changes have significantly damped my enthusiasm for the game.
1 - Before these changes I would almost always be ranked top 50 in pvp, and I often managed to get top10 when I placed the effort. 500+ points would almost surely grant top 50 positions. Yesterday, I really tried hard and managed to come just under 800 pts... and 60th position. This was NOT an one-off situation, but all pvps during the past weeks have reached astronomical scores for top 10. Now, this is just plainly NOT FUN. Too much work for achieving any kind of meaningful reward. I don't mind working hard, but only if I am paid to do it, not the other way around...
2- PVE is now an atrocious borefest. Rinse and rewind the same lame combats for 100 pts or less... and actually no hope (or little hope) of even getting the good progression rewards, because even if you suffer through the snorefest combats again and again, you're still dependant on other players to unlock the progression bars. Which won't generally doesn't happen until the deadline, because just about everyone is so bored with it I guess. Rewards have become quite stingy: whatever happened to good mission rewards like 5k ISOS and rare covers that motivate players to push through? Now all we get is lame Heroic Covers that more often than not are immediately sold for isos...
Dont't even get me started on lame Season rewards: Please give me one rare cover and keep your 10 packs please (I've seen to many of these 10-packs being open to only uncommons to believe they are actually worth anything: whatever happened to "1 rare garanteed"?).
It's not all bad: I think that offering covers as rewards to pvp is great for speeding up new players, and about equal for everyone else. But there is just too much bad stuff going on right now to make playing this game a chore rather than fun. In my opinion, of course, but also in the opinion of other players near me.
All in all, I haven't lost hope things will turn arond and improve. But if this continues, I'll probably quit for good...
ps: FWIW,i've put real money in this game. Won't do so again if things remain like this....

Unknown

I have tried to stick by the developers through this, but it seems that most in my Alliance have quit this past week, or are in the process of leaving.

I'm not being funny, I know that players from the forum leaving isn't a big issue in the scheme of things, but whole Alliances going? Surely that starts to have an impact on things? I mean, most of these guys were spending money regularly on the game, and all are leaving/have left?

Unknown

yep, i've had 3 people in my alliance quit too. i'm pretty hardcore but lately my desire to play has also been diminishing.

d3, get your **** **** together. go back to the old grouping system you idiots. as many have mentioned, myself included, that newbies should NOT be able to get the same rewards a day 150 player can. we all put a lot of time and effort to get to where we are and they should too.

Unknown

I am feeling the same issue as the others here - I have been having to actively recruit for my alliance, as people are quitting left and right. Seems like as soon as I get us up to 20, 2 more people quit. I honestly dont think we have had the full 20/20 for 3 days straight in the last 2 weeks. And like many of the others effected, I went from being able to get a solid top 50 spot to having to struggle for top 100 with an INCREASE in my activity. I am facing constant teams above my roster strength, losing 1 of every 3 battles or so I start since I cant find an appropriate battle. Plus the constant losses if I even attempt to go above 600 points....


Getting stronger in the game has made it less and less fun. This is the only game I can think of with that issue, normally as you get stronger you have MORE fun since more opens up to you. Here I have had doors close on my with every level I pump into my characters..

Unknown

I agree with most of whats been said here. The new system puts me up against teams that are almost all 141/141/85+. AND then they nerf spidey, which was not only my highest level character but also the reason i was able to compete. Now I find myself losing quite routinely. That would be ok on its own, I like some challenge, and i still win the majority of the time. HOWEVER, the whole point of levelling characters should be to give you an advantage. I have two chars around 130, and Im almost always outmatched in the new system. How is this possible? I would think I should be way more powerful than the majority of players (since im sure the majority are F2P), but with the new bracketing system, it seems the only reward for being higher level is that you have to face higher level opponents. It seems more worthwhile now to keep all your players low level and level them all equally, instead of picking a couple and trying to max them out.

ALL players, new, experienced, free, and spenders, should be randomly placed in brackets. If that means new players get their salads tossed, then guess what? thats the way the cookie crumbles. if it was completely random, there'd be new players in the brackets for them to face sometimes, and if they run up against a monster occasionally well thems the breaks. Or even if it was broken down like 1/4 of players in a bracket are under lvl 50, 1/2 are 50-110, and the other 1/4 are over 110. or something to that effect, it would ensure a mix of players while still providing some incentive to reach the upper levels.

I guess the point im trying to make is this: I spent money on this game, but now there's really no reason to spend more. Being higher level should be an advantage. If all it means is you get to face people of equal or higher level, its essentially pointless.
Please take note of this devs, Im a big fan of this game, but the recent bracketing change has really killed my motivation.

Unknown

I feel like the new sharding system has sharted all over the game

unimatrix

I have been trying to understand this sharding system (who the heck came up with that term?)

And I don't get it. What makes you think that every one who has 150 days of play under their wings must be competing with level 141s? Last PVP events have been incredibly, ridiculously difficult to progress with 141/141/misc.

A little bit hard to progress, that's fine. This is no progress at all. It's a match 3 game, it's should not be so frustrating.

Devs, please return it to the fair system time based bracketing.
I get it that you always want to tweak your system, but this really hurts.

Unknown

This is the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot players. By itself I think people would have adjusted, but throw on all the other non player friendly changes lately and it's just the kind of push that killed this game.

It's bad enough to have to wade through and army of killer teams from the start, but to have to get a very high score on top of it. Forget it. MMR changes to match you up with equal to stronger teams all the time already means you have to work harder to get points. To raise the points necessary for placement on top of that is crazy. What was wrong with the old random bracket system? Sure, the top 3 positions may have had a high score, but top 10 or top 25 was still reasonable. As a noob I wouldn't expect to play #1 or even top 5 until I had a better roster.

The only reason I can see for making this kind of change was to help the bottom line. It certainly wasn't something players wanted.

Unknown

UncleSam wrote:

This is the straw that broke the camel's back for a lot players. By itself I think people would have adjusted, but throw on all the other non player friendly changes lately and it's just the kind of push that killed this game.

It's bad enough to have to wade through and army of killer teams from the start, but to have to get a very high score on top of it. Forget it. MMR changes to match you up with equal to stronger teams all the time already means you have to work harder to get points. To raise the points necessary for placement on top of that is crazy. What was wrong with the old random bracket system? Sure, the top 3 positions may have had a high score, but top 10 or top 25 was still reasonable. As a noob I wouldn't expect to play #1 or even top 5 until I had a better roster.

The only reason I can see for making this kind of change was to help the bottom line. It certainly wasn't something players wanted.

Unfortunately it's rather genius, in an evil genius kind of way...

Step 1: Make it more comfortable for newer players to get them hooked by making it easier to win, cause who doesn't like winning, right?

[list=2]Step 2: Let them win, load them up with 3* covers they can't use but look oh so pretty. [/list]
[list=3]Step 3: #2 makes them feel the roster size pinch and thus forced to spend money. CHA-CHING![/list]
[list=4]Step 4: Initiate Dr. Evil-esque sinister laugh[/list]You know, "kinda like a crack dealer, but a friendly one that's like 'hey how's it goin...you wan't some crack?'"

They should say bye bye to the $1 ARPDAU cause they are giving the finger to the veterans (many of whom would have kept paying money into the game like a subscription service). They appear to be hooked (ironically) on getting people hooked and converting f2p into paying customers. Must be one hell of a high!