More variety in PvP teams

Unknown

So today I was grinding away for Fatal Attraction and I was getting tired of the same team over and over, but then I realized I had been running exactly the same team for the last 20 or so tournaments (not counting the featured character). Not only is this boring, it's not even very good for D3 because if your team is always just featured + your best 2 guys there isn't much incentive to level up more characters. On the other hand I use a variety of teams for PvE, and I think the biggest reason I do that is that if Bagman pulls off an amazing victory, I don't have to worry about how some level 395 Avengers later stomped Bagman and caused my rank to plummet. While retaliation is part of PvP, you can't really have much variety when the threat of retaliation looms, so here's an idea I come up with.

You can select up to 5 teams (featured + 2 others). No character may be used on more than one team. The game will pick one of your submitted teams at random when you fight someone, and you'll be given a chance to heal up your character after you team is selected (but you can't back out the fight at that point). No team will be used again until all the teams you submitted has been used once, so there won't be any freak accidents like you get your worst team 5 times in a row and you'll also have some knowledge of what your team is likely to be. After you have played at least one match with every team you submitted, the following bonus kicks in:

1. Each event has a list of minor buffed heroes (+40 level for 2* and +30 level for 3* seems like it'll work fine) that are activated by submitting more than one team. Can even tie which heroes are powered up to the number of teams you submit. Maybe you get +40 levels on OBW when you submit the maximum 5 teams, for example.

2. People who submit random teams have a greatly reduced chance of being seen by people using less teams than they do. E.g. if you're submitting two teams your chance of being seen by someone who only has one team is reduced. Note that retaliations are still always seen.

3. The points you lose is reduced by some factor related to the number of teams you submit.

You're free to switch back to more (or less) teams anytime you want, though any bonus immediately ends if you change the number of teams you wish to field.

HairyDave

I like it but I'd go for anything that means less OBW/Thor

Unknown

I like it. Admittedly, it's kind of a plan perfect for my crazy roster, but that's not exactly a bad thing. To me at least.

Unknown

Actually after thinking some more you can simply allow you to pick any of your submitted teams but you can't pick the same one again until all other teams have been used once. As long as the bonus doesn't kick in until you do one battle with every team you submitted I think there isn't anything clever you can do there since any trick you can do is still exactly the same as picking your best team over and over.

The exact % will have to be worked out by D3 but I'm thinking like -5% points loss per team above 1, and -25% chance to be seen by the opponent per number of teams you're submitting above that guy. So, a guy submitting 5 teams would have 0% chance of being seen by someone with only 1 team, and 25% chance of being seen by someone with only 2 teams. But remember they'll always see you on the retaliation.

Maybe throw in a +5 iso per team above 1 bonus per match too. I don't necessarily want it to be easier just because you submit a ton of teams, but my idea is that you submit a lot of teams you'll have a lot less headache until you attack someone.

Unknown

It sounds interesting but I'm guessing this would be a big effort to implement.

I think I'd prefer with they gave you the ability to select your defensive team without being forced to win the last game with that team. Because sometimes it's difficult to remind yourself to play with a different team before you take a break.

Speaking of which; for everyone's amusement and the sake of variety I'm currently fielding a defensive team of Psylocke/Punisher/Falcon (Levels: Max/Max/102). It's a lot of fun to play with too. Falcon eliminates strike/attack tiles and boosts my own as well as provide protection with bird strike.

I really want to see more variety in teams, but I think the main issue is the cover reward frequency. There has been too much focus on certain newer heroes while other have been forgotten. I can't recall the last time BP, Hood, Daredevil or HT (launch week?) were given out. I wish they would cycle heroes in a pattern. Running the same PvP twice in one season is absurd.

Unknown

Lack of variety and cover drought is killing my interest in the game. Hero tokens seem to be good for 250 iso now, that is killing motivation for grinding.

Unknown

Milkrain wrote:

I really want to see more variety in teams, but I think the main issue is the cover reward frequency. There has been too much focus on certain newer heroes while other have been forgotten. I can't recall the last time BP, Hood, Daredevil or HT (launch week?) were given out. I wish they would cycle heroes in a pattern. Running the same PvP twice in one season is absurd.

Pretty sure Hood and Daredevil were last done in the month before Season 1 started. It's been quite a while on BP and HT, though.

rixmith

Here's another (somewhat similar) concept... In PvP we have three nodes to choose from. What if you beat each of the three nodes without reusing a character then you get a meaningful bonus (event points plus ISO). You would have a Skip button that brought you a new set of three instead of skipping individual matches. If you just did two matches or reused characters that would be okay, but you wouldn't get the bonus.

Or what if each node buffed certain characters (I think it is better to reward you for using a different character instead of having a mechanism to prevent you from using the same character)? Even better if the buff stayed with them on defense. Then using IM35 + Venom might look better than Thor + OBW.

Unknown

rixmith wrote:

Here's another (somewhat similar) concept... In PvP we have three nodes to choose from. What if you beat each of the three nodes without reusing a character then you get a meaningful bonus (event points plus ISO). You would have a Skip button that brought you a new set of three instead of skipping individual matches. If you just did two matches or reused characters that would be okay, but you wouldn't get the bonus.

Or what if each node buffed certain characters (I think it is better to reward you for using a different character instead of having a mechanism to prevent you from using the same character)? Even better if the buff stayed with them on defense. Then using IM35 + Venom might look better than Thor + OBW.

They had the latter in Divine Champions originally like node A would buff Thor and node B would buff Ares and node C buffs Loki. However it's not exactly a good idea to pick node C under any circumstance, and to make things worse you face the same enemies in all 3 nodes.

You have to solve the problem that using variety leaves you extremely vulnerable on defense first. Assuming no character can be used twice, try to form 3 duos and you can see by the time you get to your weakest duo, it's considerably weaker than your strongest duo. So there has to be something that prevents your weakest duo from being slaughtered by everyone. At the very least, using variety needs to be prevent your team from easily being seen. I think retaliations are still fair game, but even there you really need a slight point reduction to warrant using a weaker team.

Bacon Pants

I now have six 141 characters and I try to use all of them in pvp...Spider-Man now being the exception as he's too slow for my liking. But I deserve that because I rode him into the ground, resurrected him, killed him again, zombified him, and then finally d3 put a bullet in his brain.

As I continue to bring characters to 141 I will be trying out different combos.

It is sometimes discouraging to see the same teams over and over, but I was doing it too with Spiderman.

Unknown

Bacon Pants wrote:

I now have six 141 characters and I try to use all of them in pvp...Spider-Man now being the exception as he's too slow for my liking. But I deserve that because I rode him into the ground, resurrected him, killed him again, zombified him, and then finally d3 put a bullet in his brain.

As I continue to bring characters to 141 I will be trying out different combos.

It is sometimes discouraging to see the same teams over and over, but I was doing it too with Spiderman.

Let's say Magneto + Thor is exactly as strong as Sentry + Daken in every possible way. But even then there still isn't much reason to go from one team to another unless you just happen to need 2 more lifebars when your health packs ran out.

Of course, in reality, certain teams are considerably more vulnerable on defense and while defense in general is difficult, you certainly don't want to make it even more encouraging for others to attack you. I don't actually mind using a weaker team to attack, but the prospect of that team being attacked by others more often is too much of a threat.

rixmith

I think you hit the nail on the head. You have enough advantages on offense that you'll win barring very poor luck. So trying to put out a team that will discourage other people from attacking you becomes the primary goal. That is certainly how I ended up stuck in the Ares/OBW rut. I'd love to play more with cStorm and MNMags, but I sure don't want to leave them hanging out there waiting to get attacked.