What do you think about... pvp in real time.

Bad
Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
in MPQ General Discussion
Recently the other tactical game I use to play released, after 3 years, a pvp mode in real time.
Before I was against this feature because on other pvp game I learned that it's possible to abuse, to troll and cheat.
However... actually it's funny?? And it's a challenge to fight another human.
I think a new mode like that on mpq could be really funny. 

Important points and possible rules:

A/- It should be an event for having fun:
there should  be some rewards in progression for to engage playing it a numbers of hours per month, but nothing actually decisive.
No daily challenges in here, no season points. A loss battle doesn't reduce anything. Recovering health as a possible reward per win.

B/- No cheating:
 a player who loses connection for x seconds gives victory to opponent.
The points gained should be for a character downed, for to prevent freewins.
Each player has x seconds for making a move, or AI will move on his behalf.

C/- There is nobody connected:
no pvp seeds teams. There are some solutions:
to eliminate MMR(not advisable), to enable this mode on weekend or in a scheduled horary, or a "waiting room" reflecting only the number of players on your MMR waiting to fight.
D/- Exhibition battle: a battle with a password for Line folks. No rewards in here.

Time for opinions and thoughts.
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Comments

  • MegaBee
    MegaBee Posts: 1,018 Chairperson of the Boards
    No, thank you. Seems like just begging for frustration.
  • DAZ0273
    DAZ0273 Posts: 10,083 Chairperson of the Boards
    Will the other player fail to make obvious Match 5's, match away their own special tiles immediately and always play "Sacrifice" in the Sentry PvP and suicide?
  • bbigler
    bbigler Posts: 2,111 Chairperson of the Boards
    Yes, this would be interesting to see another human play against you, but it would also be much much harder. Plus, players don’t like long battles, so the time to make your move needs to be very short, like 30 seconds. The devs also need to think of how this could be abused and make safeguards against it. I’m thinking that players would coordinate in putting out grill teams so that everyone gets easy wins - defeating the purpose of the event. 

    In addition to these issues, the match ups will never be perfectly even, meaning one team will always be stronger.  Nevertheless, I imagine most battles would be won by luck instead of skill. And you would need both players to agree to the battle before starting. 

    I like the idea, but it needs to be appealing to play. Give out great rewards since it’s harder and time consuming. But I can’t think of a way to stop players from abusing this. There has to be an incentive to play your best instead of trading easy wins with other players. Not allowing shields is a start. 
  • Sekilicious
    Sekilicious Posts: 1,766 Chairperson of the Boards
    DAZ0273 said:
    Will the other player fail to make obvious Match 5's, match away their own special tiles immediately and always play "Sacrifice" in the Sentry PvP and suicide?
    Why are you describing my optimal strategy?
  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,495 Chairperson of the Boards
    edited December 2021
    This is a good mode for live in person gaming like couch play, bar play, conventions etc but terrible for internet gaming.  A lot of the issues rely on matchmaking problems etc.  it’s been a few years since the last time this topic was raised so it’s worthwhile to discuss it again.

    Cons
    1.  Finding live gamers ready to play would be difficult.  The actual population of people ready to play in a min by min scenario is pretty small, don’t forget pvp opponents aren’t actually awake and gaming (even though line rooms makes it feel otherwise) most people are actually doing other things while acct floats.  You be looking at 15 min+ que times for an opponent that’s probably not appropriate for your roster level.

    2.  This type of network code is actually quite complicated especially once players are separated by multiple servers and physical locations.  Yes it’s quite trivial to do a physical lap link cable connection.  But connecting an Asia player with a us player in a SAFE and SECURE and FAST is not an easy or simple technology task.  You could try partnering with Xbox live, epic games, battlenet servers for that back end service, but I think you would have to pay a VIP level cost monthly to have access to a live gaming service.  (Remember pvp is actually played by a pretty dumb aI, and the only thing that’s being sent to the server is match start and end times plus any match statistics.  ). FYI, you can lose internet in the middle of match and it doesn’t affect the exp.  but this would kill a live pvp exp.

    3.  Leaderboards, alliance play would be hard to mention and open to exploitation.  Granted you could say, no alliance or lb points, but that’s also the main driver of why people play.  They would have to completely rethink the game experience and why people engage in the game.  I’m not saying this is impossible, but it would essentially rethink the entire game philosophy 

    pros
    1.  This is easy to Implement in a live environment or pass and play scenario (think car travel environments). And to be honest there nothing wrong with having a 2 person kill time mode where people can select from the same roster.

    in thinking about scope of work.

      A live pass and play mode would be a great project for a semester student internship.  Expanding it to local network Bluetooth/WiFi play would be a challenging 2nd internship project, but would be a great student project to demonstrate their mastery of networking concepts.  Having students do character design like civil war captain America was a dumb idea that basically resulted in another paid designer having to go back and rework a character.  If they are going to offer internship, I’d rather have them work on infrastructure projects vs character design/research projects.


  • Godzillafan67
    Godzillafan67 Posts: 586 Critical Contributor
    Another post that could have been a poll.  :) 

    For about the first week of pvp play, I thought that I was playing against an actual human and not a Turing-deficient algorithm. I always felt bad because I wasn't playing as fast as they were.
  • acescracked
    acescracked Posts: 1,197 Chairperson of the Boards
    I haven't thought about PvP in real time.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,622 Chairperson of the Boards
    It's probably an MPQ 2 type feature at this point.  It's not so much that they'd have to implement live PvP, which is a big job for sure, it's that they'd have to build a new type of event to accommodate it.  Matches would take a whole lot longer and the player would have a real possibility of losing every fight.

    Matchmaking would be a total overhaul too -- both players would have to agree to start the match.  How many fights do you take now where the other player would actually agree to battle you?
  • shardwick
    shardwick Posts: 2,121 Chairperson of the Boards
    I would avoid it like the plague.
  • BriMan2222
    BriMan2222 Posts: 1,218 Chairperson of the Boards
    I can only imagine the salt when your opponent gets the first turn and gets a huge match 5 cascade that let's them go winfinite on turn 1
  • MegaBee
    MegaBee Posts: 1,018 Chairperson of the Boards
    BriMan2222 said:
    I can only imagine the salt when your opponent gets the first turn and gets a huge match 5 cascade that let's them go winfinite on turn 1
    "HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAX!"
  • Bad
    Bad Posts: 3,146 Chairperson of the Boards
    Many of you are still thinking on this mode with the current rules: there wouldn't be shields because it's needed that you play that battle for actually losing points. 
    It's unlikely that alliances coordinate for giving grill teams: each player would need to play, lose his time, and losing battles.
    Players accepting each other? No. In that case nobody would play, knowing a bit the playerbase.
    It's needed to change the chip, this mode would be totally different and new teams or sinergies could work here where others good ones not(SC could be totally uneffective if the pesky opponent is breaking his combo).
    Luck always was an important factor in the game, but I think the outcome of those battles could be more like paper- rock based.
    Other additions could happen like choosing the captain of your team, jumping in front power for the captain, etc...
    BriMan2222 said:
    I can only imagine the salt when your opponent gets the first turn and gets a huge match 5 cascade that let's them go winfinite on turn 1
    Some people would hate it, others not.
    Personally I would search that player burning in flames for to try to win him without that lucky start.
  • hothie
    hothie Posts: 210 Tile Toppler
    I have thought about live, in-person tournaments, and they seem to have been a thing in the past. I've thought about how they implemented such things, but haven't delved deeply into it. I think all of those posts are still available for us to read on these forums, but until in-person tournament play starts to become a real thing again, I'm not going to go digging for those posts.

    Trying to implement something like this over the 'net, ehhhh, no thanks, for the reasons listed above by others.
  • Borstock
    Borstock Posts: 2,699 Chairperson of the Boards
    I can't think of any reason why I would want to experience that with the way this game was constructed.
    The only way head-to-head would be fair is if you had the same opponent, fought at the same time, and had to beat them either faster in time or number of moves.
  • entrailbucket
    entrailbucket Posts: 5,622 Chairperson of the Boards
    hothie said:
    I have thought about live, in-person tournaments, and they seem to have been a thing in the past. I've thought about how they implemented such things, but haven't delved deeply into it. I think all of those posts are still available for us to read on these forums, but until in-person tournament play starts to become a real thing again, I'm not going to go digging for those posts.

    Trying to implement something like this over the 'net, ehhhh, no thanks, for the reasons listed above by others.
    I don't ever remember live, in person tournaments, and I remember everything about this game! 

    Oh, maybe they did it as a demo at their comic-con booths?  I think I remember them giving out in-game items or having competitions at some of those.
  • Phumade
    Phumade Posts: 2,495 Chairperson of the Boards
    entrailbucket said:
    hothie said:
    I have thought about live, in-person tournaments, and they seem to have been a thing in the past. I've thought about how they implemented such things, but haven't delved deeply into it. I think all of those posts are still available for us to read on these forums, but until in-person tournament play starts to become a real thing again, I'm not going to go digging for those posts.

    Trying to implement something like this over the 'net, ehhhh, no thanks, for the reasons listed above by others.
    I don't ever remember live, in person tournaments, and I remember everything about this game! 

    Oh, maybe they did it as a demo at their comic-con booths?  I think I remember them giving out in-game items or having competitions at some of those.
    they definitely had something unique for nyc comic con.  Pretty sure that was the main convention they went too.  Colog would know.  He actually met Ice at one of those cons.  If its a PC build, it would be trivial to have a special dev version for live head to head matches.  But again that is very different than live PVP for users in Asia vs US vs EU players.  I know the console version could do live couch play, but not sure if they had head to head X-box live arcade functionality.  I remember trying to play puzzle quest 1 on X-box live arcade and I could never get a match.
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    Limit each move to 5 seconds should be fine. Playing with Polaris takes only 1 second to make a move.
  • KGB
    KGB Posts: 3,177 Chairperson of the Boards
    HoundofShadow said:
    Limit each move to 5 seconds should be fine. Playing with Polaris takes only 1 second to make a move.

    The original Puzzle Quest on X-Box live and PC allowed 8 seconds for a move. For some that was too short as they couldn't spot a match in that time period if they board was down to a forced move 1 match scenario. But if the hint icon came up after 3-4 seconds it should be fine to use 8 seconds.
    The frantic pace made for a lot of fun in multi-player games. I was actually disappointed when I found out MP in this game didn't allow actual head-2-head play.
    KGB
  • HoundofShadow
    HoundofShadow Posts: 8,004 Chairperson of the Boards
    I think 8 seconds wait time is too long.

    A typical match takes about 90 seconds, and that is with the AI making moves instantly. Add another 8 seconds time per move and we'll probably be dragging it out to a 3-4 minutes match. I think we can do with a timer reduction if someone takes the max time or close to max time to make a move consistently.

    I agree that this is better achieved with live in person pvp. 

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