Hi folks,
We’ve received your reports of unexpected discrepancies in PVP scoring.
What has happened:
A change we were testing made its way out on live a week ago and was not spotted.
We were experimenting with changes that might help shift the meta from a straight winfinite meta, to something a little slower and more diverse.
One of the changes we were looking at to support this was a “shield” that prevents a loss of points for 5 minutes after being attacked. Our thought was to make losses less punitive by cushioning mass rating loss in very short periods.
What now:
[Update 3:15pm 5th June (AEST) ]
We will have compensation that everyone should start to see go out overnight (our time).
We’re sending out:
- 3 Mighty Tokens
- 5 Elite Tokens
- 10 Standard Tokens
[Update 11:30am 4th June (AEST) ]
We are reverting the change very shortly. It’s pretty clear that it cannot be left as-is.
We can’t reset points, so the remainder of the Season will continue from this point forward as-is.
We will be following with compensation. (We will update you once we’ve put something together.)
[Original]
First, we already had improvements being made to the backend to make it harder for things like this to occur and make it easier to test changes without these kinds of risks. We foresaw that something like this could be a problem, and this was a slip that happened before we could finish putting those additional barriers in place.
We are currently reviewing best options.
While the change was not intended to go out when it did, it may be best to leave it in place rather than pull it out at this stage given that the PVP Season is already in-progress.
We apologise. We know that unexpected changes to gameplay and scoring are disruptive, and our intention is always to announce changes before release.
4 Likes
Huh, so we have immunity from point loss for 5 minutes after taking any loss?
That seems…exploitable. I can have a teammate with a higher score attack me for 1 point every few minutes, and be completely immune to all other losses for as long as they do it.
This will result in significantly higher PvP scores at the high end, once we all figure out how to make it work.
3 Likes
Fun concept for someone who likes to play the slower strategy part of the game. Stop Bucket at the door before he tells all his friends!
It IS exploitable. That’s why it got reported. Scores in Sim went nuts and then S1 found a person that didn’t lose points and mass beat them up to get to hundreds higher for first shield. S5 scores inflated. Lots of people reporting the same thing.
The damage to season is done. And had they only talked to us, this never would have even been considered for testing..
2 Likes
Leaving this in place seems like it will only create massive score inflation. Time to have a community challenge and just give away the red stone…
4 Likes
A shield like that should have cost 1000hp for 24 hours, 750hp for 8 hours, and 500hp for 3 hours. It’s only 1 pvp season but it is lost now. Time for a community challenge. Things happen. We are all human. I put the higher HP amounts because the majority of pvp players would have balked at it and that was the point.
2 Likes
Huh, I was wondering why 800 points was barely enough to scrape top 100. This explains it.
I can’t presume to speak for everyone but as someone who doesn’t routinely top 10 PvP events, the points and rankings don’t seem to make any sense anyway so I could not care less about this error.
That explains a lot, Lots of people in s1 are exploiting this
I planned on going for the stone but some people are right away already 10k season points ahead
Freezing
Not getting the stuff you paid for ( @TheMigz @Jeto where my Shatterstar costume?!)
This
I know I’ll make a lot of people happy saying this, might be I leave this pile of dog#### game sooner than later, I’m just too p*ssed
1 Like
Ooof, the impossible scores have a reason. I appreciate the honesty and clarity of the reply, @TheMigz . Thank you for that.
But this is something that should never have even been considered for testing, as anyone that played PVP for season score could have told you. The damage is done now. How it gets salvaged is next.
I do hope however that this got fixed before you posted it? Else it will just compound now that every knows exactly how to exploit it. And that means the season is done. Which unfortunately is one of the last 2 Stones that weren’t given away.. Ouch.
3 Likes
I have a feeling this may have come about due to a fundamental misunderstanding of how the big alliances score their points through collusion - I guess nobody explained to IP2 that shields were already being used to boost scores via player co-operation outside the game and now they just put that into hyperspace…
1 Like
Please curb your negative cheater talk with collusion and that. Bouncing shields is the only way points get added to a slice. Even if you don’t directly hit these Qs, YOU also profit from it. Everyone does. Rising tide floats all boats.
Heck, if you ever used a shield, you are part of the system.
Who mentioned anything about cheating? You need to take a chill pill, buddy! You seem awful touchy about this being called exactly what it is.
The old Devs even basically endorsed the collusion in a Q&A so it isn’t a hot topic for me but it is what it is but the new Devs may not (seemingly definitely not considering this) even have realised that is how things work. They clearly have their eye on the bigger picture so didn’t realise what they were setting up here.
3 Likes
Collusion is an inherently negative word. And it’s pretty rich from people profiting off it to keep using negative terms. It’s how the game works.
Won’t change your mind, but I can ask you to be honest with yourself.
OK is co-operation better? I don’t want to hurt your feelings. Can we agree that “bouncing shields” requires a level of teamwork to be effective?
1 Like
Edit: forget all of this. 
Without using any outside communication at all, this makes it harder to move up in a rank for your own personal gain as a player seeking higher placement. Because you can’t take any hits/lose points, but you’re not actually shielded, people can see you for longer and gain points from hitting you.
So let’s say you’re in 27st and want 19th or whatever. You are shielded. You start looking for queues to find players who are out. It might take a while but you queue some up, or at least one who will give you a good bump in score. You get all your boosts set up and fight them using your fastest team; you finish the fight in under a minute and you shield. Now anyone who was below you and hits you can’t gain more points off you (after shielded) which helps you gain placement, hopefully, because other people aren’t climbing off you once shielded. They can’t queue you, nor can you lose points from a hit. Thus you have protected, hopefully, not just your score but are staving off others using your team to leapfrog in points above you and negate your effort to move up.
This changes that by letting other people queue you for longer even if they don’t fight you at that time, etc.
5 minutes may not sound like a long time but it’s a pretty long time in the game especially when a lot of players are active and seeking points.
Thank you. Co-Op is indeed a correct term. Much appreciated.
And yes, telling people you are shielding so more people can bounce shields increases effectiveness. Which everyone benefits from for points progression (and season progression)
1 Like
What are you even on about? Lol
I completely misread what was happening. Needed coffee.
No matter what it’s bad they’re chasing wild tangents like this when they started on the game 5 months ago. They need player input.
However if the scores go up it’s likely someone who was used to a certain level of effort returning a certain placement will see their relatively low effort give worse results as long as other more engaged players are adding tons of points.
Essentially, many players - regardless of using outside comms or not - will need to chase higher scores to place the same, especially in the higher ranks. Thus, play more. (most T100-T50 and below will probably only need similar effort)
The only upside is you can probably hit 1200 more easily now.
Funny thing is, this 5 min window isn’t even working for everyone…
I guess I’m pleasantly surprised by the negative reaction to this one!
This is one of the most “player-friendly” changes they’ve made to PvP, possibly the most “player-friendly” thing they’ve done since shields were introduced. Folks have been complaining about massive point loss forever, and this completely removes it.
That makes it terrible, of course. PvP is about skill and speed – are you fast enough to outrun the zombies? The higher your score gets, the hungrier the zombies are, and the more rewarding it is to successfully outrun them. Letting you play forever with minimal points loss removes that element completely and turns placement into a participation reward. It also massively jacked up scores across the board – in s2 with very little coordination, we saw scores jump by 500 points at the high end.
I’m just confused about why everybody else thinks this is bad. I hate all of you, and don’t think any of you should score any points in PvP ever, so of course I hate this. I love hammering a player on a hop over and over and watching them shield at -200 from where they started. But I am a jerk! Why wouldn’t everyone else want this change? Is it just that everyone hates every change?
1 Like