I had originally posted on discord that this affects at the minimum the first 100 players in each shield level. After I read on the forums that 800 points barely cracked top 100 in one event recently than I deleted my discord post.
I wasn’t completely against it EB. I just wish the shield cost would have been raised for the upgrade significantly. It is refreshing to see an interaction on the issue and a developer apology. It’s also a positive that many people have chimed in on all of the platforms. It isn’t a desert out in mpq land yet lol
As im reading the reactions from the players here and on social media, i “get” the hate. I understand that its new, different, and exploitable by far… especially when you consider the co-operation of players on outside comms.
That all said – I also appreciate that the devs are trying new things, and for better or worse, are up-front with communications when results show up. They didnt HAVE to own up to anything… they could’ve pulled a BCS and just said nothing, or a blanket statement about an error in the coding, blame it on Unity problems, etc, etc… no – they owned up to it, explained it, and that means a lot, IMO.
As far as talking to players about changes before theyre implemented, theres a fine line to walk. Im always reminded of the Gears of War franchise… especially part 2. Online multi-player started pretty great on that game, then people started heavily complaining about how weapons other than shotgun types were winning battles more often (im paraphrasing to save time and explanation)… and the devs listened whole-heartedly. The game heavily favored shotguns from that moment forward, and if you used anything else, you better have a LOT of distance and a plan… because the odds could still land in the shotties favor, due to the movement mechanics in that game. In essence, theres a reason why GoW PvP never got as big as many other franchises… it got MUCH more stale faster, and all because they listened to the players too much.
Running ideas by us is a good idea… but I would hope that they wouldnt be afraid to pull the trigger without our consent. We may see one thing, but they might see another.
I did try to warn them pvp is a poisoned chalice, and trying to change it would be like opening the ark of the covenant and look, people’s faces are melting all over the place
MPQ PvP is a pile of weird mechanics and fixes that have accumulated over like 12 years. Almost every bizarre nonsense mechanic exists for a *very specific reason*, and usually that reason is “high end players found X exploit and we patched it with Y fix.”
Revisiting some of those things might make sense now – some of those old exploits aren’t even possible now or wouldn’t be used anymore anyway. But a lot of them are still relevant and would cause problems if the fixes were undone.
How is a temporary shield supposed to help with a winfinite meta? Just nerf 3May and 1Hawkeye, and remove supports from pvp.
If you already have measures in place to stop this, why not just implement them to reverse this right now? This change removes the most fun part of PvP. Now it’s just PvE with no story and different characters.
If you remove supports from PvP, why would you need to nerf Hawkeye? He has less than 100k health at 550 and no defense. He’s probably dead before the engine gets going.
I’m not even sure why you’d need to nerf Iron May, at that point. The Nova team would basically be dead and you’d be able to kill her with match damage.
With full boosts:
Johnny over on discord suggested making the last horseman (famine) have a passive where everyone starts with 0 ap regardless of support boosts. I think its a pretty damn fine idea, works thematically, stops turn 0 shenanigans.
I introduce this into the debate and im ready for the ungodly onslaught of outrage
(Readies shield) and so it begins.
I’ve also had this thought for Famine (please be Sunfire). More generally I’ve definitely seen it posted as a wanted ability here, maybe not with the Famine association. Agree 100%
Like how they stopped bakes (1stars and a Carnage TU) two weeks before they released Thanos.. where no one would ever try to bake that small again because it would be a 1-second snipe..
This guy would just turn off too much stuff. Any character that needs to cast stuff becomes useless. Active powers are only viable right now because of free AP supports. This guy would nerf Hawkeye but he’d also nerf 80% of the boost list every week.
HE doesn’t get a turn 2 winfinite. You still need the board to provide you with a purple match and then he needs to survive, not get sent away, not stunned…
May comes at the expense of an entire character because she’s dead immediately. Without supports helping those 1* characters fire a nuke immediately, she’s not anything I would lose sleep over. Kill her and stun the nuke.
I play with both of these characters. Maybe you don’t. When my supports don’t give me any purple AP for the winfinite, I lose often. And May is a complete liability unless I’m getting that boost immediately by being able to fire a power. Removing supports from PvP would mostly end her in PvP. You couldn’t run 672 1a5 Widow and immediately down anyone with yellow AP that you bring to the match. Without supports, the Ares nonsense goes away. The Juggernaut nonsense goes away.
If you take away turn zero wins from low health characters, which you do by taking away supports, they’re just fast and easy kills.
What’s funny…and I mean REALLY funny, and I haven’t seen addressed here yet…
The reason they gave here for limiting point loss is to encourage players to use other teams besides the infinite combos.
But the infinite combos are all horrifically bad on defense!
Nobody is using Hawkeye because he prevents them from losing points on defense! Hawkeye teams get beat up on defense all day. Nobody who’s using these teams cares about points at all! These players are just trying to hit their wins quota as fast as possible, they’re not trying to get placement.
If they wanted to encourage the use of non-glass cannon teams, and force players to care about defense, they should INCREASE the penalties for taking losses, not decrease them! Start making defensive losses take away one of your offensive wins, and we’ll see fewer glass cannon infinite teams.
Unlike EB, I love everybody and want everyone who participates to get 1st place. What I like about this change is that I can hit the same person over, and over, and over again without feeling any remorse or pity. And that’s because of MMR. Not because I’m spending iso, hunting someone down. Because I love everybody. Which I said.
I think the original idea was to purely take away the starting ap to level the playing field, not to turn the supports off just remove everyone to zero. If people wanted to use supports they can but this would be a massive helping hand to lower established rosters as everyone just runs 1 * hawkeye.
I have no vested interest in pvp as I find it truly awful. First fight 672 iron may and 672 hawkeye? Skip. Second fight 672 iron may and 672 black widow? Nope. Third fight 672 spiderman and 672 hawkeye? Yeah im not doing this.
Personal preference, your opinion may vary and is as equally valid.
Help me out here, you get a rush of dopamine for hitting the same person multiple times?
I agree, but wouldn’t that also mean we’d see fewer teams period?
When they’re on a hop, absolutely
Go ahead and keep denying they’re a problem. The latest survey actually called the characters out, so they know it’s a problem