Retaliation

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I believe a small change to Retaliation would help match making a lot; I would like your thoughts.

My suggestion is: When you defeat a player in a Retaliation match, you get all the points you lost to that player + the points that player is worth. The player you are attacking would only lose the points they are worth. This does several things.
One, it promotes real rivalry. You’ll want to retaliate and restore your honor, it benefits you!
Two, you feel way less shitty about being attacked. You know if you can defeat them, you’ll get a bunch of points back plus some.
Three, it incentives you to try attacking people at your levels, or even possibly above. Do you want to skip around and try and fight someone worth 22, or do you want to kill the guy that mugged you and get your 30 points back, and then some?

You can stop reading here if you like, but I created some examples below to help illustrate my idea:
(points are made up, I don’t know the exact formula for points)

Old system:

1337Dude has 300 points.
ScumGuy has 0 points.
ScumGuy attacks 1337Dude and wins, 30 points won/lost.

1337Dude gets the option for Retaliation. He knows he could defeat ScumGuy, but he would only get 15 points for a win. In the current system it is BAD for 1337Dude to attack, because he knows ScumGuy could just take another 30 off him.

1337Dude has 270 points.
ScumGuy has 30 points.
1337Dude attacks ScumGuy and wins, 15 points won/lost.
1337Dude has 285 points.
ScumGuy has 15 points.
ScumGuy attacks 1337Dude and wins, 30 points won/lost.
1337Dude has 255 points.
ScumGuy has 45 points.

If this continued, both players will end up around 150. This system is bad for two reason. It punishes 1337Dude for playing earlier than ScumGuy, making him feel like he has no recourse. It also keeps the total score lower, making progression a tedious nightmare.

New system. Reversing time to after the first match:

1337Dude has 270 points.
ScumGuy has 30 points.
1337Dude attacks ScumGuy and wins, 45 points won (30 Retaliation + 15 player worth), 15 points lost.
1337Dude has 315 points.
ScumGuy has 15 points.

You see what happened here? Instead of being punished for Retaliation, 1337Dude come out ahead! To quickly flesh out some more back and forth:

ScumGuy attacks 1337Dude and wins, 45 points (15 Retaliation + 30 player worth), 30 points lost.
1337Dude has 285 points.
ScumGuy has 60 points.
1337Dude attacks ScumGuy and wins, 45 points won (30 Retaliation + 15 player worth), 15 points lost.
1337Dude has 330 points.
ScumGuy has 45 points.
ScumGuy attacks 1337Dude and wins, 43 points (15 Retaliation + 28 player worth), 28 points lost.
1337Dude has 285 points.
ScumGuy has 60 points.
1337Dude attacks ScumGuy and wins, 43 points won (28 Retaliation + 15 player worth), 15 points lost.
1337Dude has 330 points.
ScumGuy has 45 points.

There is never a point where the two players become worthless to each other. However, this doesn’t cause an endless loop of fighting one guy. Someone else will eventually attack you and become a better Retaliation target. Or the value of Retaliation will drop to the point were killing a new guy will be worth more. It is also likely the one team will be more efficient and killing the other, meaning it will benefit them more to fight the Retaliation matches, which will also cause the cycle to end (the other team knows it can’t keep up). If those natural tendencies aren’t enough, diminishing returns for fighting the same player could be added.

2

Yeah, i don’t really like pvp that much because you really can’t do progression rewards when the points pool grows sooo slowly. Instead we are just fighting against each other like a couple of mandingos in a white mans plantation. All players lose and MPQ wins…always.

When it gets to the point where people are surpassing the progression rewards, mpq won’t only have my curiosity, it’ll have my full attention.

3

This definitely seems to have potential, and would push things in the right direction (it also has the added bonus of slowly injecting more points into the system, making higher progression awards actually possible) I would maybe tweak the numbers slightly, but that is just splitting hairs.

Players are going to game the system almost always. For example, right now I tank like crazy before any tournament I want to do well in, and then end up fighting teams much weaker than mine because that is, for me, the most sure way to placing well. I would much rather play against teams my own level, and see that play style rewarded (and I do this in tournaments when I just want to grind for ISO). It is up to the Developers to decide how they want the game to be played, and make the scoring system reward that style of play above others.

4

This is another “points for everybody!” scheme that would cause significant rating inflation and reward, above all else, people who can be on for 48 of the 60 hours or whatever it is long-form tournaments run for. If you want to grind your way to progression, that’s what PvE events are for, when they’re working. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but Demiurge has been quite explicit that isn’t what they intend the PvP to be, so any suggestion that would lead that way will fall on deaf ears unless you can first convince them no one’s satisfied with where their vision is headed.

5

I suggested this a while ago. I don’t think being able to take back points would necessarily result in more points entering the system. If the player your retaliating against is too low, you would just be stealing back the points they stole. They would still get the little boost but you would just be getting your points back. This would encourage people not to attack teams much more powerful than them with a lot of points because they can be easily retaliated against. However, if they are closer in rank, the retaliation may not be worth it because you can find better opponents. I think it would only work if there were one retaliation. A attacks B. B can retaliate. End of exchange. I think it could help someone defend themselves, but it would only be worth it against weaker opponents.