Shield cool down feedback

Marvel Puzzle Quest MPQ General Discussion
1

I figured having played a pvp that didn’t matter all that much, a PvP where placement mattered to most people (new 3* covers) and a PvP where the 1100 progression mattered to everyone (new 3* cover) i would seem reasonable to give some feedback on my experience of the shield cool down.

My overriding feeling is that it is frustrating and irritating. I suspect they will adjust the progression values because they stated that they were happy with the % of players reaching progression rewards in the discussion before they implemented it but even then, with the major practical implication on me personally “fixed” I think I will still have major issues with it.

I have a good roster, probably counting as one of those evil veterans transitioning players try to ward off with holy water and crosses. I got 1st in the last couple of PvPs after the change and got 1100 for Luke Cage with effort. So until the first 1300 progression comes along I haven’t been that badly hit by the change in as far as getting stuff I want.

I have, on the other hand been seriously irritated by, and frustrated by the way i’ve had to play these PvPs. In order to get to 1100 I have had to start planning when my first post climb shield is going to be because I have this ridiculously rigid cool down system that means I need to overlap 3hr and 8hr shields and play on the game’s bloody schedule so I can reshield after playing rather than being able to play on MY schedule.

I have had to note down exactly when I use shields to make sure i’m safe to play because there is no way to see when the cool down on the shield type I am not currently using has ended. The failure to implement a usable UI for the system is really really grating.

I have had to keep going into the game to skip skip skip skip skip skip skip skip to look for targets because of the incessant offering of targets worth 3 points. Now that EVERYONE at a high score has to remain shielded and can only play a couple of times every 8 hours it’s a nightmare to find anyone to hit unless you are using out of game communication to co-ordinate queuing up your allies (which I strongly suspect people getting over 1300 in the Cage event almost all, if not all did). I can’t just skip when i plan to play because there might be LITERALLY zero viable targets for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour…

The horde has grown and it’s hungrier than ever. Whereas the horde tended to truly decend in the last hour to 90 minutes of an event meaning people could fairly comfortably hop a bit under 3 hours and shield or pull away from the pack with a rapid climb late and throw down a single 3 hour shield. Now there is insane activity in the last 3-4 hours (judging by the hits on my shields and the fact NO-ONE broke into a relatively low scoring top 10 in that period even though the 10th placed score was one that someone shhould have been able to quite easily climb to in one go).

People can’t back to back 3 hour shields, so unless you are budgeting for an 8 hour AND a 3 hour shield, or to play til 8 hours and shield from that point you will be scrambling in the last 3 hours. There is a bizarre dead-space between 8 and 3 hours where there is NO POINT climbing above the pack. you will just get slammed back down, probably lower than where you started due to score update lag in nodes.

Finally there is the helplessness of the ability to compete being COMPLETELY taken out of your hands. If your shields are cooling down you can’t do ANYTHING. You can’t try to overtake someone. You can’t push for progression, you can’t do ANYTHING. It’s frustrating as hell and a LOT more “unfun” than shield hopping ever was. Even worse, I imagine, would be if you went to do a safe hop and it just so happened that someone who had you queued in a node hit you at that time. The -50 appears and suddenly you are SCREWED. You are probably looking at 25-35 point targets if you’ve been lucky, so you would need to win 2 matches to make up those points BUT, your high score is INCREDIBLY visible to other players. Everyone else with a high score is probably shielded cause they can only play a few times every 8 hours so you stick out like a sore thumb. You also can’t do an extra hop to get those points back because of cool downs… You are basically screwed by bad luck completely and utterly beyond your control with NO WAY to do something about it. You are HELPLESS because of the changes.

Along with my complaints I see zero benefits.

No nerf to out of game communication (instead buffed due to the game’s terrible target discoverability and increased liklihood of targets being shielded at any give time due to less hops)
No chance to win without hopping (no-one in my top 10 didn’t shield hop last event)
Insanely harder to reach progression (I assume they will fix it but, to be honest, I assumed they wouldn’t put an 8h CD on a 3h shield so…)
More P2W because hopping costs more now. Previously, if someone spent more HP because they were using longer shields to mitigate playing less intensively, someone could beat them by playing more on cheaper 3h shields to get extra, later hops in. No longer possible.

For me it’s a terrible change that, at best, gives some people the ILLUSION they are doing better because the scores they will never reach for placement are a bit lower. They’ll still never reach them though.

I am interested to know if anyone has seen an actual benefit to the change. The most i’ve really seen so far is ppl saying it’s not affected them at all. If there are genuine up sides to it for certain players it would be nice to know…

2

I’m loathe to comment before a season is over because of the small sample size, but so far the scores to get into top 100/top 25 are dramatically lower, while getting to 600 isn’t any harder. That does a lot to help the crowd who hit 500-600, at the cost of people who previously coasted to no-shield 900s and won’t now that 900 actually takes effort

3

I would say I am the type of player who can benifit from this change. I think there are some tweeks and alternatives to the system that I will list, but to answer your question here is why it benifits me as a player.
#1 I am a veteran with a deep roster, but I am F2P so I generally don’t do a ton of hopping. I would normally do 2 3HR shields on covers I really wanted and with time slices I have been able to place higher in non prime slices. I normally get top 10 in time slice 1,2, or 3. I have played the game for over 1 year and have won 2 PVP’s. 1 when shields first came out and my 2nd one in December.
Now with the changes to shields people who would hop 4,5+ times didn’t, or had a hard time finding enough points to get to really high scores. By using 2 shields I spent and extra $75 HP and got top 5. This will also help me becuase for the overall season it should be easier for me to place in the top 50 Season overall for a 10 pack instead of 5 heroic covers. I have fallen short every season even though I have scored over 10k points each season since season 1.

Changes that I would like to see made are:
#1 A 3 hour shield has a 3 hour cooldown. You should be able to play MPQ shield eat dinner, play again before you go to sleep and be shielded for the rest of the event. 8 hours on a 3 hour shield is just punishing what a 3 hour shield is suppose to do and give you a short break.
#2 a count down on the shields to show the cooldown period. I believe they will add this and it will save some headaches.
#3 Make players available for view for a time period after they are shielded. If a player cliimbs above 900+ points they should not be punished by facing players worth 3 points. It might be you can be seen 30 min after you shield so players can still climb off of each other. Maybe they fix it so you can only see someone within 100 points of you so might lose the 50 point matches, but you lose the 15 point and below matches.

Overall I would say the cool down is keeping scores down, so more people can compete, but needs some tweeking. I still believe the better solution would have been to give everyone up 5 shields per PVP, so if someone wanted to climb every 3 hours they could. If they wanted to only use a shield for 1/2 hour they could. They would just be limited in the amount of times they could shield and not penalized for breaking a shield, or be forced to wait to play becuase of a cool down.

One question for the OP is how many shields overall did you use? How many shields do you think it would take you to get to 1300 points?

4

Setting aside the fact that; once you start factoring 24-hour shields into your play strategy the cost of laddering becomes prohibitively high - does it seem like there is some piece of psych research we have all missed?

So either we are doing 2 pushes every 8 hours (3hr into an 8hr) or we can do 1 push every almost 3 hours (3hr into 8hr into 24hr). The structure of the cool downs seems to be set up to (expensively) allow for a push every 3 hours… which sounds a lot like the refresh timer in PVE.

Was there some empirical study (or ‘best practice’ established by cults) that says 3 hours is an optimal separation between reinforcing events?

5

@Wyrmtime

Even if scores are kept lower you can’t compete without shielding because of the way PvP score exchanges work. Also if someone shields then hops, all the points they can earn in a hop are points you can’t earn without hopping. The lowering of scores gives a false impression of parity. In every PvP since the change the top 10 has all been ppl hopping for me.

As far as shields used… for 1100 IIRC I used 3 3s and 2 8s. I was hit once for 49 when hopping which added the last shield and it was basically bad luck. So would have been 2 3s 2 8s. Prior to the change I could get 1100 on one 3 hour shield or 2 3 hour shields at most. As far as getting 1300 it wouldn’t matter how many I was willing to use.

Firstly there was no time to cram more shields in unless I was willing to start using 24s or start climbing earlier.
Secondly unless I was willing to co-ordinate with other ppl outside of the game there was no chance of me finding the value of targets I would need to get there. I was having to skip lots of times on multiple occasions when shielded just to find targets worth 20+ points once I was over 900. Having to keep going back to the game SOLELY to hit skip 20+ times in case someone was unshielded is definitely UNFUN. Trying to get 200 more points under those conditions wasn’t going to happen.

6

While I dislike the new system there is one benefit that I can’t deny–in the past 3 events I would have been able to secure a top 10 spot (non-slice 4) with a single 8-hour shield. Before the cool down system was implemented it would take at least three 3-hour shields to accomplish the same placement for me. This means that I can get the same reward tier for 75 HP less. One 8-hour shield and one 3-hour shield have been enough to get me top 5 placement in the past two events.

That said, I like shield-hopping. It’s as close to exhilarating as a match 3 game can get. icon_e_biggrin.gif
I also have been lucky enough not to be hit while shield-hopping since the change so I haven’t yet been put in the position where it’s literally impossible for me to play any more because if I break shield I won’t be able to buy another one.

7

SO, in your experience, rather than making it more competitive for placings the change has removed enough contenders for top 10 spots that you can get it more easily with zero hops then? Not really what they intended IIRC 8).

8

Thanks for the info. I agree that you have to shield hop if you want to win or place well. I shield hoped this last event and ended up in 3rd place just using 1 8hr shield and 1 3hr shield, but the difference was I was under 900 points. In the past I would have been able to score more points from having higher scores to hit and I probably would have been able to score higher, but I would have ended up top 10 or top 25. This is why the shield cooldown benifits a player willing to spend 225 on shields more than someone willing to spend 525. Now you spent 525 to get the 3* cover you wanted which is cheeper than paying 1250 for it where I am willing to wait till the next PVP to try and earn top 5 placement to get the cover I want.

Even at 700 points it was hard for me to find targets and I was going for 18-20 points a pop instead of 30-40-50. I think adjustments can be made see my above post, but if you think about your original post who does it help? It helps someone who has a solid roster who is willing to spend 225 HP on shields but does not want to go HP negative. With 1st place scores in some time slices being 900 points someone paying 225 but earning 250 HP can place top 5 or even win an event. I took 2nd place in combined arms and was under 10 points behind 1st place. I did not need to cover so I did not break shield at the end to take 1st. It needs adjustments to let bigger players score when they reach 900 points or they need to lower the progression. Someone like yourself is going from being able to score 1300-what ever you want to paying to get to 1100. I am someone who spent 225 to hit 1100+ to spending 225 to hit 900 and place top 5.