This is prompted by the baking changes announced today, but I think it is a separate topic worthy of its own discussion.
Demi/d3: why are you consistently moving twards longer, harder matches?
You have designed a game that heavily favors quick, reliable victory. But then you seem disappointed when players notice this and design strategies that leverage fast, easy victory?
Between the health shift, scoring changes, shield cooldowns, 5* tiers, and massive champ boosting, the game has steadily moved towards longer matches and competitive PvP scores/rewards have gotten lower with each major system revision.
But why? Is there compelling evidence that these changes are either more profitable for you or more enjoyable for players?
I imagine there’s a specific equilibrium point that they want PVP matches to be in order to try to keep the events feeling good for all players. If some can dominate in 30 seconds, and many can’t, it could easily create a worse connotation for the game/event.
I miss my MPQ bathroom breaks.. since the health buffs last year along with championing and 5*s, my wife thinks I’m sick when I’m in the bathroom for just 1 match!
Is it bad news if you never indulged in cupcaking to begin with?
I’ve always pushed to hit 1000 and stop there but lately I’ve been happy if I can hit 900. If 900 now means I can get a 4* cover regularly, then this is wonderful news for me.
The only thing that could be an issue is how many points the cupcakers were actually providing. If all this does is make the highest score in the slice I tend towards cap out at, say, 1100 rather than the 2000+ it used to hit then there will be an issue with this, definitely.
This likely would be the problem, but they’re changing the scoring and not telling us how (yet), so it’s basically impossible to understand the impact.
Once the mechanics are explained (or just experienced by the vets), it’ll be cracked, just like everything before it. So I wouldn’t worry too much.
I don’t worry about the outcome grumpy. As you say. Even without info, the vets will experiment and figure out how to crack the system in a week or two at most.
What worries me is that d3/demi seem to want a game that doesn’t seem like much fun, or they don’t understand likely impacts of the changes they are making. And they seem to be doing it with little explanation.
Back when matches were much faster, you would get defensive losses all over the place during shield hops. Since the (almost) universal health increase and Sentry nerf, which made matches significantly longer, I’ve felt that this has been less of an issue. Personally I think match lengths are at a pretty good spot right now.
It’s sound marketing. Build up the goodwill with good Changes, then when you have enough you can announce something unpopular.
Personally I have been able to hit 1300 Before shielding ever since I maxed OML, so I am unsure how this change will affect me. I don’t coordinate cupcakes, but if I find them I hit them (after a Little while of course). The big question is how the top scores will be affected by this? Front runners can still reach silly scores, it’s just more difficult for the stragglers to Catch up when they can’t get easy Points from cupcakes.
Whenever the devs have made changes with the PvP system post anniversary1, the result has been lowering scores and (sometimes) lowering the prog targets to compensate. This happened with shield cooldowns, then again when the nerfed boosting, then again with the healthshift, and then again when switch scoring (so that 75 points was the max) and then again when they added weekly boosts (so now it was boosted, higher health characters), and again when they added the champion system. (note: This sequence may not be ordered properly. But all of those changes have had the effect of extending PvP matches and making it harder to reach higher scores.
You are right that after demi makes changes and scores drop a bit, players adjust to the new rules and scores start to creep back up. That will definitely happen again. This next season will be wired as players sort things out, but by next season we will have started settling on new strategies and scores will start creeping up again.
Baking cupcakes is decidedly NOT for player’s own direct benefit. Baking requires coordination, so it’s mutually beneficial (at least with respect to scoring), both for players who eat cakes and players who like to have higher-point slices that make progs easier for everyone (so everyone who cares more about prog rewards that placement rewards).
We can argue about exploit v. Cheat v. Intended Gameplay endlessly. And I think There are strong arguments to be made on all sides there. But the fact is that anyone who bakes a cupcake sees no direct benefit from it. There are only indirect benefits that are, by and large, good for everyone’s scores and progs.
Sorry, not stealing, just abusing faulty game mechanics. Basically cheating, so selected group can get extra points. But it’s totally fine, because some random person will also have a chance to get few points every now and then.
That’s the thing though: Cupcaking does not mean “a few Points now and then” for “some random person”. The entire slice benefits from the cupcake because once you pass 1000 Points the only way to inject new Points into a slice is to hit a shielded target. It’s a trickel down effect - even if you don’t hit the cupcake yourself you still benefit from it if you hit someone who hit the cupcake and thus is Worth more Points. Compare how many Points are avaiable in a dead slice, where you have to struggle to get past 1000 Points, to one with many cupcakes where things might get slow around 1500 Points.
If you’ve played PvP at all in the last year, then… YOU ARE THE THIEF.
NO EXCEPTIONS! SHOOT EVERY PVP PLAYER!
The current system, as presented, is terrible. You can’t get points started very easily, and they bleed A LOT over a certain point (from 700-800 I would hazard a guess at).
Hammering shields and hoping for the best helps generate more points as all your queues and retaliation bounce off.
The cupcake bakers do the initial painful rush, then set it up so a load more players can get boosted closer to them. This puts more points into the slice that then trickle down, because it generates significantly faster points than a small number of slow slogs would in the same time frame.
Then people beat the ones who got the cupcakes.
Then people beat the people who did that.
Then people who started later, or are recovering from absolute murder, get a series of stepping stones based on this higher level feeding frenzy.
Cupcakes obviously have a downside. A small number of players coordinate to generate massive points that no one else can touch. This is what the Devs are shooting down (and after a certain point they are not benefiting anyone else but each other anyway and can’t hide behind the trickle down positive effect).
But people baking together to reach 1300 helps the people getting to 1000, helps everyone underneath that to get ANYWHERE.
