[2020] PVP Changes

Hi Adventurers,

We’ve made a couple of changes to PVP in response to some of your feedback:

• Players over level 1,500 will now receive more Victory Points when choosing lower level opponents
  • Players over level 1,500 will now be considered as exactly level 1,500 when the attacker chooses an opponent who is lower level than them.

For example, if a player is level 1,700 and they choose a level 1,600 opponent, both players will be considered level 1,500 so the attacker’s Victory Points won’t be as reduced for fighting a lower level player.

• There was an issue where PVP defense teams weren’t as up-to-date as we all expected. This has been changed so each player’s defense team will be their most recently used PVP attack team in the region you’re fighting against them.

Note: You may still see some old teams until you either refresh your opponents with Gems or until after daily reset.

We have more changes to come for PVP and look forward to hearing more of your feedback about it!

This is fixed in the hotfix which will be out very very soon! Sorry

I am just checking about it crashing on the pre-battle screen as I wasn’t aware the crash was happening there too, hopefully it is solved by the same fix, but I will find out.

Just confirmed the fix should solve the issue on the pre-battle screen as well.

Hey all,

Just wanted to let you know I’ve been keeping an eye in here. I’m going to be making another PVP feedback report this week, so while any time is a good time to give feedback, now is especially a good time to give PVP feedback!

Thought I’d let you know in case there was anything else you wanted to share but maybe hadn’t yet. I know there’s tonnes of feedback already for me to include!

I’ve read everything up to this point but wanted clarity on one thing:

A lot of you are saying you want the Hero Class to be affected by the region restrictions, I’m just wondering would you want the colour restrictions to apply to the Weapon selection as well or not?

If not, I’d love to hear about why as part of the detail to include in the feedback.

My brain glitched ignore me

I’m low key wondering if restricting Weapons would actually make it more difficult.

ahaha it’s that time of day

Heyas, lots has been posted here overnight, just popping my head in to say I read it all and am up to date.

Here is a quick and brief summary from the top of my head of what was posted over night. I will go back over the entire thread and other places we received PVP feedback with a fine tooth comb later this is just high level stuff:

• Want more variety in opponent teams

  • Note: There was code in the old PVP system to be biased towards showing PVP opponents who had a different defense team - I’ve asked for this to be reviewed and checked

• Want clear Easy > Normal > Hard opponent options

  • Want Opponents to be based on Team Score, not level, for this reason

• Apply PVP region restrictions to Hero Classes

  • Note: I have concern this would make PVP more difficult for most of the player base

• Want the Elementalist class reviewed and possibly rebalanced (nerfed)

  • Particularly review Elementalist + Wand of Stars combination

• Want a more efficient way to farm Class XP

  • Note: This doesn’t have to be a solution provided in PVP even if it was the way to farm Class XP in the old system.

• Want an easy way to manage teams in PVP

• Want to be able to set PVP defense teams - not use attack teams as the defense team

  • In relation to defense teams: the dev team already agreed to surface a way to test teams like how we used to be able to test our teams easily. No ETA yet (not sure which update this will be included in).

• Want to be able to farm for Pet Gnomes, not having Casual PVP is making this very difficult

  • Note: If this isn’t solved by the feedback about having clear easy and normal opponent options, maybe this is something we can address in a different game mode?

I’ll add this as it’s own point as it’s not related to the actual difficulty but to the base VP rewarded which is a separate topic.

What level is your account?

Nope, if you read the thread there was mixed feedback about this.
I’m not going to tell the team to nerf the class, but there’s been enough debate here about it that it needs to be looked at as to why Elementalist is a topic at all.

To be clear: Our stance is to avoid nerfs, so any review of it will be with us asking “does it really need this though? What are the other factors here? Will any of the other changes we’re working on or any of the feedback here address this point indirectly instead of having to touch the class? Can we implement other feedback and release the other updates we’re already working on and see if the feedback about Elementalist changes because of those updates?”

It’s gonna be ok!

I put disclaimers all over that post for a reason
That was a dot point summary off the top of my head of the discussion that happened in this thread last night, I was dot pointing what you were all talking about. It was not my report to the team, it was not meant to contain every minute detail.

I probably shouldn’t have said “want Elementalist reviewed” I should have written “Discussion about Elementalist in PVP” or something else - the point is, the wording only matters in that I didn’t mean to freak you out, that post was for you all here, not for anyone else.

I take it everyone is having a hell of a hump day (or Tuesday for those not yet at Wednesday yet).

I could definitely use another coffee, can I grab one for anyone else here?
Iced mocha for me, cheers

Edit: I just realised this post was a reply to Kelana, sorry Kelana, this was not meant as a direct response to you, I guess I hit reply on your post instead of the main reply button for the thread haha

Setting expectations: this isn’t likely.
I’m hoping to have something about it next week sometime.

We were already discussing these points earlier in the week:

So if I do get any news it might be about those, but I think more time is needed.

On a technical level for a programmer it would be faster to implement probably - but in every other aspect of game dev it would not be easier or less time consuming.

This is definitely at the top of my list with PVP and Guild Wars for sure. But no news currently

I gave my weekly community report this morning about 2 hours before you posted this comment (short verbal report) and I absolutely mentioned this as well. That we’re getting a lot of PVP feedback but, sparing the details of the feedback for a more official report, it was just so great to see so much constructive community engagement over the game features itself.

I feel like everyone has started the new year on a much better note and it’s been so fantastic to see the discussions with different opinions (or even the same opinions) in a more constructive way than we have seen some of these discussions historically. This despite the issues that have popped up so far this year.

It is making it much easier for team members to jump in and read what is going on directly and for me as a CX Agent to jump in and be more part of the discussion with you because while I know I have to be careful with my wording (see me putting my foot in my mouth on that one point earlier), it’s far easier to just talk here like a regular person with you all in an environment like this and I’m really enjoying being more involved and also being able to confer with you back and forth over things

I think the Guild Wars post Nim made is a good example of how we’d like to communicate on a more regular basis by sharing what’s behind the scenes and asking your opinions so we can discuss together and hopefully involve you all more in the dev process when possible. The development schedule is fast paced but this was one of those times we have a good lead in to include you in the discussion a bit. We still will have to say “no” for various reasons sometimes, and we can’t make everyone happy all the time but I think this way of communicating is a step in the right direction and this constructive environment helps foster that.

So TLDR I’m just echoing this sentiment:

Thank you all <3

No? Because that team might show up in one of the opponent slots but not all 3, so the attacker would have more options. Also this code doesn’t restrict which team you use as an attacker, so if you want to use that team you still can, it just means you will show up less as someone else’s opponent which doesn’t impact your own gameplay.

Ah, yes! That’s correct, the code tries to select 3 opponents who have teams that are different from each other - what the attacker is using isn’t factored in

Hey all,

Just an update on PVP stuff:

The current first priority is investigating a couple of issues:

1. When PVP opponents are refreshed, only the first opponent is refreshed
2. Reviewing the code that is meant to favor showing 3 different teams in your opponent selection, due to the reports of seeing 3 of the same team.

Once those 2 things have been looked into we will then move onto looking at the 2 highest priority pieces of feedback:

1. Opponent Team variety
2. Clear easy > normal > hard opponent selections

The reason we’re looking at the 2 issues first is because they will affect these 2 points of feedback as well. We think these 2 points of feedback will have the biggest impact for the most amount of players. We are still looking at the other feedback as well but we have to start somewhere

Just wanted to let you know the team have already made a start on the feedback provided and are taking it step by step!

I will have to catch up in here on what has been said over the weekend. We received a lot of lengthy Guild Wars feedback so I’ve been busy writing that up for the team so we can come back with some answers so that topic can get some good communication on it as well.

I’ll definitely read through here in the next couple of days to catch up and let you know as I have updates to the feedback you’ve given though.

I know you’ve been waiting a long time for this and I will follow up, but priority order will be things that affect core gameplay closest > things that affect core gameplay least (generally speaking, there’s lots of reasons for exceptions to this and other factors to consider).

I don’t personally have the stats about engagement rates with the PVP rework, but anything affecting that engagement rate, as you’ve suggested, as general but critical feedback about a core game mode is going to generally take priority over very specific endgame collection feedback.

I absolutely hear what you’re saying re: the dragons and needing to be able to target them. I’ve seen all the screenshots posted where people have heaps of duplicates of all of them except 1. But full transparency there’s little chance that is going to take priority if it means a programmer has to be pulled off working on a core game mode that has major pain points for every player in the game.

I know everyone is irritated about the targetting Dragons feature not coming sooner after we said we had plans, but I think we should all probably be upset and question priorities if that was prioritised over the PVP feedback, because the game should be enjoyable in the meantime while waiting to craft things.

I also know we promised this quite awhile ago, unfortunately, circumstances changed so it hasn’t been able to fit in the development schedule yet. It’s still on the list. Part of being able to share plans with the community means sometimes the timeline for it is going to be long, sometimes we won’t know when something is going to be done and sometimes even if we do have a solid ETA, that ETA can change. But we preferred to let you know we were going to do something about it than to say nothing about it.

I do get that it’s frustrating waiting for it.

Hey all, can we please keep the Gem and Cosmic Dragon drop rate feedback separate from the PVP thread? If you want both sets of feedback to be more easily seen by the team it’s better to keep them separate so that they can come to the PVP thread for PVP feedback and Dragon drop rate thread for dragon drop rates. The drop rate has nothing to do with PVP so doesn’t belong in this thread- don’t fight me - I know Stellarix is making PVP more difficult but increasing the dragon drop rate/adding duplicate protection is not how we’re going to fix PVP.

Cheers and have a great weekend.