While they fix this, be careful of the opponent having reflect (they will have a small buff sphere icon above their spells) or having warlords mantle equipped (they reflect part of melee damage back). Even if the reflected damage doesn’t kill you, it will reduce your armor and reduce the points you win.
I believe the opposite happened with me yesterday. I used warlord’s mantle.
The opponent sent a killer match (big-big skull match, out of nowhere, of course). It seemed I would die. I didn’t, but the opponent died of reflect - I won.
I also suffered a defeat after killing the enemy, since I died afterwards I think it should count as a victory or not be counted and provide an extra battle. Anyway, I find the new PVP experience more interesting.
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I also died after defeating the other player. This should count as a win, methinks, regardless of whether i died because of reflect. At the very least, it should be a “draw” and not counted as a loss.
@Lyrian is right here. For several days no chance to progress anyway:
Seems also this idea can be thrown in the mass grave of crappy outcomes. T0, T1, some weird secret coding without any formula explanation to the community … so what will be your next move? Finally delete this PvP mess from the game and start all over for a “better” PvP future?
2 Likes
I am not at the top, so my problem differs.
Choice 1: too low for advancement, but sure 15 honor points
Choice 2: sometimes too low, sometimes just right and could give a few points, other times unbeatable (but better than the old system, where I constantly got too low opponents).
Choice 3: the top player, definitely unbeatable. So the lower players really have 2 - I meant 1 - choice for advancement.
As for the ‘Choice 2’ opponent, I began using a notepad, writing up if the hero was beatable or too strong for me. I would like this detail displayed when making the opponent choice: was the last 3 or 5 battle against them (in this league and week) win or loss? A popup window asking if I want to encounter that opponent again after suffering 5 losses from them would be even better.
The choice would be applicable for only that league and week.
This way the weakest players would spare some of the frustration of encountering the same big players again and again…
3 Likes
So this happened to me (see pic below): PvP against a player who had fallen shoulderguards resulted in runaway unbeatable conditions where their armor eventually went up to 903 million, and resistance to 2 billion. It’s like, if you don’t beat them quickly enough, the fight becomes unwinnable.
It seems like there are at least a few PvP circumstances that can result in an unwinnable match:
- Fallen Shoulderguards eventually provide runaway armor/resistance that can’t be overcome
- Reflect kills the player when they kill the opponent
- Full Starting Mana allows the opponent to immediately kill the player
That’s correct.
Going to quote myself from the another thread,
And what you are frustrated about is exactly this concern in action.
The Fallen Shoulders by themselves cannot cause the result that you have posted.
The interaction between the Fallen Shoulders, Savior’s Locket, and multiple healing mechanics causes this result to occur. With those kind of armor/resistance numbers, everything in the game becomes trivial to clear after a couple of rounds (and not just PvP).
More situations like this one are probably going to come out of the woodwork soon.
Thank you for the info and affirmation @Lyrian ! 
Glad to know im not completely crazy, haha. In my particular instance, I think “burn” also contributed to the exponential increase
I understand the new system.
It’s still broken though.
Please forgive me for being so blunt. I thought the idea was to get players to play the game day after day? I have to believe the idea here wasn’t “Let’s let players have a shot at scoring big…but then completely foreclose them from moving forward–effectively giving them just 2 or 3 days of real tournament play during the week.”
If this is how PVP works, there is no incentive for me to play 7 days a week. Might as well save myself the time if I see the same person over and over and can’t move my score up at all.
So, i usually dont play PvP, but today and yesterday i played through a bunch of matches. I gotta say, it really sucks to get stuck with these unwinnable scenarios. I cant see myself playing this game mode when 30% of my matches are straight up unwinnable due to weird game mechanics.
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I am certainly enjoying this current implementation of PVP more than the previous one. I enjoy getting more difficult opponents you have to do something special to beat. Then once you’ve done with your top 10 you can just pick easier opponents to collect your honor for the rest of the week. Assuming you don’t get someone else that is difficult and will help you improve your top 10 later on.
N.B. The unbeatable opponents and ones that start with full mana are a problem still though.
2 Likes
After some days with the new PvP system, this is what I think about the new changes.
Opponents having their item abilities
I believe this is a great improvement. Now battles feel much more PvP-like, they are challenging and exciting. You need more effort, strategy, even having to change your gear or spells to adapt to each opponent. Scoring is no longer a matter of just finding a big enemy, if you aren’t careful enough (sometimes even being so) you will be floored.
There are some issues related to this, though.
- The opponent’s spells starting at full mana. Since it has been confirmed not to be something intended I won’t say much more about it, I just hope it can be fixed soon.
- Fallen shoulderguards snowballing out of control. I have battled several players with Fallen shoulderguards, so I can say that this is not an universal issue. As long as your damage output is high enough compared to enemy’s defense, it can push through the items regenerative abilities. It is when the opponent clearly outranks you when it becomes impossible to kill it “fairly”, although there are some ways in which it can still be done. Now, to be honest I agree that this item has always been too overpowered, but we are only realizing now that we are facing it in PvPs. Solutions? I cannot find any apart of nerfing the item (for example gaining starting armor/resistance instead of max so that it doesn’t spiral out of control so easily). However, I am sure many players would be against it.
Matchmaking - only being able to get 1 top score from each opponent
This is an interesting change that probably has been implemented to avoid score ties. I believe it also gives PvPs an extra challenge since achieveming a perfect score is more important now that you cannot fight the same opponent once and again. Now that everyone should be getting paired against the top players, their ability to finish the fight with max score is what it will determine their placement, not just their strength. This has been something asked for, giving players the opportunity to compete for the top even with not too high gear/citadel, and I really like it.
Matchmaking - getting 1 similar opponent, 1 stronger opponent and the strongest one
Another feature asked for, I find it great that we have now the opportunity to always face against the strongest players. Again, this gives all the players the opportunity to compete for the top even if their gear/citadel is lacking. I love it.
The main issue with this is what @KerGiz explained, how lower players will have less choices available for them since they cannot go against the strongest opponents. Could it be possible to have something like and option/switch that could let the players decide if they want to be paired against the top players or not? That way lower level players could have more reasonable match ups, while higher level players could still get their top pairings.
Matchmaking - getting strongest opponent first and then down
This is something I find interesting. It was clear from the 2.3 PvP details that the new pairing system would lead to getting your max possible score within the first 2-3 days, and then getting only opponents that wouldn’t let you improve your score. This is something many players complained about with the previous PvPs, but with a big difference… Before, the complains were that we were never getting paired against the top ones, but now that is not a problem.
So the current issue mainly becomes that once you get your max possible score, the rest of the PvPs are meaningless, no incentive to play them as @HinnFalni said, apart from getting honor. Well, weren’t we complaining about PvPs requiring a too high time investment? Now, you only need some days to get your max score and then you can choose whether to stop playing until next tournament or playing fast battles to get your honor, as @shmaunpq said.
This issue is something that will happen in any type of tournament that has some kind of score limitation. Once you reach it, you won’t be able to advance further. The only way to avoid this would be to have no scoring limitations, and I am strongly against that. If absolutely all PvP battles give scoring opportunities, the pairings would also become much more important: placements would be decided mostly by how many big shots you were able to go against during the week. Also, time investment in PvPs would skyrocket.
Of course, this is just my personal opinion. I understand there are players that would prefer to get the excitement and thrill of competition from every single PvP battle.
Conclusion
All in all, I really like the new PvPs. They are more challenging and exciting, and they give every player the opportunity to compete for the top places. There are still issues and loose ends, sure, but I find PvPs gradually improving and becoming more satisfying.
4 Likes
If the current system stands, and there is literally only one chance to register a “top score” against a top 10 opponent (the only ones that matter for placement purposes), then you realize what the meta for PvP is, right?
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Play a PvP match against a top 10 opponent.
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If you can guarantee a top 10 opponent match plays out in a way that yields a perfect score (ex: you had a good starting board and filled all of your spells on Turn 1 and the AI side failed to match any skulls at all on their Turn 1), take the win and perfect score.
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If for ANY reason you cannot absolutely guarantee a perfect score in a given top 10 opponent match, immediately abort the match to avoid a top score from being registered.
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If you had to abort the match, repeat steps 1-3 until you do get a perfect score against that top 10 opponent.
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Repeat steps 1-4 until you have a perfect score on all top 10 opponent matches.
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Congratulations, you have just guaranteed a winning score for that tourney that week. The rest of the week is just a honor farm, if you so desire.
With only 10 perfect top 10 opponent wins needed in a pool of 77 energy for the week, there’s plenty of room for aborts and retries until your scores are perfect for that tourney.
That can’t possibly be how PvP was intended to play out?
The issue is that the amount of healing generated by shoulders eventually will overwhelm anybody’s damage capabilities, given enough time. Until that occurs, the opponent can be defeated normally. How much time that takes depends on the power levels of the offensive player and the healing strength of the defensive player.
You are understanding the foundational problem with the infinite healing issue. The Fallen Shoulders are NOT the problem. If you equip the shoulders by themselves, they do NOT cause the healing problem. So, nerfing the shoulders to limit them to starting armor and resistance will not resolve the problem fully, because that is not where the core issue lies.
In the case of the infinite healing, the problem lies with two game mechanics:
1a) The game currently translates the percentage of armor/resistance to be healed and then plugs the result into the normal healing formula. ← This is fine.
1b) Because the amount to be healed is subject to the healing formula, the amount is subject to influence by Healing Bonus.
1c) The Savior’s Locket adds to Healing Bonus with each spell cast. There is currently no limit to Healing Bonus.
2a) If the amount of armor or resistance calculated to be healed exceeds max armor or resistance, then the full amount of the heal is allowed and the resulting numbers are set as new max armor or resistance. There is currently no limit to maximum armor or resistance.
Note: There is a graphical cue in the healing animation for the armor and resistance bars when the max armor or resistance limits is raised that can be easily seen.
So, what happens is this:
- Armor effects process on incoming damage.
- Healing amount is calculated.
- Healing bonus is raised by the Savior’s Locket.
- If the amount healed exceeds incoming damage (likely because of a successful block or elemental resistance) and the amount healed exceeds current max armor/resistance, set new maximums for those stats.
- Rinse, lather, repeat with each successive turn.
Over time, Healing Bonus becomes so large that the healing calculation generates high enough results that guarantee raising of maximum armor and resistance. And with each successive turn, the amount healed grows exponentially because of increasing Healing Bonus and the continual reset of what the game considers to be maximum armor and resistance. The result is what was pictured above, with millions of armor and resistance regenerated with every single incoming piece of damage.
This is a textbook example of unchecked exponential growth, which really needs to be nipped in the bud fast. And because many stats in the game are allowed to have unchecked growth, the potential for similar issues to occur with other stats in the game is very high and is already occurring in other places in the game.
2 Likes
Plenty of players complained that in the previous version we weren’t able to get max scores because a lack of strong opponent pairings. Now that we have it, is that also a problem? We still need to get those individual perfect scores, so I don’t feel everyone can guarantee a max winning score as you say.
What is the difference between this and being able to fight against an opponent as much as you like until getting perfect score? At least, with current PvPs there is a cost to “trying again”, not winning honor (and there is always the possibility of something unexpected making you win the fight without a perfect score). Are you suggesting that we can only fight each opponent once?
To be honest, I see no problem at all in what you explain. What is the problem in your opinion?
Let fallen shoulders buff armor and resistance until it rolls over into the negatives. Then the corresponding damage goes right to their health.
Easy and done.
3 Likes
The scoring system looks at too small of a pool of players and uses too few scoring metrics that makes it too easy to max out any individual score.
But, I believe the devs are already highly aware of the situation.
It’s just going to be a long 7-8 weeks until 2.4 releases (unless a hotfix update happens). Until then, if the tactics I posted above are needed to score well, then so be it. That’s the current ruleset of the PvP universe everyone plays in and we can’t change those rules, no matter how flawed they are.
I play PvP now only to earn honor since that is one of the required currency and the PvP is the only way to earn. I don’t play for a challenge. I am choosing the lowest gear/point opponent and I can win only 50% of the time. You need to provide options for people who want a relaxing game that they can actually play or give players another way to earn honor so I can begin skipping PvP in its entirety.
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