PvP Tournament Points and why they prevent playing a new hero in PvP

Game Feedback & Ideas
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Good morning everyone,

I mentioned this before in one of the PvP discussions, but I’d like to open up a discussion and maybe draw more attention to this and find a good solution. Please note that my main pain point is that once you want to play a new character, the current system punishes you even more due the internal ranking system.

In the current system, all players are ranked. Given the feedback from @Jeto about the meaning of gear score (in the quote, “it” refers to Gear Score):

In my situation, I have:

  • Citadel Level > 100
  • a few mythical items (i.e., lvl 50 weapon)
  • Spellbook level 50
  • Close to moving from Platinum to Challenger League

As you can see, I am not really playing a lot of PvP (mainly due to the lack of time), but it was enough to increase the Tournament Points.
The only problem is: I do not like the character anymore and started focusing on two different classes. These heroes currently have no mythical items and a lower spellbook level of 35 and 45. But they share the tournament points, as they are account-wide.

Before the patch, I was matched against Opponents, where I died as soon as they filled the spells once or matched more than 5 skulls, (usually a GS of 2.9k+), so I had to switch back to my better-equipped character and to get a ~30-50% win ratio to receive some Honor. Sadly, this is no fun at all, especially, if you want to experiment with new class(es) and playstyles before investing Glyphs/Relics.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t want easy wins in PvP. But as Honor is an important currency, the current system feels really bad and it would take weeks of constantly losing battles to manually decrease the Tournament Points to the point, where playing makes sense with a lower character.

So … any ideas are welcome on how to make PvP accessible when you want to switch characters. So far, I have two ideas:

a) Make the Tournament Points character-based and let every character move through the Leagues on their own. This makes sense in multiple aspects and even with Citadel, Gear, etc. you can argue that some people have a benefactor, some don’t - so they can move up in rank faster, but no more harm is done.

b) As I don’t really care about the Tournament Points, I could also live with the option to reset the Tournament Points and start over. While this is less flexible, it still might give you the option to start again and move to a League, where your equipment / spells / etc. is reasonable.

I personally would prefer a) as this is the way almost all other games I know work (you create a new character, you start at 0) - but I could live with b) as well. Any other ideas?

PS: I just checked and I am still matched against players with all mythical except for 3 legendary items.

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You are right, playing with weaker characters and/or builds in PvP tourneys is difficult since your opponents are choosen based on your “strongest you”.

However, I don’t like the first alternative you propose. There are a lot of us that like or need to experiment with different builds and characters in PvP. There are periodic changes in how PvP works and the tourneys changing color and weapons can mean different characters being good at different times. Therefore, being able to change characters without penalty is important, and making PvP progression character dependent would be really annoying.

Furthermore, and together with your second suggestions, it could lead to unfair PvP behaviour, since players with really strong loadouts could easily abuse being in lower ranks by changing to unused characters or reseting the tournament points.

I understand your concerns and I do think it would be nice to have a way to address them. But I believe that what you propose would just shift the issue to other places. This is the problem of current PvPs, there are plenty of issues but no clear solutions on how to fix them without creating new ones. Since each player has their own way to play and enjoy PvPs, fixing what for one player is an issue can lead to creating an issue for other players.

Some players have proposed that we have the ability to choose our opponents, which I believe that could help solving plenty of current issues (yours, for example), but again it would open the door to abusing it by just fighting the weakest opponent and therefore lose all meaning of competition and challenge.

I hope that all our feedback together can help devs to find the sweet spot to make as many players as possible happy with PvPs.

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Why not use an (even existing) Elo ranking system per character (not player), as nearly any other game and competitive sports do? Why inventing the wheel new in this case?
Elo is not bound to anything then sucess in tourneys. Why rate a players citadell, why rate his char level, why rate his “power” level.
Just rate his performance with that char fightwise in comparison with another, as an Elo does, and based on some tourneys by the time we will get a nice and good view on which toons are best, which players have the most skill and are hardest to beat and who is a descent opp for every single toon and we are fine.

And additionally … we need new scoring rules anyways, even more cause spells can crit now and Tourneys even more got a lottery, does my spell crit , does it not, does it, shall I use it … or shall I better not use it … maybe opponent will get killed to early (you see the problem, a rating system that honors playing as weak as possible cant be the way) … and guess what, an Elo even automatically does a ladder afaik based on every fights outcome.

2 problems, one solution.

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You are both right in the point that the PvP system itself is broken, does not follow a clear path and seems to have been artificially fixed multiple times “to continue to work somehow”.

But it would make sense to think about how it should be, which sets the path how to get there.

The important aspect in what you said is: What is PvP progression in PQ3 and why does this make a progression per character good or bad?

In most other games with focus on PvP, PvP requires multiple components:

  • Equipment
  • Experience / Understanding the game mechanics
  • Player Skill / Tactics
  • optional: PvP-only content/stuff

And the PvP ranking rewards the players with PvP-only rewards. For example:

  • cosmetic items / morphs
  • PvP-only items
  • small (!) boosts for PvP stats - this is where most games fail because this easily creates an imbalance
  • Titles / Badges / Frames to show off

The incentives designing PvP should be:

  • PvP is accessible for everyone after a certain point in the game (if they chose to or not)
  • PvP is challenging for those, who commit themselves to it
  • PvP tests skill and/or strategy
  • PvP is rewarding but does not create unfair advantages (unless it is a PvP-only game)
  • PvP is optional, not mandatory (unless it is a PvP-only game)

In PQ3, PvP fails to address these things, because

  • it is not optional: you have to play it for Honor/Gems, required to get access to rare and required currency (especially Glyphs), also making it mandatory to advance in non-PvP gameplay
  • it does not test skill, it tests your equipment: this is extremely visible since 2.4
  • it does not require experience / strategy, it requires more grind (more non-PvP equipment, investing into multiple loadouts for restricted tournaments, which in turn require Honor/Gems)
  • it is not accessible for everyone, because you cannot access it with a fresh character once you are locked in with your first character
  • it is not rewarding, because there are no “fun” or “brag” rewards, just pure currency required for the game
  • it is not optional (mentioned before) if you want to progress your character(s)

Basically, the non-optional point makes PvP so annoying, because whenever you lose, it sets back you non-PvP advancement.

This might be a valid point currently, but again, the real question is: wouldn’t it make sense to adjust the league and reward system so that abuse is inherently impossible?

If the characters have their own Tournament Points and their own place in the Leagues, then changing to a low-ranked character will reduce the potential reward and also advance the character quickly to a higher tier.

Which brings me to:

I was wondering the same thing but did not want to suggest such a change. It would remove a lot of pain points, but an Elo system ranks the skills… which needs to be mapped to PQ3 somehow, where currently skill is not rated.

But regardless of the ranking system, let’s look at the Tournament Point system itself: The Tournament Point system is a linear progression system, which is highly unsuitable for PVP Leagues. Instead, Tournaments usually have a placement phase (again, with an existing elo system, this is really easy), then you enter a tournament (or you can enter late, but receive a penalty) and then play for placement. In PQ3, you have the weekly tournament phase, but the Leagues are not reset and placements are not determined by the outcome of your performance in the League.

This means: given a certain amount of time, every Account will move upwards and the lower tiers are empty.

So, as a conclusion: currently PvP is just another mandatory grind, which has many drawbacks both for new players, long-term players and hero-changing players.

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But anyway: I would really like to strongly point out that a game, which allows creating multiple Characters and where the design choices prevent them from being equally strong (now with the spellbook, it will take month/years to bring another character to the same strength), it would be really good to move these choices into PvP. And with the current system, I would really like to restart PvP with my new character instead of failing every fight over and over and stop playing PvP at all.

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Wow, Thalinae, Respect for that detailed answer and the good points you made.

I also did already think about that PvP in a way is not optional in PQ3 and that many ppl may play it even so they dont wana do, which explains why so many ppl play it, even so its really not good in many matters. And I guess one problem is that Dev does think ppl like it much more then they do cause most ppl play it.
Well, you did make very clear why PvP on PQ3 isnt a hit, not much more to say.
I dont agree in every point, e.g. that PvP in PQ3 doesn´t tests skill, it does not test it much, thats true, but there is also skill involved in just building some good PvP builds and then play them best way possible. Another point I dont agree is that I think it is rewarding, not in a fun way maybe, cause you cant get anything via PvP that you cant get with mindless grinding, but the reward is … you need less time to get it. You yourself mentioned that in a way with your point that its not optional to play PvP in PQ3.
I also want to add a point to your comparing list between PQ3 and other games.
PQ3 is a match 3 game … a very special one, but at its core its simple match 3, and match 3 wise the mechanic of PQ3 is also very, very basic and simple. Other match 3 games have varying playboards in size and shape, dozens of diffrent pieces and gimmicks that influence the board and its content in many ways and special mechanics for combing many of that pieces.
But none of the ones I know (except of the other game of the Dev) has a PvP mode.
So Match3 is not the best genre for PvP it seems.
And if we are honest, PQ3 does not have PvP also … it has PvP+AI (edit: should have called it PvPequipedAI). Which is not much diffrent from PvE.
So maybe we have to find first a way to make it real PvP with 2 players in real time playing against each other. Cause thats maybe the main reason why it does not really work.
And then we can speak again about how this real PvP should rate players , build ladders and rewards players.
So … I look forward to your and others suggestions.
Lets think about it, all together … Dev and players.
I am nearly sure, thats the key …

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Hey folks!

Thanks for taking the time to write this up and discuss it in such detail!

I just wanted to let you know I’ve seen this. I’m just catching up after the long weekend we just had.

I’ll send your feedback through to the development team and respond here with any follow up questions or comments I have soon.

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There is a lot broken about pvp. The 3 choice system is in a constant state of failure. Give me a history to rematch my losses. Give me new opponents each time.

Please :slight_smile: