General Weapon Refinery discussion/speculation/creation thread

[Diovani Bressan]

3 hours ago, XRay said:

It would also be nice to see Cavalry Boots Sacred Seal.

Cavalry Boots?! You mean... Be able to move up to 4 spaces?!

[XRay]

1 hour ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Cavalry Boots?! You mean... Be able to move up to 4 spaces?!

Yes. No. It should be 6 spaces. Armor Boots doubles an armor unit's movement, so I demand cavalry get the same treatment!

[Fabulously Olivier]

5 hours ago, XRay said:

I am a little salty that ranged units are not getting the love they deserve.

I propose throwing game balance out the window by releasing armor/dragon effective Sacred Seals, and removing BST, SP, Bonus unit, and Bonus kill scoring criteria. Flying Firesweep healers with armor effective damage would be great.

It would also be nice to see Cavalry Boots Sacred Seal.

In fairness, BST and SP scoring criteria should be removed. All it does is needlessly restrict the top level metagame not by effectiveness but by requirement.

[bottlegnomes]

5 hours ago, XRay said:

I am a little salty that ranged units are not getting the love they deserve.

I'm real salty about how they bent over backwards to nerf cavalry and boost armors back when cavalry dominated, but now that armors hardcore dominate, they just double down on nerfing cavs and boosting armors. So I definitely feel you here.

Edited October 10, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Shiki]

Innes' is disappointing and serves no purpose.

Cool, he can now shoot dragons but why? He won't achieve clean ORKO against them with their massive bulk. He has just similar performance as Firesweep!Cordelia (+1 Atk, -1 Spd) against them with the marginal bonus of having the default -owl effect.
No counterattack against mages is not particularly useful either since
1. he doesn't double most of them.
2. against most modern mages, if he doesn't kill them they just blow him up during PP with a Special.

They should have given him something that complements his anti-mage role during EP more. Flat damage reduction from magic, Guard-like effects an additional bond passive, all of that would have helped him to combat the modern mages. But this does nothing for his niche and there is still no reason reason to deploy him against dragons.

Edited October 10, 2018 by The Priest

[Diovani Bressan]

2 hours ago, XRay said:

Yes. No. It should be 6 spaces. Armor Boots doubles an armor unit's movement, so I demand cavalry get the same treatment!

The function of Armoreed Boots isn't to double armored unit's movement. It gives one extra space of movement to the unit. Of course the double of 1 is 2, but still...

Armored Boots: "At start of turn, if unit's HP = 100%, unit can move 1 extra space. (That turn only. Does not stack.)"

What IS could do is create a seal that nullifies cavalry units problems with trenches. "At start of turn, if unit's HP = 100%, unit can move through trenches tiles without reducing unit's movement."

[XRay]

57 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

Of course the double of 1 is 2, but still...

It is about throwing game balance out the window fairness. Armors got twice the movement, so should ponies.

57 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

What IS could do is create a seal that nullifies cavalry units problems with trenches. "At start of turn, if unit's HP = 100%, unit can move through trenches tiles without reducing unit's movement."

I like the way you think. You should have the honor to name this epic Sacred Seal.

2 hours ago, Etheus said:

In fairness, BST and SP scoring criteria should be removed. All it does is needlessly restrict the top level metagame not by effectiveness but by requirement.

Yeah, and then armors will finally get off their high horse on tier lists. Only ponies can ride high horses.

2 hours ago, bottlegnomes said:

I'm real salty about how they bent over backwards to nerf cavalry and boost armors back when cavalry dominated, but now that armors hardcore dominate, they just double down on nerfing cavs and boosting armors. So I definitely feel you here.

I am actually fine with trenches and armor exclusive skills, but what I am not fine with is their decision to move Arena away from a mode where the best performing team succeeds to a mode where you babysit and feed kills to a bonus unit.

They heavily penalized Player Phase teams (and combat performance teams in general) by scoring them less just to make crappier units and skills be used more often.

If they cannot return Arena to the way it was before, then I think they should release a new PVP mode without the arbitrary scoring crap and judge a team based solely on performance. Ideally, I also want the mode to not factor in merges, so all units will basically be treated as if their stats are 5*+10.

[Fabulously Olivier]

18 minutes ago, XRay said:

It is about throwing game balance out the window fairness. Armors got twice the movement, so should ponies.

I like the way you think. You should have the honor to name this epic Sacred Seal.

Yeah, and then armors will finally get off their high horse on tier lists. Only ponies can ride high horses.

I am actually fine with trenches and armor exclusive skills, but what I am not fine with is their decision to move Arena away from a mode where the best performing team succeeds to a mode where you babysit and feed kills to a bonus unit.

They heavily penalized Player Phase teams (and combat performance teams in general) by scoring them less just to make crappier units and skills be used more often.

If they cannot return Arena to the way it was before, then I think they should release a new PVP mode without the arbitrary scoring crap and judge a team based solely on performance. Ideally, I also want the mode to not factor in merges, so all units will basically be treated as if their stats are 5*+10.

I can agree with all of this. 

 

New criteria could include:

Wins (return to 7 wins to allow for more score differences)

Surviving Units

Turn Count (bonus if under 5 turns)

Merges

 

You shouldn't really need more factors than that.

 

I would keep merges solely because it separates regular players from long time players and whales. It is the only scoring criteria that correctly and reasonably does so. 

[Diovani Bressan]

20 minutes ago, XRay said:

I like the way you think. You should have the honor to name this epic Sacred Seal.

A generic name would be Cavalry Boots, or Horseshoes.

[Fabulously Olivier]

4 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

A generic name would be Cavalry Boots, or Horseshoes.

Horsehoes would fit.

 

If we get a flier equivalent, it could be Speedwings.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Etheus

[Ice Dragon]

3 hours ago, Etheus said:

In fairness, BST and SP scoring criteria should be removed. All it does is needlessly restrict the top level metagame not by effectiveness but by requirement.

You can say that all you want, but there's no good objective way to measure a unit's "effectiveness".

The usual way to do this sort of measurement is to use a ladder system where after a large enough number of matches, you can see how well a team performs, but this method relies on the assumption that that players keep the same team over a long period of time and therefore play a lot of matches with it, which is not how this game mode works at all.

On the short time scales necessitated by the game mode format and with the ability to change your team at any time, you need a matchmaking system that can determine a "matchmaking rating" immediately.

I see a lot of people saying what parts of the matchmaking rating should be removed or what should be considered, but no one has yet come up and actually given a concrete "better" means of calculating a matchmaking rating without handwaving away the "figure out how 'strong' a unit is" part, which is kind of the most important part of the calculation. Have any of you actually tried tackling coming up with the calculation to determine how "strong" a unit is?

 

25 minutes ago, XRay said:

Yeah, and then armors will finally get off their high horse on tier lists.

Just about every tier list out there doesn't consider scoring potential when rating characters, so nothing would change.

 

5 minutes ago, Etheus said:

New criteria could include:

Wins (return to 7 wins to allow for more score differences)

Surviving Units

Turn Count (bonus if under 5 turns)

Merges

 

You shouldn't really need more factors than that.

 

I would keep merges solely because it separates regular players from long time players and whales. It is the only scoring criteria that correctly and reasonably does so. 

That sounds like a terrible idea.

First off, the biggest problem, you've thrown any semblance of matchmaking itself completely out the window. The only criterion you've listed that is based on the team composition itself is the number of merges, and that's a horrible measure of anything other than how much time or money you've invested in the game.

Second, if you've removed bonus units altogether (since you didn't mention them at all), you've pretty much removed a significant motivation to pull for new characters since players would just be able to get 4 +10's and never need to pull for anything new ever again unless it suited their fancy. I mean, sure, if you want the game to die, this is a great way to do it.

Finally, turn count is a terrible measure of anything. It unnecessarily punishes a lot of luck-based factors, such as being matched against an enemy team that requires positioning to separate and pick off, getting matched on a map with long distances between teams (and obstacles in the way), and getting matched on a map with fortification tiles out the wazoo. It also unfairly punishes melee units, infantry, and armors and gives unfair scoring advantages to fliers and cavalry.

If you're looking for better equity (there's a difference between equality and equity) and fairness in the Arena, this flat out doesn't work. It fails equity for the same reason the current system does: it favors specific weapon and movement types over others. It fails fairness by putting a huge luck-based factor in the scoring criteria.

[Jotari]

45 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You can say that all you want, but there's no good objective way to measure a unit's "effectiveness".

The usual way to do this sort of measurement is to use a ladder system where after a large enough number of matches, you can see how well a team performs, but this method relies on the assumption that that players keep the same team over a long period of time and therefore play a lot of matches with it, which is not how this game mode works at all.

On the short time scales necessitated by the game mode format and with the ability to change your team at any time, you need a matchmaking system that can determine a "matchmaking rating" immediately.

I see a lot of people saying what parts of the matchmaking rating should be removed or what should be considered, but no one has yet come up and actually given a concrete "better" means of calculating a matchmaking rating without handwaving away the "figure out how 'strong' a unit is" part, which is kind of the most important part of the calculation. Have any of you actually tried tackling coming up with the calculation to determine how "strong" a unit is?

 

Just about every tier list out there doesn't consider scoring potential when rating characters, so nothing would change.

 

That sounds like a terrible idea.

First off, the biggest problem, you've thrown any semblance of matchmaking itself completely out the window. The only criterion you've listed that is based on the team composition itself is the number of merges, and that's a horrible measure of anything other than how much time or money you've invested in the game.

Second, if you've removed bonus units altogether (since you didn't mention them at all), you've pretty much removed a significant motivation to pull for new characters since players would just be able to get 4 +10's and never need to pull for anything new ever again unless it suited their fancy. I mean, sure, if you want the game to die, this is a great way to do it.

Finally, turn count is a terrible measure of anything. It unnecessarily punishes a lot of luck-based factors, such as being matched against an enemy team that requires positioning to separate and pick off, getting matched on a map with long distances between teams (and obstacles in the way), and getting matched on a map with fortification tiles out the wazoo. It also unfairly punishes melee units, infantry, and armors and gives unfair scoring advantages to fliers and cavalry.

If you're looking for better equity (there's a difference between equality and equity) and fairness in the Arena, this flat out doesn't work. It fails equity for the same reason the current system does: it favors specific weapon and movement types over others. It fails fairness by putting a huge luck-based factor in the scoring criteria.

Turn count rewards/penalties could be altered using the map as a multiplier, just like how Bonus EXP in Radiant Dawn isn't a flat <10 turn limit. It raises or lowers based on how many turns the chapter is expected to take. I also doubt they're suggesting the removal of bonus units (because why would anyone be?) and merely forgot to mention it.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Jotari

[Fabulously Olivier]

32 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

You can say that all you want, but there's no good objective way to measure a unit's "effectiveness".

The usual way to do this sort of measurement is to use a ladder system where after a large enough number of matches, you can see how well a team performs, but this method relies on the assumption that that players keep the same team over a long period of time and therefore play a lot of matches with it, which is not how this game mode works at all.

On the short time scales necessitated by the game mode format and with the ability to change your team at any time, you need a matchmaking system that can determine a "matchmaking rating" immediately.

I see a lot of people saying what parts of the matchmaking rating should be removed or what should be considered, but no one has yet come up and actually given a concrete "better" means of calculating a matchmaking rating without handwaving away the "figure out how 'strong' a unit is" part, which is kind of the most important part of the calculation. Have any of you actually tried tackling coming up with the calculation to determine how "strong" a unit is?

 

Just about every tier list out there doesn't consider scoring potential when rating characters, so nothing would change.

 

That sounds like a terrible idea.

First off, the biggest problem, you've thrown any semblance of matchmaking itself completely out the window. The only criterion you've listed that is based on the team composition itself is the number of merges, and that's a horrible measure of anything other than how much time or money you've invested in the game.

Second, if you've removed bonus units altogether (since you didn't mention them at all), you've pretty much removed a significant motivation to pull for new characters since players would just be able to get 4 +10's and never need to pull for anything new ever again unless it suited their fancy. I mean, sure, if you want the game to die, this is a great way to do it.

Finally, turn count is a terrible measure of anything. It unnecessarily punishes a lot of luck-based factors, such as being matched against an enemy team that requires positioning to separate and pick off, getting matched on a map with long distances between teams (and obstacles in the way), and getting matched on a map with fortification tiles out the wazoo. It also unfairly punishes melee units, infantry, and armors and gives unfair scoring advantages to fliers and cavalry.

If you're looking for better equity (there's a difference between equality and equity) and fairness in the Arena, this flat out doesn't work. It fails equity for the same reason the current system does: it favors specific weapon and movement types over others. It fails fairness by putting a huge luck-based factor in the scoring criteria.

Matchmaking isn't supposed to take tier lists or class strength into account in any game. Ever. Otherwise, we'd see fighting games' online matchmaking forcing constant mirror matches (worst case scenario) or constantly updating to only match players against players using characters in the same tier with no regard to counterpicking.

 

It is a baffling, terrible idea to try to impose arbitrary unit strengths to achieve some sort of equity because no unit rating system is going to be accurate even in a vacuum, much less in predicting niche case uses and counterpicking. It is better and more accurate to give every unit the same value at max level (which in this game is 5*10) and let the player determine what is and is not optimal for their setup against foes who do the same.

 

Also, unit rating systems that attempt to officially tier characters are an admittance by the developer that they have messed up on unit balance whether intentionally or by human error. Whether that is inevitable is irrelevant. It is still an admission of guilt.

 

The same also applies to skills, by the way, and this is demonstrable. For most units, for example, the most effective specials are Moonbow and Glimmer. However, if you want to be maximizing your score, you need Galeforce or Aether, which are only beneficial to very particular builds.

 

Rarity and merges are the only objective strength criteria in this game and should be as such.

 

I'll grant you bonus units as a necessary evil.

 

Turn count is no worse than unit survival as a scoring criteria. There are plenty of legitimate strategies which intentionally sacrifice a unit to achieve an overall victory, and this is also a luck-based factor, as it punishes the player for being matched up against an offensive team on a map which emphasizes the opposing team's strengths. We accept unit survival as a necessary evil that creates more score differences. That said, turn bonuses should be tailored by map, if used at all.

 

So:

Wins

Rarity

Merges

Bonus Unit

Unit Survival

Turn Count (under Par, Par varying by map)

Edited October 10, 2018 by Etheus

[XRay]

24 minutes ago, Etheus said:

I would keep merges solely because it separates regular players from long time players and whales. It is the only scoring criteria that correctly and reasonably does so. 

I think free players should be given a bone and be able compete with whales on more equal footing. Arena is dominated by whales. Arena Assault is more accessible, but it still requires the player to spend some amount of money to be able to summon lots of fodder to build counter units en masse. Grand Conquest theoretically is an equal playing field, but unless you are part of a community like Serenes Forest or Reddit, free players are going to have a hard time befriending lots 5*+10 units.

I guess it is not a big deal, but I would like the difference in rewards to be less pronounced between the top and bottom tier to make it less stressful for free players and slowly ease them into other PVP modes, and hopefully, the positive experience would convert some into paying players.

22 minutes ago, Diovani Bressan said:

A generic name would be Cavalry Boots, or Horseshoes.

I like Horseshoes. I prefer reserving the name Boots for skills that double movement.

Maybe Horseshoes can even be a C slot skill that allows the unit and allies to cross trenches together if they are adjacent at the beginning of the turn.

2 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Just about every tier list out there doesn't consider scoring potential when rating characters, so nothing would change.

I know they do not consider scoring potential, but the type of enemies we face is skewed by scoring potential, so their rating is in turn indirectly a little skewed in my opinion. If Player Phase teams and combat performance were not penalized for scoring less, I think they would place more emphasis on mobility. Having amazing combat performance is nice when you are not facing stuff like Candlelight and Firesweep on a regular basis.

15 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Second, if you've removed bonus units altogether (since you didn't mention them at all), you've pretty much removed a significant motivation to pull for new characters since players would just be able to get 4 +10's and never need to pull for anything new ever again unless it suited their fancy. I mean, sure, if you want the game to die, this is a great way to do it.

They can still keep the current Arena and have Arena 2.0 at the same time. If you want all the rewards, you still need merges and expensive fodder for regular Arena.

17 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Finally, turn count is a terrible measure of anything. It unnecessarily punishes a lot of luck-based factors, such as being matched against an enemy team that requires positioning to separate and pick off, getting matched on a map with long distances between teams (and obstacles in the way), and getting matched on a map with fortification tiles out the wazoo. It also unfairly punishes melee units, infantry, and armors and gives unfair scoring advantages to fliers and cavalry.

Turn count can be compromised with a 6 turn limit, or whatever you feel is most appropriate. I think expediency is a performance virtue so I would like to have it implemented, but if it places an unfair burden, I think it is fine to remove it later.

[Fabulously Olivier]

18 minutes ago, XRay said:

I think free players should be given a bone and be able compete with whales on more equal footing. Arena is dominated by whales. Arena Assault is more accessible, but it still requires the player to spend some amount of money to be able to summon lots of fodder to build counter units en masse. Grand Conquest theoretically is an equal playing field, but unless you are part of a community like Serenes Forest or Reddit, free players are going to have a hard time befriending lots 5*+10 units.

I guess it is not a big deal, but I would like the difference in rewards to be less pronounced between the top and bottom tier to make it less stressful for free players and slowly ease them into other PVP modes, and hopefully, the positive experience would convert some into paying players.

You're missing my point. Merge scoring is for the benefit of new players and free players, not the detriment. Otherwise, there is a very real chance of any regular 5 star team going up against and being dominated by whales with full or partial +10 merges, rare skills, and high value units. Conversely, it also allows high-investment teams to not completely trivialize the arena and bore the whales.

Yes, it means that newer players aren't going to reach the leaderboards for a long time, but the alternative is a terrible player experience that will cause the game to bleed players.

[bottlegnomes]

@XRay I'm fine with trenches and them helping out armors since they were in a bad spot, but the degree to which they've taken it bugs me. Bold Fighter is the biggest offender. I mean, why do armors get boosted BST, their choice of guaranteed top tier PP or EP, access to every skill, and multiple ways to mitigate what was supposed to be their major flaw, movement? Cavs (and fliers for the first one) have access to exactly one cooldown speeding skill, HB (unless there are some I'm forgetting), and have had their stats boosted very minimally for Gen 2, on top of trenches making their mobility not mean nearly as much. It's not that any one, or even multiple, of those things are issues. It's that all of them have been introduced with no signs of things changing to head back to more of a balance.

@Ice Dragon Just come out and say that arena is meant to encourage whaling instead of adding more and more features that tilt it that way without actively acknowledging it. Something like (unit's lowest available rarity) + (lowest available rarity of skills) + (merges) and possibly - (age of unit). Obviously with some modifiers to make things balance in IS's favor, e.g. launch 5* (Lucina) is still more valuable than recent drop (Lene). Sure, it'd probably piss people off, but so have basically all of the recent changes, and it would let whales run whatever movement types they want.

[Diovani Bressan]

2 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Bold Fighter is the biggest offender.

In my opinion, Bold Fighter should work only if the unit has HP ≥ 50%. Basically, Bold FIghter 2 should be Bold FIghter 3.

Do you remember when Ephraim got his refinement? The "If unit's HP ≥ 90% and unit initiates combat, unit makes a guaranteed follow-up attack" effect? At the time, players were considering great a unit be able to do a guaranteed follow-up attack when HP is high. Then, one month later, Bold FIghter came saying: "Hey Ephraim. That's a cool weapon, but it can do what I do?"

[XRay]

23 minutes ago, Etheus said:

You're missing my point. Merge scoring is for the benefit of new players and free players, not the detriment. Otherwise, there is a very real chance of any regular 5 star team going up against and being dominated by whales with full or partial +10 merges, rare skills, and high value units. Conversely, it also allows high-investment teams to not completely trivialize the arena and bore the whales.

Yes, it means that newer players aren't going to reach the leaderboards for a long time, but the alternative is a terrible player experience that will cause the game to bleed players.

They can just give everyone a stat boost like in Arena and Grand Conquest, but limit the boost to merge+10. That was what I was trying to refer to, but I guess I did not word it right.

19 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Bold Fighter is the biggest offender. I mean, why do armors get boosted BST, their choice of guaranteed top tier PP or EP, access to every skill, and multiple ways to mitigate what was supposed to be their major flaw, movement?

I guess this is down to player's team composition. For me, armor units pose absolutely no challenge because they still cannot reach me despite having access to Armor Boots and Armor March while my ponies are being slowed down by Trenches. Having Dancers/Singers boosts my mobility by a lot, and it offsets the trench penalty quite a bit. Since they cannot reach me, it makes Bold Fighter irrelevant. For Enemy Phase armors, I just take them down with Firesweep Bow-Poison Strike.

I think non armor melee units may need a buff, but I do not play them enough to give much recommendation. Maybe give them their Grand Conquest effects as additional Sacred Seals? Infantry gets another Quickened Pulse, armors get another Armor Boots but better without the HP requirement, ponies get pony-only Bold Fighter, and fliers get super Guidance.

Having effective damage Sacred Seals would also help a lot.

Edited October 10, 2018 by XRay

[bottlegnomes]

@Diovani Bressan My major issue with it is that a PP double means a lot more because it makes speed a nonfactor. With QR and VF, sure, it guarantees a double, but if you dump speed, you still need to survive two attacks. That's default winter Tharja's major problem. A PP double means you need to survive at max, one attack, unless you're failing to kill the unit, in which case, why is that engagement happening.

In practice, VF is a step up from QR. The cooldown bonus is nice, but doesn't come into play unless the unit can avoid or tank a double. Avoiding a double means other stats suffer, reducing overall performance elsewhere, and tanking a double can be risky. There are factors that mitigate its strength.

BF amounts to essentially HB infinity + darting blow infinity since if the enemy survived, you're doing something wrong. There's basically no downside to it.

But rant aside, yeah, the HP threshold does just make matters worse. Ephraim, and Alm and Celica since they aren't that far off functionally, can basically do that for one round without assistance or delaying. Armors can do that the entire time they're alive.

@XRay You're looking at is as how much of a problem do these units cause me when I encounter them as enemies? Tier lists look at units as how braindead is it to win with them under my control? That's what I mean by favoritism. PP nukes need to engage in a way where they can either ORKO while surviving, trickier with def tiles and the overall bulk and damage output increases, or kite in a way that keeps them safe. Armors inch forward and murder everything since the AI doesn't kite and can be baited with relative safety because their bulk is massive.

Edited October 10, 2018 by bottlegnomes

[Hilda]

1 hour ago, XRay said:

They can just give everyone a stat boost like in Arena and Grand Conquest, but limit the boost to merge+10. That was what I was trying to refer to, but I guess I did not word it right.

I guess this is down to player's team composition. For me, armor units pose absolutely no challenge because they still cannot reach me despite having access to Armor Boots and Armor March while my ponies are being slowed down by Trenches. Having Dancers/Singers boosts my mobility by a lot, and it offsets the trench penalty quite a bit. Since they cannot reach me, it makes Bold Fighter irrelevant. For Enemy Phase armors, I just take them down with Firesweep Bow-Poison Strike.

I think non armor melee units may need a buff, but I do not play them enough to give much recommendation. Maybe give them their Grand Conquest effects as additional Sacred Seals? Infantry gets another Quickened Pulse, armors get another Armor Boots but better without the HP requirement, ponies get pony-only Bold Fighter, and fliers get super Guidance.

Having effective damage Sacred Seals would also help a lot.

That might be true for Arena Assault, but your ponies wont go against 4x Armors in normal Arena because of BST scoring soooo. The whole problem with Arena is the BST bonus Armorers get. I am fine with the SP skill being calculated into points but base BST?! Come on get rid of that fuckery.

[Ice Dragon]

44 minutes ago, Etheus said:

Matchmaking isn't supposed to take tier lists or class strength into account in any game. Ever. Otherwise, we'd see fighting games' online matchmaking forcing constant mirror matches (worst case scenario) or constantly updating to only match players against players using characters in the same tier with no regard to counterpicking.

There's a fundamental difference between matchmaking in fighting games and matchmaking in "team building" games and that's the metric that is being used for ranking.

In fighting games, matchmaking is based on a player's skill. Because each player has only a single ranking, this softly enforces that players will always be using the character or characters that they are most familiar with and have the most skill with. Effectively, this removes the need to re-rank a player every time they change characters and makes the ladder format of matching players against players of similar rank a suitable form of matchmaking.

In team building games, the entire point of the competitive game is creating and adjusting a team. While skill plays a part in player ranking, it plays a much smaller part than the actual performance of the team being used. This poses a large problem when adjustments to a team are frequent because it's no longer players moving up and down the ladder, it's teams moving up and down the ladder, and the new team will need to be re-ranked. This takes time, and is therefore not suitable for a format that uses weekly rankings.

Because of this, there needs to be a means of performing the re-ranking portion instantaneously, without the need for the player to constantly be re-playing placement matches. This therefore necessitates an imperfect (unless the game is simple enough to accurately mathematically measure expected performance from the members themselves) and arbitrary matchmaking mechanism that can be calculated from your team's constituent members.

This is why "mirror matches" (loosely speaking) are not the norm for matchmaking in fighting games, but is the norm for Heroes. The metric being measured and the time scales required for rewarding placement are entirely different.

 

Finally, counterpicking is not a significant factor in most online ladder formats for fighting games. You typically don't see your opponent's pick until after your own pick, which limits your ability to counterpick typically to only the information of who your opponent plays most often, not who your opponent actually picked. Counterpicking is a tournament strategy, not a ladder strategy.

 

1 hour ago, bottlegnomes said:

Just come out and say that arena is meant to encourage whaling instead of adding more and more features that tilt it that way without actively acknowledging it.

I won't because it isn't. I want to see this game continue to succeed and I have no need to be a cynical prick.

 

As for my opinion on the Arena itself. I think the only change that is necessary is to restrict the maximum number of points obtained from bonus unit kills. The part that is unhealthy to the current Arena format is that you need to get your bonus unit to get all 20 kills to maximize the number of points, which turns the Arena core that you should be taking pride in into a glorified babysitting service.

What I believe was the motivation for this feature was the fact that players were constructing teams of a 3-unit core and tacking on a bonus unit in the back that did nothing except boost the team's score. This partly defeated the purpose of having bonus units at all of they weren't being used.

I think that by limiting the maximum number of points obtained from bonus unit kills to 10 kills (30 points), there would be a better balance between making players use their bonus units and allowing players to still use their Arena core for what they were meant to do.

 

[Fabulously Olivier]

47 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

There's a fundamental difference between matchmaking in fighting games and matchmaking in "team building" games and that's the metric that is being used for ranking.

In fighting games, matchmaking is based on a player's skill. Because each player has only a single ranking, this softly enforces that players will always be using the character or characters that they are most familiar with and have the most skill with. Effectively, this removes the need to re-rank a player every time they change characters and makes the ladder format of matching players against players of similar rank a suitable form of matchmaking.

In team building games, the entire point of the competitive game is creating and adjusting a team. While skill plays a part in player ranking, it plays a much smaller part than the actual performance of the team being used. This poses a large problem when adjustments to a team are frequent because it's no longer players moving up and down the ladder, it's teams moving up and down the ladder, and the new team will need to be re-ranked. This takes time, and is therefore not suitable for a format that uses weekly rankings.

Because of this, there needs to be a means of performing the re-ranking portion instantaneously, without the need for the player to constantly be re-playing placement matches. This therefore necessitates an imperfect (unless the game is simple enough to accurately mathematically measure expected performance from the members themselves) and arbitrary matchmaking mechanism that can be calculated from your team's constituent members.

This is why "mirror matches" (loosely speaking) are not the norm for matchmaking in fighting games, but is the norm for Heroes. The metric being measured and the time scales required for rewarding placement are entirely different.

 

Finally, counterpicking is not a significant factor in most online ladder formats for fighting games. You typically don't see your opponent's pick until after your own pick, which limits your ability to counterpick typically to only the information of who your opponent plays most often, not who your opponent actually picked. Counterpicking is a tournament strategy, not a ladder strategy.

While this is valid, none of what you said in any way countered or mitigated my argument. At all. 

My argument is that there is no merit to assigning an arbitrary value to indicate the performance of one unit as compared to other units of the same level because there is absolutely no way to objectively even come close to quantifying that. Your argument, which I responded to, was basically "BST is the best we can do. I don't see you contributing a better idea."

The fact of the matter is that BST is not a valid measure of performance. Period. Otherwise ranged units would be objectively inferior, and armored melee would be the dominant force based on gameplay performance and not scoring. This is very much not the case, as many of the best units in the game, including and especially offensive mounted staves and tomes are scored as lesser to units with an inferior arena performance. 

The only purpose of BST differences is to balance movement types and attack ranges fairly against one another. It is not a measure of performance, and yet the ranking system is using it as one.

 

Also, by the way, we don't see character-ranking systems in other team building genres either. Does League of Legends reward you bonus ELO rating for playing Twisted Fate? No, it doesn't. Does Overwatch reward you bonus ranking for picking Reinhardt? No, it doesn't. Because that would be retarded. But that's exactly what we're dealing with here. We're pretty much getting bonus points for picking Reinhardt (or rather we aren't because our Reinhardt has poor BST for scoring). 

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I won't because it isn't. I want to see this game continue to succeed and I have no need to be a cynical prick.

And yet you continue to defend a status quo that is visibly hurting the game's metagame long term.

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As for my opinion on the Arena itself. I think the only change that is necessary is to restrict the maximum number of points obtained from bonus unit kills. The part that is unhealthy to the current Arena format is that you need to get your bonus unit to get all 20 kills to maximize the number of points, which turns the Arena core that you should be taking pride in into a glorified babysitting service.

What I believe was the motivation for this feature was the fact that players were constructing teams of a 3-unit core and tacking on a bonus unit in the back that did nothing except boost the team's score. This partly defeated the purpose of having bonus units at all of they weren't being used.

I think that by limiting the maximum number of points obtained from bonus unit kills to 10 kills (30 points), there would be a better balance between making players use their bonus units and allowing players to still use their Arena core for what they were meant to do.

 

If players wish to not use an entire unit on their team, that is their prerogative and the ranking system should not be penalizing that. They are only gimping themselves by not properly building around their bonus unit and relying on a core of three. That's a self imposed challenge, and if they can maintain peak arena performance despite effectively being down a character, all the power to them.

It is not a good solution to have arena play devolve into babysitting a bonus unit and feeding it as many kills as possible in a game based around a rock paper scissors weapon triangle that does not support this playstyle.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Etheus

[bottlegnomes]

@Ice Dragon How is it not? Bonus units were already an incentive to pull, and they doubled down on that. Now not only do you need a bonus unit, you need a high merge, fully optimized bonus unit with a team built to support them. They even created a whole new tier with even more rewards, most notably an extra orb to tease F2P people. All of the high scoring units introduced since launch are 5* exclusive, and the only way to somewhat overcome that score gap is a set of 5* exclusive skills. Skills are mildly better, but all the 300 SP skills are 5*-locked. Literally everything about arena is built around encouraging high-end units with high-end skills.

Am I being cynical? Yes. Would that change actually upset people that much? I don't know, but from everything I've seen, that's basically how people feel alway, and at least whales would get more freedom with unit choice. If I wanted it to actually be fair, then Etheus's criteria would be the best. Yeah, there is more variability, but two things affect performance: team-building ability and resources. Resources is directly tied to investment, be it time and/or money, which keeps encouraging spending. Team-building ability is fairly constant even if the parts change. If I add a new unit, it's my job to make sure they fit into my team effectively. It's also my job to adjust my team to adjust my team to keep up with the times or suffer.

I want heroes to survive too, and again, yeah, I'm being cynical, but the last change that was actually largely received not negatively, not even positively, just not negatively, regarding arena was decreasing the max to 5. I don't see how defending a system that from all available evidence the majority of players are unhappy with is any more constructive that being a "cynical pick."

[Ice Dragon]

16 minutes ago, Etheus said:

The fact of the matter is that BST is not a valid measure of performance. Period. Otherwise ranged units would be objectively inferior, and armored melee would be the dominant force based on gameplay performance and not scoring. This is very much not the case, as many of the best units in the game, including and especially offensive mounted staves and tomes are scored as lesser to units with an inferior arena performance. 

Actually, it is to a reasonable degree. Ranged units have a positioning advantage, but they lose out on combat performance due to simply not having enough points in stats. Being able to out-position an opponent doesn't help if you simply cannot safely engage them in combat.

 

4 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Now not only do you need a bonus unit, you need a high merge, fully optimized bonus unit with a team built to support them.

No, you don't. You need a team that can babysit. As long as your bonus unit can deal at least 1 damage to anything, you're good.

I can maintain Tier 21 without too much difficulty with even low-merge unoptimized bonus units.

 

6 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

Literally everything about arena is built around encouraging high-end units with high-end skills.

That is only one facet of it. It's like saying college exists for the purpose of getting people higher-paying jobs. Yes, it does do that, but it does a lot more than that.

The Arena serves two primary purposes from my perspective. The first is to be a means of encouraging spending through the use of bonus units and relatively lucrative rewards. The second is to be a goalpost for players to set their sights on. The latter purpose is why there are always free units in the list of bonus units every week. If the game mode were only a means of encouraging spending, free units would never appear as bonus units as that would be counterproductive.

 

12 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

I don't see how defending a system that from all available evidence the majority of players are unhappy with is any more constructive that being a "cynical pick."

Because "toss everything in a fire and start all over" is not constructive in this situation.

[Fabulously Olivier]

14 minutes ago, Ice Dragon said:

Actually, it is to a reasonable degree. Ranged units have a positioning advantage, but they lose out on combat performance due to simply not having enough points in stats. Being able to out-position an opponent doesn't help if you simply cannot safely engage them in combat.

Which is why units do not exist in a vacuum. You might (MIGHT) have a point if this game was a 1v1 dueling game. It is a team-based strategy game involving four units. And that ranged unit who has lower stat points may not be able to safely engage on a specific enemy unit in a certain situation, but they more than make up for that by taking out other units on the enemy team, supporting allied units who CAN safely engage the problem unit, and reaching the enemy backline with greater range and movement. We cannot score the value of that in a meaningful way and we should not be trying to.

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No, you don't. You need a team that can babysit. As long as your bonus unit can deal at least 1 damage to anything, you're good.

I can maintain Tier 21 without too much difficulty with even low-merge unoptimized bonus units.

 

That is only one facet of it. It's like saying college exists for the purpose of getting people higher-paying jobs. Yes, it does do that, but it does a lot more than that.

The Arena serves two primary purposes from my perspective. The first is to be a means of encouraging spending through the use of bonus units and relatively lucrative rewards. The second is to be a goalpost for players to set their sights on. The latter purpose is why there are always free units in the list of bonus units every week. If the game mode were only a means of encouraging spending, free units would never appear as bonus units as that would be counterproductive.

The flaw in your argument is that to maintain whales, one must also maintain minnows. If there are no counter-balancing mechanics in place to keep the lesser sea creatures playing, there is no game and nothing for those whales to compare themselves to. 

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Because "toss everything in a fire and start all over" is not constructive in this situation.

That is highly reductive. No one is saying "burn it all." We're saying "this works, and this doesn't. Let's replace what doesn't work with something that might."

This idea of maintaining the system as is without critique, which basically boils down to "it exists as is therefore it should exist as is" is how we end up with most of the world's problems, large and small.

Edited October 10, 2018 by Etheus