Two Desperately Needed Changes
1. Dodging & Deflections. There's an incredibly easy and quick way to make this a non-issue. Change the dodge mechanic to be half (50%) damage instead of 100% damage evasion (maybe call it a grazing blow or something), and Deflections to 75% damage (unless you WANT to make the two things the same thing, which you probably should do). If you want to keep actual RNG in place for dodge & deflection (rather than fake RNG to satisfy human incorrect expectation of RNG), this is the only way to stop the whining about it. If you start monkeying with the RNG rates for either/both, you'll never hear the end of it. Either people will continue to complain about how OP dodge is, due to their RNG perception in an impossibly small sample set (ie. less than 1 billion+ iterations), or once you've dropped the chances until the QQing ebbs to a trickle, it will be so low as to be pointless, and people will start complaining about how pointless dodge is. THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND HERE due to how the majority of people completely and utterly do not understand the nature of RNG.
It's worth pointing out though that despite the fact that most people don't actually understand RNG, they're still 'right' in the sense that what they're conveying is dis-satisfaction while playing a game. Whether the mechanic is fair or not is irrelevant, the players are perceiving what appears to be an unfair result. Again, it doesn't matter if they are correct or not, the end result is that is what they are preceiving. It's also worth pointing out that if the player had some way of mitigating this behaviour, this perception would also disappear, but since there is absolutely nothing they can do (ie. gear swapping, skill point assignment, etc.) aside from raw 'get stronger', you've excluded any way to do this. This is the problem of having only a singular path to progession, while simplified, limits everything in the play experience (and arguably puts an absolute ceiling on things like player retention and ultimately revenue).
2. Arena ladder. This is primarily related to the progression path being too linear (moreso than other games similar to SWGoH) without enough tier seperation typically tied to the various leveling components (ie. hero stars, gear levels, hero levels, etc.). Currently on my server, I can take on the top 10 handily, the problem is that I can rarely get there due to the limits with ladder progression. Now this progression limit would be fine if there was also a limit to how quickly I can drop, but right now, if I miss a day, I'm guaranteed to drop 200+ positions MINIMUM. The most I've dropped in a single 24 hour period was 400 places, but typically this means I hover around the 100 area for arena position every day, despite being capable of taking on the top 10.
Now if this is intentional as a way to get me to spend crystals, this will guarantee I'll never spend a penny on the game, and will likely cause me to quit eventually. If it is not, then the arena mechanics need to be overhauled. Either the various tiering needs to be adjusted so that there is more of a seperation between tiers (which accomodates groupings entirely related to progression, which is how pretty much all other games like SWGoH work) or a loss timer needs to be added (whenever you are challenged and suffer a loss, a timer needs to engage to disallow challenges until the timer runs out). I'd suggest an hour per loss to start, then tweak from there. You can't implement a challenge limitation without also adding a loss limitation as well to offset in both directions.
As it is now, it's fine for someone just starting out on an established server, but anyone who's been around for a while (basically everyone in the top 300-ish spots) are just juggling around the placement with no way of ensuring upper tier placement without a lot of gaming the system (which honestly is kind of killing arena as well).
To be clear, I'm not complaining about losing position, I'm mentioning that the amount of positional offset is just too large at the top end. It doesn't really matter at lower rankings (ie. 500+), but once you enter into the top 100-ish area, you really shouldn't be losing 200-300 positions in a single day, you should be losing in the 40-50 range (basically until you hit an up/down balance of roughly the same in either direction, there is no balance), which btw is around how high I can climb daily due to the new challenge limits from a few updates ago (which were sorely needed btw). I also realize that the active player base is a factor here, but if nothing changes in the mechanics, and this positional offset stops being a problem, it's just a sign that the server is basically dead. As it is, arena is more of a lottery right now where on some days you get 800-900 tokens, and other days you get 600-700 tokens.
Is that really the intent of arena?
Jebus
0
Replies
And I think if Dooku got nerfed the whole dodge thing won't be nearly as relevant. Rarely do people complain about dodge when they face Lumi teams, although you will get dodged nearly the same amount.