5v5 Boosted TDM Review & Suggestions

Overall, I loved this event! The perks weren't my favorites, but it was still a blast to play.

I put logic behind suggestions in spoiler boxes for the millennials .. but forgot to add the pictures

Increased Movement Speed/Reduced Cooldowns

The extra speed spoiled me. I vote for a permanent increase in game speed - even 10% would be great!

If the game feels slows for me at max mk6/7 speed, I can only imagine what it feels like for lower tier ships with slower turbos.

Ticket Timers

I think that either the ticket timers or requirements still need a bit of tweaking. In my opinion, the 30 minute timer is fine, but an increase in the ticket cap to 12 tickets or a decrease in perk requirements (to around 100 stars) should create a nice balance. Or, a fourth event day with the same requirements could work

Spoiler: Reasoning

Reasoning: For f2p, they should be able to grind out nearly 2 legendary perks if they're dedicated (and watching their tickets). For those willing to buy some tickets, they should be able to grind out 4-5 perks (considering they probably only want one perk of the four and have a 25% chance at it each time).

Calculations
3 day event, 16 playable hours/day

First event:
(5 tickets to start/wake up with + (16 hours x 4 tickets/hr)) x 3 days x 1.6 average stars per game = 177.6 stars of 350 (two rounds of event perks) = 94.6%

Last Event:
(5 tickets to start/wake up with + (16 hours x 2 tickets/hr)) x 3 days x 1.6 average stars per game = 177.6 stars of 250 (two rounds of event perks) = 71%

Suggestion 1: 12 ticket cap

(12 tickets to start/wake up with + (16 hours x 2 tickets/hr)) x 3 days x 1.6 average stars per game = 211.2 stars of 250 (two rounds of event perks) = 84.4%

Suggestion 2: 100 star legendary perk

(5 tickets to start/wake up with + (16 hours x 2 tickets/hr)) x 3 days x 1.6 average stars per game = 177.6 stars of 200 (two rounds of event perks) = 88.8%

Star System

First off, thank you for switching back to the star system; it's easily better than the win system. It's a welcome change to hear people excited to do well enough to pull out 1-2 stars out of a loss rather than endlessly complaining about matchmaking.

As far as small tweaks, I'd suggest:

1) Earning a 3rd star can be ridiculously difficult in an even match (screenshots attached). I'd suggest that most matches should have 1 or 2 mvps awarded with a 3 star - without having to do double the damage as 9 other players. (See screenshots).

Spoiler: Reasoning

Reasoning: A third star reward in normal play wasn't an issue because stars weren't important. But, in event play, the stars matter. The match's best player (or two) should be rewarded, rather than solely in situations where a player was matched with dramatically weaker opponents.

2) Currently, fixers get the short end of the stick and fire users get a bonus star at the expense of their teammates. So, I'd suggest adjusting the scoring to be more straight forward, based solely on damage (or damage + fixing). This would be more transparent and viewed as more "fair" (or less contentious).

Spoiler: Reasoning

Reasoning: Fire weapons are already overpowered and need no further star reward incentive, and more complicated reward calculations wouldn't likely be any real improvement.

A flare/blast or ecannon combo can deal 4k+ damage (far more dps than than any other combo remotely that accurate). And, a firebomb can cause around 2600 damage to a single person or several thousand to a team - with it's quick projectile speed, blast radius (that often hits beyond the visual marker), and extra cannon damage it leaves targets susceptible to), it's arguably even more overpowered - especially when multiple FBs are used.

So, although setting unfriends on fire can benefit team members, fire users need no further star reward incentive to use those items. Other than having less irritated players (over losing a star), there would be no change in game play.

I also considered trying to improve the current system - but, it would be just as a overly complicated and highly debated as the current one .. and it would still piss people off.

For example, it would be great to take kills (or k/d ratio) into account to punish those dying 4-5 times a match (e.g., the suicide miners rushing the spawn, dropping all mines and dying all game, or the speeders blasting around, kill stealing, and dying to a mine once every 30 seconds). But, then you would further reward the mine/firebomb campers for never dying, which wouldn't promote a fun or competitive game.

Tokens/Tickets/Trophies

With events, guild quests, personal quests, achievements, and infamy, there are too many mini-games that aren't well connected.

So, I would start with getting rid of guild trophies. Instead, directly reward players with tokens for the work they put in - rather than in quest completion rewards that are shared by the entire guild. Then, take the cap off tickets - or leave the cap on free tickets and give players a second bank of uncapped tickets that could be won in raffles or purchased with tokens. This second bank of tickets wouldn't expire between events.

With rivalry matchmaking a bit of a mess, players earning tokens (rather than worthless trophies) would provide an individual incentive for completing guild quests - and buying boosts.

VIP Perk

Lastly, I'd like to see some VIP benefits for events.

Spoiler: Reasoning

Reasoning: I'm sure I'm not the only person that think the $10/month isn't worth what it once was.

The VIP chat was entertaining and educational at first, but it's basically the same as the chill zone - in terms of people and trolls.

There is little incentive to do well in rivalries in it's current state (because you're punished for doing well one week with 3 weeks of impossible matches and the raffle system rewards are most often disappointing), so the 3rd quest isn't as appealing.

I have upgraded/trained all I need to for my current boat/items, so the reduced training times and battle rewards aren't as valuable. Likewise, there's little benefit in training the other crew members because it would take 20+ hours (or 1000 pearls) to switch perks over to use another boat/set of items.

Anywho, I don't mean to end on a negative tone, but it's just my realistic view of why event VIP perks are needed.

Screenshots

 

The Good
- Better balance between time available and what was needed to farm to leggy perk. Easily doable as f2p, which is all we can realistically ask for. It has nothing to do with whether its wins or stars, people disliked wins because the amount of games required was far too high (they might not realize this though).
- A healing perk to combat the damage power creep from tons of weapon perks going out. And an super strong healing perk even, thanks!
- Event gameplay was fun, 20% lowered cd works endlessly better than the horrible trash we had last week. Giving a different feel without invalidating most non defender strategies. Higher agility wasnt noticeable outside of using my low mk enfo, probably why Gear Lube and Rudder arent very useful either.


The Stuff that could be Better
- 5vs5 is fine, but more creativity would be appreciated.
- Deathmatches are also a fine addition, but after 3 in a row we are ready to see what else you guys can come up with.

- Going back to stars (or changing the metric weekly) is fine. But you need to take a serious look at why Fixers are vastly underappreciated in deathmatches if thats what we get every week & stars is what we need to farm. The current system encourages charging straight into the enemy team to spam damage, thats a much easier way to get stars than to play the teamgame. Thats ok some weeks, but not every week. Winning is a vastly superior metric to promote quality games.
That & healing done lacks far too much value when compared to damage done - Current formula works fine in short games (for some reason), but in those long games with high numbers (like a team Deathmatch), Fixers get the short end of the stick.

To me the simplest solution is to vary what is required to complete quests & to vary between different gamemodes, favouring different boats and playstyles. But if its Deathmatch and stars every week, then a serious look at the value of healing needs to happen. As it is currently someone makes the wrong decision every time they queue into a game with a green boat.

 

For me VIP players should get 7 tickets compared to 5 no other perk.
I loved the 30min refresh time was so much better!! Just need to make sure the win total is moved correctly next time wins is used as the basis rather than stars.
Something other than TDM would be nice but maybe they are just trying to sort the overall system first before introducing new game modes?
The potential perks have been varied so far and it is great to see health and freeze perks too not just weapons.
Fixers are useless for stars currently and this does need fixing ASAP!
The longer events seem to be better as it gives more a fair chance at it but then the target needs increasing too to ensure lots of leg duplicates aren't acquired by people in 1 week.

 

I understand that the win requirement being too high was part of the dissatisfaction, but it's not solely that.

With wins, people were infuriated with their bad teams/teammates/MM when they felt they cost them the win to the point of giving up on the event/game - especially when they bought 5 tickets and didn't advance their progress one iota. There were a number of people in my guild and on the forums that struggled to win 1 out of 4 that event.

With stars, however, they are able to laugh it off. They advance their progress by a star or two, and feel vindicated that the terrible teammate got less stars. That 5 loss streak doesn't bother people as much as long as they're advancing towards a goal.

Plus, I'd argue that stars are better at rewarding merit, rather than simply being present on a team that happens to win.

 

Yeah, basically my thoughts.

In another reasoning box, I went into how using a k/d ratio was my initial thought on how to change the scoring system, but it would favor camping too much so I came to the conclusion that straight damage (or damage + fixing) is the best of imperfect solutions.

As far as giving the 3*, there are times when all 5 teammates have 20k damage, but that's rare. It could simply be the person with the most damage.

If you look at the screenshots, you can see I'm well over that threshold .. to the point of doing nearly double the damage and half the kills, yet still getting 2*s.

 

Both fixers in the screenshots got screwed btw

 

1. Increased speed, improved agility and lower cooldown were excellent. It's hard to go back to regular ranked battles after experiencing the faster pace of the event.
2. VIPs need some type of benefit in these events. Throw us some type of bone. The most obvious is a bigger ticket bank(hold more tickets so less go to waste)
3. I noticed improvements to the matchmaking and team making as the days went on. The balancing of infamy and gear score seemed to improve by Sunday matches. Friday matchmaking was really bad. So I think the developers' tweaks helped over the weekend.
4. I am NOT a fan of the 30 minute ticket timer along with only being able to hold 5 tickets. We play when we have time. Sometimes that is for 15 minutes and sometimes it's a 3 hour stretch. Having to stop playing the game because you run out of tickets is extremely annoying when you see you have another 26 minutes to wait before you can play again. Maybe you can create a compromise next time and try a 20 minute timer? 30 is just too long. Or increase the standard ticket bank to 10 instead of 5, but leave the 30 minute timer in place.
5. Overall the gameplay of the 5v5 Boosted was fantastic. Much better then week 2 (3v3).

 

Haha yeah, thanks. I wasn't clear ...

I meant replace "trophies" with "tokens", so people doing the work are rewarded more and also have a personal incentive in quest grinding.

And, VIP perks meaning benefits.. star boosts or extra cap would be great

 

Fair enough.
The way stars are given out promotes some silly choices though - Rushing in to farm damage is superior to carefully working with teammates to ensure victory.
Granted this is primarily a deathmatch issue.

 

Yeah, I got you. Technically, the highest contributor earns maybe 1/4 of an extra spin for doing 200k more trophies that the guy in 25th .. you're right.

Forest for the trees aside .. Replace trophies with tokens (so individuals are rewarded proportionally for the work they do), take out the tokens for individual quest completions, keep the token rewards for board completion and guild podiums, put tickets in the raffle or allow players to use their tokens on tickets ... to take the first step towards make a cohesive, connected game instead of 3 distinct mini-games (infamy, guild quests, events).

 

100% agree .. I dunno how else to code a better solution. It's hard to measure good teamwork.

 

That sounds great. 12 is a lot though… maybe 9?
I'd like it if we could play the event even after we run out of tickets, but stop getting the rewards for it. I really enjoy playing the event, and I would rather play it over playing regular ranked games sometimes — even if I'm not getting event perks for playing.
The event is also a great place to use ships/items I don't use normally because they're underleveled. It's a nice place to contribute to Guild Quests without letting down your team.

Definitely.

YES.
Self-healing might be too much though. Selfish Fixers would get first place every battle. It would probably be ideal for the rewards system to only count healing of other ships.

That might be too much. The ticket cap is a huge part of why Legendary Perks are still somewhat rare to see (at least in lower levels). If the cap was removed or people could save up tickets over weeks then Legendary Perks would be significantly less Legendary.

I'm probably biased in this regard (I'm not VIP and don't intend to become VIP), but I really like that events are a somewhat level playing field for everyone. With the exception of purchasing tickets for pearls, people have a relatively equal chance at a Legendary Perk regardless of whether or not they've spent money on the game.
I think the best way to make a VIP subscription worthwhile would be to make it cheaper. It's insanely overpriced for what it is.

 

I like the idea of being able to play events for fun, but feel like the quality of gameplay would go down with nothing on the line.

Do duct tape fixers still get repair points on the results screen? I know they fixed bandages, but I'm not sure about duct tape.

Having a second set of tickets could make the perks less exclusive, true, but it's still a major grind regardless of whether you're saving tickets for weeks to use on the perk that catches your eye, spending pearls to buy tickets, or hoping rng doesn't give you all frost perks on your one free run through the event ...

Haha, and yeah, VIP isn't worth the price right now, but the price isn't going down, so they need to find some way to start adding some major value to it

 

I agree with most of the thoughts posted here.

Now let's get rid of the Exploit Loopholes.

Currently many Fantastic Boats are slumming to game the system. This is equal to Token Farming. @Kitterini

I once was a token farmer and got a roll back.

So under that standard....something needs to be done Asap about Exploits and closing exploiter loopholes.

Exploit list.

1. Undershipping. By 2 mark level ships verses your highest level ship. Ex a Mark 7 boat now only uses Mark 5 boats for Deathmatch to lower gear score. Get unfair advantage. Many players did this.

2. Developers confirmed infamy plays a part in determing Team A verses Team B.
So The world's current best Player in the Game decided to drop from 6850 infamy 3 weeks ago...down to 3993 for this latest Deathmatch. Night before event he lost 800 infamy just to get easier matches. This is Whack! And this level of infamy manipulation at all for golden trinket needs to an stopped. He is not the only one. And is an example of the abuse. Realize high level players have all mark 7 boats with all Maxed epic and Legendary weapons. So when one of these drops infamy in order to game the system. The system is broken.

These both have 2 simple solutions to prevent future abuse.

A) whatever your highest Mark ship is. You have to use. Or within 1 Mark of your highest.

B)League level infamy Cap preventing a Nitemare league player from dropping their infamy lower than 4k for Deathmatch matchmaking. Or...even more hardcore. Keep their season high score as the Matchmaking tool. Stop Players being able to game this system.

Or the #1 player in the world from last 4 seasons will keep doing this....
Honestly, last time a #1 player did infamy manipulation. They had a 14 day vacation to consider their choices.

If nothing is done,
the infamy tanking wars will start for multiple guilds. This is the tip of the iceberg.
Nip it in the bud before this becomes something worthy of Rollbacks for the entire bay.

Just saying.

Jaws

 

Modes
there should be at least another mode that goes on, WITH the current mode
the secondary mode could also offer small rewards
this way you could always choose something AVAILABLE that you like

 

TRIPLE THE STARS?!
how about:
2x stars
2x speed training
2x token earning
2x rewards
2x ticket recharge speed