5v5 Boosted TDM Review & Suggestions

With you on the infamydropping being problematic and in bad taste.
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With regards to running mk2 (which I did for this event!): We asked Miika and the message was ‘break it if you can’. They have already done significant changes to how worthwhile it is to run these hustler setups, and you cant get into matches anywhere near as low as you could week 1. My mk2 plays against mk6 boats with t4 epics most of the time.

Is it still too viable? Probably, most of those mk6 players have no idea on how to play.

But, unlike the 12 quest new guild on repeat exploit, the patchnotes are crystal clear & the devs are actively rebalancing the matchmaking to prevent it from being a dominant strategy. I think your suggestion to force people to run their highest (or second highest) mk is great. But comparing this to the blatant exploiting with guildtokens is crazy talk

More than anything Id wish that running my main boat (Fixer) was viable, or that talent respeccing didnt have a 1 week lockout so I could run a non gimped defender instead. Till then I will happily continue using my lower mk boats if they provide better rewards pr time spend, until devs change the ruleset anyway.

 

I disagree with this particular point. It had everything to do with wins vs stars. With the star system, I'm not beholden to the performance of my teammates. I can win some stars every game and progress towards the goal. With the win system, if my teammates (95% of the time of lower infamy), don't work together and we lose, I don't get any credit towards progression despite my 2 or 3 star performance.

There was only 1 game in the entire TDM this weekend where I got 0 stars. I played like garbage, missed easy shots, and had trouble with constantly being stuck in wave troughs being unable to take a decent shot.

I also think the current system promotes a reason to win. You get one star guaranteed for a win. I played to maximize damage and work with team for a win, just as I would in any normal infamy match. I spent a full minute in one match hovering below 1k hp (down to 47 and down to 90) yet still killed 3 enemies in that time.

 

Good plan, but unfairly favors defenders. (I'm saying this as a career defender)

 

I was just thinking it was a good choice of screenshots, they both illustrate the 3* deficit and the fixers getting shafted.

 

not only events should focus on legendry perks but also weapons should be added as prize for hard work. or give option to select legendry perk or weapon so that not everyone will blame for useless perks

 

One side note... Last night I think the matchmaking got wonky.

I'm about 10.5k gear score for the event with 4k infamy. I got matched a few times last night with teams of 2k infamy players with 5-7k gear score. Needless to say I absolutely destroyed the team.

In one round there was one poor enemy speeder with sub 1k infamy and sub 5k gear score. When he got close I destroyed him in 2-3 shots... I stopped shooting at him because I felt bad. Naah just kidding, I slaughtered him every chance I got. 4 times! Poor guy!

 

Haha. I had a match yesterday which had a speeder with 1900 HP (gear score was around 6000). I was laying a lot of mines. The poor guy just kept hitting my Level 30 Epic Mines for the one-shot kills. I must have killed him at least 4 times. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

 

@xArrogance

As far as I know, self-healing isn't counted on the results screen.

I'm not completely sure what you mean. Can you elaborate…?

Good point.

I think the best way to convince people to get the VIP subscription would be to make it not a subscription. I imagine a lot more people would get it that way, if they could buy it once and keep it forever. The only problem is that a TON of people would have to buy it to make up for the loss of income for Rovio.
Having played this game, and having really enjoyed it, I actually wouldn't mind if the game cost money to download. That could compensate for the money Rovio would lose with a one-time-purchase VIP subscription. Of course people might not give the game a chance if they have to spend money before trying it… Rovio would have to set it up like Angry Birds and offer some kind of lite edition, I guess.

 

If it is actually advantageous to use an MK5 over and MK7 then Gear Score is inaccurate. The unfortunate reality is higher MK boats tend to get nerfs in speed and such, so stepping down gives a bit of a boost as well as lower gear score. Rovio needs to put a lot more thought into how they deal with mixed class boats in an account and progression. The easy solution is to level all boats at once and the whole problem disappears... and solves many others.

This is exactly correct.. infamy itself is sort of a garbage number because (a) players can manipulate it, and thus (b) Matchmaker(tm) itself uses many other variables in matchmaking to compensate for the inaccuracy of infamy. If Gear Score was accurate, the need to use boat MK levels, Infamy, League, Item levels, etc, becomes unnecessary for event matchmaking. I've argued several times that the easy solution is to use a simple moving average to calculate infamy so that it's not possible to drop infamy in a short period of time... and if someone does that it would be difficult enough to get back up they will lose rewards for a while as punishment.

 

A couple extra thoughts on the event:

In a Star event, Stars shouldn't be given out like a normal battle. They need to be adjusted by a kill/death ratio to be meaningful. If someone dies 8 times got a single kill, but #1 in damage, let's face it, they were a liability, and should not be rewarded extra stars. I'd like to see this stat posted at the end of all TDM battles. Fixers would need to be judged by heals, but K/D ratio is applicable to all other boats.

Similarly If gear score is used in TDM matchmaking, it should also be saved in the results page for later reference.

With the added speed and cool downs the action is frequently too much for the UI ... so many explosions and fire adds lots of stress to the UI and device. I suppose it's realistic but in those cases I lose orientation because the entire screen goes yellow and shakes, at which point boat control is impossible when my tablet tries to keep up with the demands of rendering the mass chaos. It may be less of an issue in a normal match when people bring less Mines and Napalm, and actually try to avoid death, but the added speed of yellow boats also seems to show network latency issues more frequently. It's just one of several side effects to be aware of if the speed is brought to ranked matches.

 

Agreed with all you wrote....except death total and being penalized.

Explained that fully in another forum post. And the Defenders role.

Star totals and how rewarded can always be adjusted. But do remember dying less is rewarded already by 1 more star...fyi. my friend F QTR hardly ever dies and does top damage. He gets 3 stars most of the time. But he is a shooter and uses distance weapons.

Myself I die all the time. I am a defender and do top damage and get 2 stars most the time. With a win rate of 70-75 percent.
Nuff said there. I expound on this further another post.
Graphics.... yes the game can do better stopping shaking graphics and making steering a boat unplayable when multiple explosions go on in TDM. It's bad enough when people focus fire my direction and then I can't respond for 7 seconds waiting for graphics to settle.
Thought it was just my ship. Good to know it's a game wide issue.

 

This is a team game. If you're only win 1 of 4, then your enemies won 3 of 4. Not counting tie here. The star system reward those mindless damage dealers. How is that fair for all ships? I play all ships and tried out all ships in TDM. I don't have to tell you about how fixer got screw there. The reason why damage dealers can have to stars loss is because the fixer contribution counted so low. If they fix the fixer contribution, than 2 stars losses become rare because the average contribution will be higher. The highly useful telsa bolt in TDM added very little to contribution calculation of a battle while it contributes immensely. Only the shooter and defender are at advantage here. Win system rewards the winning team for being better in that battle. Like @Kitterini said, they just need to scale it to a reasonable number. 50 wins is a reasonable number because that's how much win people did to get 125 stars.