19 replies to this topic

[UDareUTake]

Lots of players have been anticipating this tournament system since it was first announced. But what we saw after today's patch was nothing but disappointment for players that are at or near soft-cap.

 

 

This tournament system is meant to cater to both new and experienced players, but what we currently see now is a one-sided advantage for new players.

 

Review

 

Level Gained ( This Segment is purely biased against soft cap players, this category would be dominated by either new accounts OR low level players)

 

Honor Gained ( Once again, this segment benefits new accounts or low/min rank players and those in the top rankings are heavily in disadvantage due to the low honor gain they get per duel)

 

Heroic Deeds Completed ( 3rd time in a row, a segment that benefits new accounts due to the fact that most veteran players had already complete more than 75% of their deeds, and new completed deeds are hard to come by)

 

 

From these 3 points, it can clearly be seen that for veteran players that have worked hard and dedicated their time into this game, they will stand no chance at all in these tournaments despite the time and effort they have put into the game.

 

 

Suggestions

 

There would be a need to improve the focus on veteran players as with the current tournament system, they are not able to compete at all with the newer players.

 

One way to balance this issue is to implement another separate set of tournament ranking for players that have reached soft cap (Level 250 and above) so pre-soft cap players will not be competing against post-soft cap players.

 

 

New Categories

 

Coins Hoarded

( More advantage to higher level players but also gives chance to mid level players as they can save up )

 

Hours Worked

( Another Balanced category)

 

Coins earned from Work

( Favors high level players and/or players that use +50% work boosters)

 

Duels Fought

( Instead of Honor Gained, Duels Fought is a more balanced category, we could have both also. Plus could favor teams with Courage Trophy*if courage trophy is changed into faster filling of courage bar*)

 

No. of Missions Done

( Balanced category *Favors team with Energy Trophy)

 

Training Units used

( Balanced category *Favors Team with Training Trophy)

 

Rewards for Current Players in the Top 10/20/30 (Honor) (Level)

( There should be some incentive/rewards for players that have worked hard to maintain at the top tier )

 

 

Introduction of Level Brackets

 

Problem #1- Lots of Clone accounts created to win the tournament

Solution- Minimum criteria to enter lowest bracket (Level 40+3 days active)

 

Problem #2- Unfairness due to large difference between low level and high level players

Solution- Level Brackets* to seperate players. 

 

*Sample of Level Bracket

 

Level 40-99

 

Lvl 100-149

 

Lvl 150-199

 

Lvl 200-249

 

Lvl 250+

(This final bracket could be adjusted according to the number of soft-cap players)

 

*If the player reaches Lvl 40 after the tournament starts, they will only be entered for the next tournament onwards

 

**If the player levels up and exceed their level bracket after the start of the tournament, they will only be moved to the next bracket until the next tournament starts

 

 

[mogiks]

I have been looking forward to the tournament system ever since it was announced. I thought it was something that could revive interest in the game for players like me who are becoming more and more disillusioned with what Hero Zero has to offer soft cap players. (Note our team has lost two members in the past week, they were level 254 and level 252, because they got bored and decided to quit playing. Coincidence that they were a few levels into soft cap when the boredom became so bad they had to quit?) But as soon as the update finished and  I went to look at the tournaments, I was so disappointed. Fellow players who are level 249+ also expressed crushing disappointment in Kongregate chat.

 

It is not fair that we have been more dedicated than any other players but we cannot possibly win any of these tournaments unless we resort to tactics like deliberately losing honour so we can gain it quickly when the next tournament starts. It is not fair to make us compete with new players who can gain dozens and dozens of levels in a week when we can only level twice in a week! How is that fair?! You said there would be rankings for experienced players but newer players clearly have the advantage here. I am so sick of being short changed on all the updates just because we are at soft cap. Like I said in my other thread: SOFT CAP SUCKS. It is not fun. It is like we are being punished for being dedicated players of your game!!! You have to change this or everyone is going to quit and Playata will earn a bad reputation.

 

UDare's suggestions are, as always, well thought out and logical, and address fundamental problems with this new update which will alienate old players. I agree with all of UDare's suggestions. Maybe you could separate the tournament rankings further to make it more fair, so that players are only competing against people of a similar level to them. So, for example, there is one tournament for level gain for players who are levels 1-50, one tournament for level gain for players who are levels 51-100, and so on. It seems ridiculous that a level 1 is in the same tournament ranking as a level 200+, when it gets harder to level the more you play. Then you could add new tournament categories like coins earned per day, so a level 200+ is not competing against a level 1, because that would be very unfair.

 

MAJOR PROBLEM WITH THE UPDATE:
I believe that some people will make new alt accounts (this is against the terms of service of the game) so that they can win the tournaments. They will level up rapidly, and once they win they will just abandon the account and make a new one for the next tournament, because it'll be easier to level up from level 1. That's basically just adding lots of dead puppet accounts to the game.

[Excrucio]

I echo the above sentiments.  As one of the strongest players in the game and someone who has farmed hundreds of players this "tournament" does absolutely nothing for me.  Being lvl 275 atm and having 217k+ honor means I have no chance of gaining lvls or honor in speedy increments since those are both heavily skewed in favor of lower lvls with less honor.  Same goes for deeds as most of mine are already finished with the exception of a few donut-based ones.  And as far as team expansions goes lol... my team has been maxed out for months now so once again we are left in the dust.  

 

I was really really *REALLY* looking forward to the tournament system as I am a big fan of pvp in general and was excited to see what would be implemented.  All I can say now is how utterly disappointed I am with the actual result.  Great idea for the new players but amounts to a slap in the face for those of us at the top who have supported the game with our donut purchases for months.  Thanks for nothing.

[Flynn]

I also have to say that this is a disappointment, the idea is sound but the actual implementation leaves a lot to be desired for your long term players.

 

The only way I can see us winning any of this is to:

1. create new accounts/restart from level 1 and
2. create new teams using coins/donuts hoarded from the old accounts

I can also see this being abused by having some of the higher honor members deliberately lose to team mates (stripping off equips/boosters) and there are probably even ways I haven't even thought of to skew this tournament.

 

I am currently playing in a tournament against 30+ level 1 accounts that magically appeared today, also a couple of new teams appeared that are using coins to buy the first tier of non-donut expansions and I wouldn't be surprised if they suddenly disappear at the end of this round.

 

All in all, I think this needs to be cancelled post-haste and rethought to use a system that is non-biased competitions, no trophy bonuses, no team bonuses, just dedication and skill...

 

For example, Friend Codes (you get more potential players, bonus points if they stay and/or buy donuts), energy used during the week, finding hidden secrets that give a small amount of coins/xp... anything but this.  please?

 

Flynn.

[zademan]

Generally i agree.

UDareUTake and other players have made very good suggestions for the game in the past but none has been implemented.

Antidonut and Darkawesom.... who are a new player and team will obviously dominate this tournament. Next week someone else will make a new account and a new team and the result will be the same.

What's interesting about this?

[Bxvamp]

Your tournament fails. Cant really suggest anything that hasnt been suggested already. Just add my name to the list of people disappointed with this. Does anyone on your development team even think about what they are adding before doing it? No way could higher level, higher ranked players keep up with honor or levels tourney... so many skill points to earn from deeds about this tournament that we wont be able to get. Thank you devs for yet another awesome(sarcasm) update... Actually, heres a suggestion: Fire whoever comes up with your new content and hire UDareUTake. He actually comes up with good ideas and tries to make them fair for everyone in game.

[FireTiger]

this absolutely blows!!!

iF YOU want me to spend more nuts!!!!and buy more!!

DO something nice like the spidey or hulk costume (UDareUTake's suggestion)for the washed up ironman suit!!

as for your tournament system...

massively idiotic...

whoever you have that thinks up these ideas has the (creativity = N+1)  

horribly disappointing..  

i am as disappointed as a fat kid that bites into candy and finds out it is sugar free...

 

[buffy]

I am incredibly disappointed with this poorly thought out "tournament"  system for a number of reasons, most of which have been well stated by UDareUTake and mogiks.  This does nothing for the interest level of the game, and is open to blatant abuse, as well as being seriously biased toward new players. 

 

This is, unfortunately, symptomatic of a basic problem with Hero Zero, which is an almost complete lack of creativity in updates and changes, coupled with apparent lack of interest in retaining higher level players.   The much hyped "gang fights" are just another team fight--although the possibility of winning an expansion point is a good addition--and now the "tournaments" are automatic entry "competitions" which amount to keeping score of things we normally do as part of the game.  They do not call for skill or strategy, and are so poorly designed that it is actually pretty much impossible for a higher level player to compete with the lower level players, leaving no real incentive or reason to care. 

 

In fact, the bias toward lower level players is so pronounced that there is less and less incentive for higher ranked players to continue playing the game.   This seems to be a very poor return for people who have been instrumental in making the game successful, have spent their money buying donuts and who have encouraged their friends to play.   Also, retaining high level players actually adds to the game experience for all the players, as it gives a stable base for teams and a pool of experienced players to give advice and provide competition for new people. 

 

I am sad and disappointed that the people in charge of developing content for Hero Zero seem uninterested in keeping the game challenging and dynamic for everyone, but as each "improvement" is unveiled and proves to be much hype and little content, I am forced to come to that conclusion.

[Baka]

Just adding my voice to the group. As a high level player I agree and you guys are doing squat in keeping us. I get you want to expand the playerbase, but some of us invested a lot of time and money and all we get is a big virtual middle finger?

Very disappointed

[nasajd]

Villains are well thought out, every player has a chance at top 10 based on dedication, and maybe spending 2-6 free donuts they had gotten. Tournaments could be similar, I think team based tournaments of Duels won, energy spent, and hours worked would work well, clearly favoring full facility expanded teams, so segregated tournament brackets would help this. Other decent ideas would be individual duels won (lets you either be very active or nut your way), individual energy spent is similar with slight favoring to those on teams which hold multiple energy trophies. Lastly I think it reasonable to discourage team hopping for tournaments aggressively.

 

If a top team remade the team as a level one team, they could instantly fully expand and shoot up through the rankings guaranteeing a first place victory, find a way to prevent this.

[Rafael]

Hello,

 

we understand your complaints and really care about your opinion.

The tournament system is a brand new feature in-game. We tested it and tried to make it fair for everyone (whether a great lvl player or not).

But we do want to improve it! So let's wait a bit, let the tournament roll, and after gathering enough feedback we'll improve it, of course. As your feedback is what we seek, please keep posting your ideas to make it better.

 

P.s.: We will add new categories.

 

Cheers,

[Bxvamp]

How did you test it? Do any of the actual devs play this game and understand the problems that many have? Reading about them on the forums is one thing, but actually playing and experiencing them is better. How many devs on your team? How about next time before rolling out a feature like this, you post some sorta details on the forums about it and get our feedback then, instead of being way too vague about it and getting our hopes up to ultimately let us down.

[UDareUTake]

Hello,

 

we understand your complaints and really care about your opinion.

The tournament system is a brand new feature in-game. We tested it and tried to make it fair for everyone (whether a great lvl player or not).

But we do want to improve it! So let's wait a bit, let the tournament roll, and after gathering enough feedback we'll improve it, of course. As your feedback is what we seek, please keep posting your ideas to make it better. 

 

P.s.: We will add new categories.

 

Cheers,

 

Hi, thanks for the reply! At least finally I know my suggestions/feedback got through, lots of players would hope to see an improvement/change to the tournament system soon! As now the tournament is either

 

A ) Create new character to win Lvl/Deeds Category

 

B ) Create new team to win Team Honor/Expansion Category

 

C ) Pooling and boosting teammates in duels to win Honor Category

 

*New points updated into first post at the btm

[nasajd]

I'll look forward to new and rotating tournament categories that players have a chance at without gaming the system.

 

Team expansion / team honor = make new team and insta win

honor earned = dump honor week before to win

deeds/level up = new character in fully expanded team

 

see current leaders and strategies to confirm this.

[papvin]

Alsso thinking a tournament involving number of Hard enemies in the missions done

[Liberty]

I am actually not going to say too much, because this doesn't really surprise me at all. I expected better rewards for advancing as much as I have, but they don't improve at all. I do all the missions I can possibly do daily to hopefully go up a level, but with no new mission goals, it becomes rather boring. I put in my time, and I am a very active player, but if I check out my score on the current tournament right now, I have a total of 3 points. Therefore, I am not participating in any tournament, and I basically act like they don't exist. As far as I can tell, it was a pointless addition for any of your dedicated, active players, but really there is nothing beneficial in any of it for dedicated, active players anyway.

 

I stay because I am the strongest player on my team of friends, and I won't abandon them, but it has gotten somewhat boring, and adding tournaments has not helped.

[XanderNighthawk]

I like the idea of your tournament system, but have noticed it heavily favors low level players and new teams. 

 

I believe that replacing the level gain category with a base skill gain category would make it more fair and balanced for both low and high level players. 

 

The deeds gained category is only winnable for a new player as experienced players have already earned them. I see no way to fix this category. 

Adding a category for number of attacks on villains would also be fairly balanced between high and low level players.

 

The expansions category again is only winnable for a new team as the early expansions require no donuts and few coins. 

 

[Floppus]

Yeah, as another over the softcap, this tournament system does nothing for me as is.  It's a fun thing for an experienced player to do with a new account.  But as for keeping this game fresh... not so much.

[thefaceboy]

Am I the only one really disappointed that the tournament wasn't about head to head/team to team duels?

 

I don't care whether it's individual or team, we could even have pick up teams where you temporarily band together with other players (randomly or by choosing or whatever).

 

I don't care either whether the pool of competitors are broken up by similar level, honor, randomly or buy some kind of buy-in (coins, donuts or both). 

 

All these ideas would work great for me, as long as we get some kind of head to head bracket. Come on my fellow Americans, don't you want some March Madness up in here (non-Americans who know what I'm talking about, don't you want it as well)?

[Bury Red]

The tournaments aren't bad for a start but do favour people creating new accounts and blitzing the easy heroic deeds and early levels.  Not really in favour of cutting off new players from experienced ones though so I would like to see some more even tournaments introduced that everyone can compete in:

 

I'd favour "Hard enemies defeated" and "Attacks on villains" coming in and rotating with one or other of the leveling and heroic deed tournaments.  Hard enemies are gauged against your level so the only advantage anyone can gain is having a good build and having energy trophies in your team.  Anyone can attack the villains if they are on at the right time of day so it would encourage regular play and it might give the nutters a bit of payback when they are trying to earn the last piece of their Iron Man costume.

 

I'd leave the weekly honour tournament in place as that is possible for everyone provided higher players spend the tournament before dumping honour and rank so they can climb back up the mountain.  It might seem a bit daft but it does encourage positive team work and tactics and brings teams closer together.  It's been a laugh this week as we've been trying to boost Jacobio but clearly you guys in DP had your tactics worked from the start and have the monopoly on the soft cap players that enable you to trade honour more evenly than we can.

 

Harder to say how team tournaments could be evened out but maybe some sort of league table each tournament where you get varying points depending on the ranking of the team you beat compared with yourselves in the global team rank list.

 

Something like:

 

5 points for beating teams 15+ ranks above you

4 points for beating teams 5+ ranks above you

3 point for beating teams within +/- 5 levels of yourselves

2 point for beating teams -5 ranks below you

1 point for beating teams -15 ranks below you

 

It's cheatable in as much as a team could fight nude / not register for a few weeks to dump rank and then rearm to take on their natural rivals for bigger points but it would make picking and choosing your team fights a much more tactical and team driven game and make a change from the usual daily tussle between ourselves (Paragon), DP, SCS, PTC, Vis etc

 

I'd also like to see a knock out team tournament done on the team rankings:

 

Day 1: Top 64 teams at the start of the week drawn in a random tie against one of the next 64 teams

Day 2 -7: Last 64, 32, 16, 8, 4 & 2 Ties drawn at random from remaining teams

 

500 donuts for winning team, 250 for losing finalist, 100 for 2 losing semi finalists and 50 for 4 losing quarter finalists.

 

Fights should not count for team honour and trophies should not be won lost in the knock out matches but trophies in a team's possession on the day of their fight could continue to have the normal nerfing effect so a lower team might hope to avoid the big boys in the early rounds and trophy dump in their daily fights to face the finalist at their full strength and stand a realistic chance.

 

You could also do a knockout with the top 128 players on the same sort of basis provided they report in and register for the tournament the day before the fight starts and then register again each day or forfeit.