October PVP Changes

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[ATA]Strange

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Hi PIMDuper heroes.

Because we have an event with a PVP mechanic launching today, it's time to do a little sprucing up of PVP.

PVP Not-Spring Fall cleaning



broom.jpg

Getting ready to clean up PVP

You may remember in April/May we did some changes to PVP.

Back then, we..
  1. Capped Misc by a factor of 2x dormies + 4x tutors + 4x rs
  2. Added Peace Tags & Peace Prevention
  3. Made the matchmaking effect of misc unbounded
  4. Reduced hit ranges by 1 bucket
  5. Added the recent aggression buff that increases hit ranges
After gathering data from the last few months we're repealing changes 3, 4, and 5, effective immediately.

Why?


  • Why does Misc no longer contribute to your matchmaking rating past a certain amount? The misc cap alone serves the purpose we need it to - preventing misc from being the end-all and be-all of PVP. The big reason to remove this is that people were using misc to get into range to hit a target, then escape being hit back by jumping up and down buckets. This is pretty exploitative and very much against the spirit of PVP. It also became clear that PVP events didn't make sense when players could adjust their own matchmaking rating up or down so easily.

    The first 100m will still contribute, like before May. This is to prevent exploits where players use new accounts to grief other new players. At high level play the effect of this small amount will be irrelevant.

  • Why are we removing the recent aggression buff? The purpose of recent aggression was to prevent people from hitting, then bucket jumping so they couldn't be hit back, but after a while people figured it out, and jumped 2 buckets instead of 1. It was also confusing. Given that it's unnecessarily complicated and also didn't stop the bad behaviour anyway, it had to go.

  • Why are we returning the hit ranges to what they were originally? (Your own plus 2 up or 2 down). Together with the misc MMR, this change fragmented the community much more than we were hoping. We still do feel like this is too wide, but the other way was too narrow, leaving many people who wanted to fight each other, unable to do so. We'll have to come up with a better solution in the longer term, but until we do, this is the better of the options because it's more proven - PIMD existed for 9 years without this change, and only 5 months with it. So we'll see how it goes from here.
Also, we have disabled some PVP exploits that people were able to do by using old PIMD clients. I'd rather not give any more details here, but some people were purposely not updating because they were getting an advantage with an old client. That's patched now.

Finally, with regard to Peace Tags, or "shields"..
If you mosey on over to the event post you'll see that the current event includes a PVP mechanic where under certain conditions, Peace Tags don't stop hits. This is an experiment in a number of things. Our goal is to make it so that people can feel safe when they want to rest, but in order to maximize their efficiency they have to give up their safety sometimes.

Our theory is that balancing risk vs reward is a lot more fun than just being always safe or always unsafe. To meet this goal, we aimed to make this happen only sometimes and only to active players. These conditions won't be met by players who are on vacation, for example.

In this case, for the duration of this event, peace tags have no effect during a hit when the defender has 3 or more Lil' Cursey dolls. (You can see why this won't be a problem if you peace tag and go to sleep, but people who are trying to get as many drops as possible will have to open themselves up to danger.)

sharkpunch.gif

This shark thought his Peace Tag would protect him, but he had too many dolls


We're going to see how these changes work for a bit, but our next crack at making PVP more fun and rewarding will only be able to come with your feedback. So leave that feedback here!

[ATA]Strange
 
Sounds decent to me. Less complicated, and removed easy exploits. I'm not a frequent PvPer so I'm not as well aware of how these work in actuality, but on paper it does sound like an improvement and does fit in line with some of the grievances I've heard from people that use PvP regualarly.
 
How about making PVP hit ranges dependent upon the misc cap like it is, PVP experience (meaning like, your win loss ratio and hit miss ratio, or how a ranked match would work in call of duty) and tutor bonus IN VALUE, not stats. That way it keeps players of equal skill within hit range of each other, and newer players stay only within range of players who are also new to pvp? Ofc I’m a nub who’s been inactive since those black theme days.. but coming back and thinking about it.. I think this could work??
 
My thoughts on pvp is we are focusing to much on the wrong aspect of the game when it comes to farming mechanics

Misc has gotten most of the attention in all this. And it does need help too. But we should be focusing on the rs boost now more then ever.

Imagine this, a less then 2 kcs account got a successful hit in on a 3 MCS account. Yep you read that right. The account did not have any misc. It was her rs that allowed this anomaly to occur. The rs was over 50Mcs and majorly increased her hitting range.

I think as the stat gap gets wider. This is only going to get worse. A 75-100mcs player can rs someone tiny like a 1.8kcs accoun . The small account remains unhittable and the 75mcs account (particularly with a lot of misc) can grief a lot of average players still.

I dont have a solution to this and it's an exception since someone has to actually rs someone so tiny. But the rs component is a major aspect of the game that hasnt been addressed yet.

The old farming system worked all these years because stats were on a much smaller scale and couldnt boost someone into a dramatic hit range like it's doing now. And it's a problem I think that will get much worse coming into this black friday. 😊
 
I enjoy the old mechanics better. The hit range was all messed up with the changes. Especially with trading, people can float their high misc items between accounts much easier instead of gifting them back and forth. Trading also conceals a person's alts because we'd often find them through gifts before trading. The peace tags are nice, allowing people to sleep or deal with real life issues without worrying that a big tut will be hired and all your money will be gone. I wonder why people focus on misc more now than tutors. Tutors were very important and now they're underpriced. They were great for defenses, big accounts would bounce off someone with a lot of TB. People outside of cat clubs can't seem to keep up with the misc of those doings lots of cats because they get the really high stats avatars and misc items. I still think the changes that killed pvp were removing the daily DN cap, and making pvp still lose value in plunder as you unload, but parties now have continuous plunder as you unload. This obviously made people pick parties over making cash via pvp, and allowed for the biggest demon of all-flash and solo cats which made this game very unbalanced. But it makes you a lot of money, I get it. I think pvp would be more appealing if you adjusted the payout so that it could be competitive with parties. Afterall, it does take some skill and effort to be good at it, which should be rewarded more handsomely. Whereas parties you just click a bunch to unload and people can stay pinned on them, whereas they used to pin on jobs which seemed more fair because job pay is so low. You had a good thing going with the beta wars (I know I sound like a broken record here), if you had adjusted pvp to more advantageous to cash payout and hunt progress like you did with parties. People would simply pick parties for payout and hunt progress, but everyone who figured out how to war found the experience more fun. Don't cut off your nose to spite your face.
 
Also, tutors being the advantage were good because bigger more experienced players taught their tutors the game and invested in them, so they could grow and upgrade, which then also benefited their pupil. Collecting misc is easy and doesn't enhance the community. Clubs and pupils had to teach new players the game. Now you have a bunch of inactive players who got bored or never learned the game and club chats are dead because you don't have to communicate with people to be successful in clicking on a party.
 
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