PvP Drafting - Sneak Peek

News & Announcements
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PvP Drafting - Sneak Peek

We believe that one of the aspects of PvP that causes frustration is that you are going into every match blind. This means you have to be prepared for everything and anything, so players tend to take the same meta–based teams into matchmaking to provide the best coverage

There are some really amazing and effective teams out there that are great at countering some of the most powerful heroes, but they’re simply too niche to be picked against an opponent you do not know. We want to give these teams the opportunity to thrive.

The solution, we feel, is PvP Drafting!

We want to make sure we iron out any kinks and get all of your valuable feedback about this proposed new system, so we’re going to feature it in an upcoming Brawl to test out those new ideas. Testing new game types is one of the main reasons we created Brawls, after all!

As seen in the video below, players will each pick three Heroes, simultaneously, from their personal pool. Once you and your opponent lock in, your choices will be revealed. Based on this, you’ll be able to adjust your final two picks. Will you go for counter picks? Or will you focus on the original strategy? We feel this will shake things up by giving players more of an ability to act and react before a match begins, deepening the gameplay experience.

We also know that matchmaking in general is a contentious issue. Matching teams with so many different variables is extremely difficult. We want this Brawl to be 100% focused on your knowledge of the Heroes, so we’re going to be normalizing all heroes to a set level, grade, stars and skill level. If you have a Hero unlocked, they’ll be set to the same upgrade point as everyone else.

This Brawl is scheduled to happen during the October Update, so look for it in a month or so from today! We don’t have the exact date nailed down yet, but keep an eye out for news as it develops!

We hope you’ll try out our PvP Drafting Brawl before passing final judgment, but feel free to provide some preliminary feedback below! As always, keep it classy and constructive!

 

This video is an artist’s representation and is subject to change

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So now another 30+ seconds to get into a match? As well as the tedious 3 min battles. :frowning:

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Just rollback this health and healing update… 4 Healers w/ revives dominates and it still will if this is your proposed fix.

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This is a good concept but could be refined a lot. Also this does not fix the issue of Min/Maxers and system abusers, which is what people are complaining about.

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Very interesting for a Brawl Tournament where all heroes will have the same stat, this will then be a tournament where the best strategic and skilled shooter could win!

For normal PvP that might be frustrating though adding up to 30+30 sec additional time for picking teams. It would also be difficult to first get a match, then pick heroes with widely different power.

To improve Matchmaking my best idea is:

  • Eliminate skills from the equation, this way it always will be useful to upgrade skills to max and not useful to avoid it for certain low important skills just to keep the heroes power low.
  • Limit some fundamentally wrong characters build ups to be used in PvP. E.g. 9 star silver or lvl50 gold/plat when you are at LvL70.
  • Limit the difference in stars for heroes used in a match to max 3. So you cant use a 10 star together with a 6 star lineup, but you can use a 10 star with a 7 star or a 5 star with an 8 star at max difference
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It’s certainly a cool idea though and I’m excited to try it out!

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The only thing in the game we can play constantly is PvP. You massively Increased the grind time on that and now it seems going even further.

I will be leaving this game for good if you extend matches even more without better rewards.

It’s so tedious and draining.

(MOD can merge posts if possible)

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So we’re gonna be matched with an opponent NOT on the basis of team power? Please clarify.

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Literally just made an account so I could weigh in on this. For the purposes of a special, finite event, yes - this sounds like a really cool mechanism and whoever in the office thought it up deserves a hearty commendation.

For the purposes of normal gameplay, I hate the new long PvP matches and the prospect of making PvP longer makes me think I’m going to have a lot of free time on my hands when I quit. The matches require a true time commitment after the last mod, extending that time AND adding input steps is too far.

Again - love the concept for the occasional, purpose-built application, but for all PvP you’re going to fully alienate your player base.

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oh man… this is exciting!!! I am so ready to try this mode out. :slight_smile: definitely could see some refinements to be had, and this totally could help break dominant team comp strategies if you can draft to counter them. This is definitely a step in the direction I would love PvP to go. Can it be October now please?

@Nham how would this not address min/maxers? I thought Howitzer mentioned that all heroes would be normalized “to a SET level, grade, stars and skill level” which basically makes min/maxing impossible, since every hero will be at the same “level”.

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This only accommodates one event, not the entirety of PvP. This does not address the problems with regular PvP people have.

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Now this is intriguing. My favorite part about this game is experimenting with team combinations, but the current PvP situation punishes variation rather than rewards it. Some heroes are almost never used not because they are necessarily bad, but because they fill a specific role. I loved Yanlong when he came out, but he is very specialized, being the best counter for shields, so it’s hard to really implement him. With this system though, I can bring along Yanlong if I see my opponent is bringing their Butter, Phalanx, Caine, etc.

Now my one question is this though. When does the September update release?

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You can take a page out of League of Legends (or whatever clone) and introduce bans. Just have each side be able to ban 1-2 heroes, then just start alternating picks, or something to this degree.

The issue seems to be that the prolonged PVP battles are not worth the rewards, so just increasing the rewards should alleviate that IMO. I can understand that 3 min+ battles amounting to just 100 pvp points would not be worth it or give enough incentive to runt he daily PVPs.

You can create a ranking system for even daily PVP events, and have it run for a week or two, like fighting game rankings. As players win, they reach higher tiers, where other players who win get matched up with each other. There is the possibility that you will lose players who prefer to casual PVP, but you could gain a stronger following with more hardcore PVPers, or those that enjoy more challenging PVPs.

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Summoners War does something very similar in their live RTO aka PVP. One tweak is that in SW after a player “drafts” in round one the opposition gets an opportunity to eliminate one 1 of their picks in round 2. And round 3 they completely fill out their rosters.

I like the idea but as Recmar noted above, in specific events only. Moreover, the time added to such a feature should reflect an increase in rewards. Afterall, the player base will always weigh their time vs rewards in these type of grind fests.

As for the overall free for all pvp experience, I truly hope there’s a plan in place to reduce the average pvp match time. We went from one extreme (panzer month) to another. It’s about that time to find middle ground.

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We have a saying in our country, probably hard to translate, did you take some vinegar for breakfast. That means did you wake up with a bad mood or sour or salt or just why be negative.

Right now this is going to be 1 brawl, nothing about rewards is confirmed, min max might be taken down(since we can all put our 10* plat dog into the fight) we might finally counter endless walls.

No bad words to say, this looks good, don’t take the ifrit flatline wall as hate into this, we use those 2 and we see what we fight.

Great work!

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I like the idea of drafting, but I don’t think it will really solve much. The problem is right now we have two extremely good, bursty DPS heroes (Dog and Panzer), and then Ifrit/Flatline who can revive, and finally a handful of support/healers who help round out the meta (Nightingale/Mandrake/Heimlock/Caine). How is seeing my opponent’s team picks going to allow me better chances of countering it? There is no real counter. I can just mirror match it to give me the best chance of winning.

If you want to truly fix PVP you need to look at the top 8-10 heroes ruining it and adjust them. Dog and Panzer have incredible DPS and burst, as well as survivability for their damage which is why they are the two dominate DPS right now. Odachi does decent, but doesn’t have the same level of burst and has way less hp so he is easily focused down. Maven has no burst abilities to deliver massive damage and her AoE/silence are fairly easily avoided, while her Miasm is random. Clyde is a glass cannon and dies to a round of shots from Dog, even when he gets up there in power. His abilities are also too luck reliant. Caine’s insta shield recharges fast and shields for quite a bit, making them hero savers. I could go on and on, but either the top heroes need some nerfs to bring them down or a ton of the current under dogs needs buffs.

Also, as Nailfox points out a number of other PVP issues need to be address:

I would also add xp to PVP matches so it’s impossible to artificially keep your heroes lower level to gain a leg up in PVP. Why HH is unwilling to look into these fixes, or at least acknowledge them and let us know their thoughts is beyond me.

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Initial feedback is an applause for a change in the platform to do something towards the average new player before and as they scale up; a benefit we did not have against purposeful PvP manipulation 8+months ago that still goes on today.
The match time discrepancies is important to address as the matches can easily take too long a lot of the times as they stand now with the new meta from the last update.
The new hero balancing, once the heroes are on even ground, when skills become a trade to have, will be highlighted as we will all learn more from and for role warfare in the heroes we use that have good and bad abilities alike. Those bad abilities and all other time issues will be recognized and can be ironed out and improved once the platform is developed, in place and exercised from. This will help reduce fixes to heroes in updates so you can develop more maps and bring new content to the flow of the game much easier .

The thing we all will want to know is real time cooperative communication vs delays. If there’s a PvP problem in the staging arena do we wait until the next month update to be released before we see changes to it as rediculous as that might sound or could be it be more on a real time work in progress type of no schedule to test things and fix as needed and retest WITH further notices in a form of a follow up even if there’s no solution 8 days later I think everyone was surprised by the quick response to iFrit the week of his release and It would be a good thing to continue the communication to the masses, positive or negative.

The platform is the key for a good start for PvP success with fairness and challenging fun to finally become commonplace daily. There’s a long way to go we know. But for initial feedback to this : Applause.

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This looks interesting and fine. I don’t mind spending another 20+ seconds on picking characters. One thing though: can we back out from the match if we see the opponent pick the team we hate and are we punished for backing out / not starting the match?

Kudos.

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The draft lock in for PVP only allow the participating parties to know half of the team on the opponent. Draft 2 would be hard press to make a counter. Frankly, by seeing 3 of the lineup would easily know which meta is being run and who will be picked in the remaining draft.

Without adding other prerequisites, the sandbagging continues …

I am skeptical of the proposed and frankly this does not fix the min/max abuse . . . And it’s not addressed …

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[I’ve re-written my post below as I think the tone of the original post was too sarcastic and not very nice to read. Hence I’ve decided to self-censor].

Here are some of the thoughts that I have regarding this announcement.

1. Min-max problem

The first point I’m concerned about is that it isn’t clear whether the PVP Drafting system is intended to replace the existing PVP system, or run alongside it as a separate game mode altogether.

If it is intended to replace the existing PVP system then it’s great that all heroes will be equalised (but see Section 2 below) because that would directly get rid of min-maxing.

However, if it’s just another game mode in addition to the current PVP system then I’m seriously concerned that there is/will be no solution to the min-max problem for the foreseeable future.

As highlighted previously by members of this community, some good solutions to the min-max problem are to:

- restructure or rescale skill power
- implement level and skill restrictions for pvp team compositions
- implement star and promotion restrictions for pvp team compositions

Given that there is no offer of fixing the current system it means that all min-maxers can continue to abuse the min-max system until PVP Drafting goes live - in October. So we have potentially 5 more weeks of min-max abusers.

2. All Heroes Equalised

I’ve got 10 plat heroes and 50 other heroes which are at varying levels of stars/promotion.

With all heroes equalised I can play like Elite players such as Rygel. I can play against Rygel. Never faced him before. If all heroes are equalised in PVP Draft, it necessarily means that as long as I have my 3 star Mauler unlocked at green or even bronze, I can play at 10-star plat!

Again this has significant downstream issues if PVP Draft is intended to replace the current PVP system.

For instance, if I don’t have to care what level/stars/skills my hero has in PVP Draft, then what are plat, stars and level promotions for then? Well, for campaign, gauntlet and… bounty I guess.

The good thing is, as long as I have every hero unlocked, I don’t have to chase for stars (for power).

I also don’t need gear anymore (for promotions). I don’t have to play PVP anymore to acquire gems because hey, my 3 star Mauler can play at plat. My playing time for Hero Hunters is likely to become way more “efficient” as I no longer have to acquire upgrades.

I also don’t need to spend any more gold trying to star up Heimlock from crates. This will save me a whole bunch of money. It will decrease HHG’s available revenue. I can safely ignore the current Special Offers for 180 Heimlock frags for 1800 gold and 300 Ifrit frags for $40 bucks.

The implications are obvious… no one needs to do anything beyond unlocking heroes. After that everything else is given on a platter.

If the PVP Draft replaces the whole PVP system, I am very likely to play (and want to play) HH less.

But if PVP Draft is not intended to replace the current PVP system but operate alongside it, then… HHG still needs to develop a solution to deal with the minmax issue.

3. PVP Draft

I do not love the idea that we add another 30 seconds plus 15 seconds idling before a game. This is terrible. Matches are currently too long already. What’s next, HHG putting in a video advert before we enter the raid lobby too? We don’t want to spend time waiting for a game to start.

I also suspect that there may be a bit of naivety of the devs in thinking that there is gonna be “strategy” in choosing 3 + 2. The simplistic thought is… oh man if the opponent chooses Oracle in his front 3 I am gonna bust him down with Panzer!

But here it goes… I’m gonna choose 3 utility heroes. Caine Heimlock and Night. No clue about what the +2 is gonna be. No clear “strategy” because the other player is still going in blind! He still has to be prepared for my +2. He still has to “be prepared for anything”. He still has to “take the same meta based teams”.

This isn’t gonna change the meta, this isn’t going to introduce “effective teams” that are “too niche” from getting playtime. In fact, after everyone finds out the most optimal front 3 lineup, after a while, things will become stale again.

This is because, unless there is a substantive change to the meta, introducing 3+2 alone isn’t gonna solve anything you claim it will solve.

4. Who do we match against?

I guess this is a work in progress and the devs have yet to finalise the matching system, but I just wanna say… it would be very unfair for novices to be matched with pvp veterans.

And, it could be very unfair for veterans to only play hard games against fellow veterans while novices can rack up easy wins.

I’m not criticising anything here but I just wanna sound out a warning… balancing matchmaking either based on skill, or randomly, needs to be very carefully thought through. On all available evidence… I am very sorry to be making such a statement… HHG has not been able to demonstrate critical thinking and solution-forming to key issues such as this. And I am pessimistic of this being successfully implemented (perhaps unduly so but there is little encouragement based on how things have gone in the past 3 months).

A possible solution would be for players to be ranked under an ELO system which is transparent and fair and possibly the best human-devised, self-correcting ranking system. As a 2000+ ELO rated player… I can vouch that it works. HHG might wanna consider implementing this system to pre-empt matchmaking disparities that WILL OCCUR unless an excellent ranking system is in place.

Conclusion

I’m sorry that I sound so negative. I can’t help but feel negative. I honestly CANNOT see any positives from the PVP draft system. But I hope I’m wrong.

I guess that I can come on board with the PVP Draft system if it’s an entirely separate game mode than usual PVP… but this will mean that the devs will still have to fix normal PVP.

If I’m right, though, then that’s it for Hero Hunters for me, thanks for the time.

/Sing

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