Strange way to rebalance outposts while waiting for 2.2 update. 10% extra damage. IF you hit the omnidodgers.
If you cant affect luck and/or dodge even temporarily before next update please consider this... Those past events, 50% more damage with hunters or warriors was much much better solution and much more fun.
In general, the designers and developers at Next Games have created an enjoyable game. I do applaud them with many of the improvements over time with this game. They are trying hard to create an engaging game that also is profitable for them, and they've done a pretty good job of it. Some missteps, but they've do try to balance the game over time. Unfortunately, I believe these recent outpost changes will not prove to be a big hit with the player population.
Perhaps if the players could understand the developers goals for the changes, then the players could be more help in giving feedback. Invariably, there's either one of two problems with changes like these: either the design goal is just plain wrong or the implementation to achieve the goal is off the mark.
If the design goal of these changes is to restrict players to matches that Next Games considers an "equal rank", then I suggest that the design goal is not what the players want. Players are not going to engage in an optional PvP battle that they don't believe they will have a high chance of winning. If the players believe that there is only a 50% chance or less of winning an outpost raid, then the players don't believe the risk is worth the rewards. The decision players are making is that trade goods won and influence won in a raid is not worth the costs of a likely extended hospital stay for their survivors. Players will elect not to raid in this scenario.
I am not sure if Next Games understands how bad players feel about survivor hospital stays. It's not something they can get from their data about game play, or something they can understand in a test environment. Most players try to avoid hospital stays in any way possible. Hospital stays often mean that players stop playing the game for a while, when all the players really want to do is just the opposite - play the game.
With the current system of raiding risk and reward, players want a high chance of winning a raid, maybe on the order of a 75-80% chance of winning. There's only 2 ways to give an attacking raiding team this high chance of winning, either:
#1, give raiding parties a significant advantage in an equal match, or #2, allow players to find opponents that they think they can beat , i.e. let players find an unbalanced match in their favor.
You really don't want to continue to do #1, give raiding parties more advantages to fix the problem. You do not want to warp outposts by buffing the attacker even more because that would make defense nearly impossible. If you make outposts something into which you cannot defend at all in an even match, you ruin the concept of outposts. People will give up on even trying to defend their outposts, and they will concentrate on just attacking all the time. This is not what anybody wants.
So what this really means you want #2, let the player find what they believe is an unbalanced match in their favor in the matchmaking.
Allowing players to find unbalanced matches, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, also gives players a chance for an epic underdog victory against a higher ranked opponent. These underdog victories should not be underestimated as a source of potential player enjoyment. Also, in the long run, players don't want to be continually forced into even matches pitting them regularly against the similar players with the same equipment and tactics.
You can provide incentives that entice high level players into not picking on lower level players, which can be a problem with allowing them to find unbalanced matches. Just make the risk/reward situation for the higher level player so bad they won't regularly pick on lower level players.
Players want to find a match they are interested in at the moment. Perhaps the players is looking for an almost sure win with little reward, or they will be shooting for that underdog victory with higher rewards. Or perhaps they want to play against a certain outpost map, or find opponent survivor types of their choosing, or they want a revenge chance at a certain opponent. Let the players choose what type of raid they want, and then outposts will be more fun, and there will be higher player participation with outposts.
So, in my opinion, fixing unbalanced matchmaking is not an appropriate design goal. It is not a problem that needs fixing in the first place. However, trying to fix an unbalanced matchmaking system with blind matchmaking of equal opponents is just throwing salt on the wound. Next Games is trying to fix a problem that is not really a problem with a solution that makes the situation even worse.
Maybe the secondary goal for Next Games of the blind matchmaking is to prevent people from tanking their outposts to create sanctuaries. I can certainly understand the desire to try to fix that problem. The blind matchmaking now does put a serious damper on the concept of sanctuary (not defended) outposts. But the changes done toward achieving this goal create even bigger problems. A good solution to the problem of sanctuary outposts would be to find incentives for players to properly defend their outposts. Many players frankly just don't care about their influence and since they don't lose trade goods anymore, they do the logical thing and leave their outposts undefended. If there is no good reason to defend their outpost, some players won't do it.
If there were other goals with these changes, perhaps Next Games can chime in here with these goals so the player base can help achieve them. Us players want outposts to work, and we want more players actively involved with outposts too. And yes, we realize these changes have to work for Next Games for also.
There are some good ways to let the outpost raiding matchmaking system balance itself, with proper player rating techniques and good raiding and defending player incentives. I believe the system as designed now, with limited choices, high risk, and insignificant player incentives, misses the mark of trying to increase player participation in outposts. If the folks at Next Games are interested in hearing some ideas, the player base would be more than happy to help. Next Games is reaching out more to the player base for their feedback in other aspects of the game, which I believe is a good step in the right direction.
I can tell you that it should be a negative sign to the game developers when they have to add more and more complexity in an effort to fix problems. With added complexity comes unexpected consequences, communication issues, and player dissatisfaction. Often the best solution is to throw out the complexity and look at the problem from a different, simpler angle for solutions.
These are my opinions. I have been a regular raider. I am regularly in the top 100. With these changes, I will stick to just defending my outpost and spend my gas elsewhere in the game. Hopefully, other future changes will entice me to take another look at raiding again.
Not just those lower level player are having difficulty.
Even though i can win against lvl19 opponent, most of the time i wont be leaving unscathed. Usually at least 2 if not all 3 will spend 2hr 45min in hospital.
So it quite frustrating that i only can do a raid every 2-3 hour.
And this made the 1 gas cost redundant since i cant do multiple raid
In order to promote outpost play and make it enjoyable a good balance in outposts between offense and defense is clearly needed and that balance should be shaded slight in favor of the offense and not defense.
I liked outposts when they first came out. Now I'm not saying go back to it but rather I would like to point out what I thought made them fun was you had a good chance of winning on offense and a good chance of losing on defense. To gain either TG or influence a good tactic was to assume that as soon as you log off you would be attacked and lose so do 5-7 raids at least and then be prepared to give back a small portion of that. Shield problems not withstanding, if you could be attacked and lose 3 times in 24 hours, then winning 4 or 5 battles offsets this and anything else is "profit" or put you in the black or however you want to say it.
When we had hunter week a few weeks ago, the level of fun I received from outposts increased during that week because that extra damage from the hunter was enough to undo rebalancing efforts that NG has made to the game and outposts. I always play outposts but for the last 2 months it is a necessary task and not something done for fun. I'm sure they had good intentions with the rebalance but to me the rebalancing wasn't working. During that week I felt like I could still defend against players that I should easily beat and my winning percentage against players that I can beat some of the time and lose to some of the time was just about right.
In order to promote outpost play and make it enjoyable a good balance in outposts between offense and defense is clearly needed and that balance should be shaded slightly in favor of the offense and not defense. That way the more you play the more you win.
This is what we [I] were talking about when we [I] said that things would be rocky.
A lot of high-level players who were purposefully tanking their influence are in the wrong matchmaking cohort. This has made it so that lower-level players will be matched with them more often, which is what I see happening on this thread. We need those players to play and win more matches so that they rise in influence to where they belong and get out of the way of the lower players.
You can see the rarity of the survivors your opponent will be using. Use that info as a 'fuzzy' difficulty indicator.
We'll be running this cycle as-is with the increased rewards for players who have more than middling influence in order to entice them to come play more and sort themselves out. After the event & cycle, we'll analyze the data and plan the next move.
If you are only able to play an outpost at the end of your session with your last Gas, that should still see you get some good rewards now and then, and not reduce your session length if you weren't coming back for a few hours anyways.
As I mentioned earlier [maybe in this thread, I dunno], we're looking at modifying healing times permanently, have already changed that particular defense map, and are strategizing on further changes that might be needed in different outcomes. Thanks for giving it a whirl, please consider trying again, and as always, I appreciate the feedback.
Development Team Member - The Walking Dead: No Man's Land Please note: Development is a fluid process, and suggestions and implementation take time and iteration. Any discussion of future features, deadlines, updates, balance changes, and such should be considered prospective and subject to change.
I am really worried that this is going to ruin outposts for players that are not at end game yet. My max survivor level is 17 and I am only in Gold tier II, but currently when I try to raid it takes me 15-20 tries to get a match-up of similar level to me (almost every time it is 3 level 19 survivors with max zombies). If every time I try to raid I only have a 5% chance to get a raid I can actually complete and a 95% chance that my survivors will be in the hospital for 2 hours, it will no longer be worth raiding. I hope that you are fixing the match making to be more survivor level dependent at the same time you are taking away the choice.
I am willing to give it a try, but if I am correct in my worries this will quickly become a part of the game I don't play, and I don't think I will be alone.
And my fears come true, I have tried 5 raids and on every one I got 3X19 level defenders if I flee I lose 10 influence if i stay I have serious hospital stays in my future.
I'm only in Gold tier II !
When are you developers going to realize that we all aren't at end game?!?
You try to balance things out to make it competitive and fun for people that already have max everything, but you make it harder on the people who are trying to get there. If you continue to make it unreasonably hard on new players to catch up, you are going to drive them away.
You do realize that if you don't replace the end game players that get board and quit with new players that the game is going to die, right?
Who's trying to fool who here? Outposts aren't PvP, they are PvAI. The AI is broken, has been for a long time now. Defenders behaving like Superman. When they fix it I will play in earnest again. For now, since they have cut TG delivery in half with the challenges (and are moneti$ing them too, knew that was gonna happen!) it's just snatch and grab, until they nix that capability anyway.
Im intentionally de ranking now, for one i dont want to play the same map over and over even if everything else was work as intended which it isnt so tge 3 hour hospital trip isnt worth it. In general the whole risk vs reward on outpost is out of whack.
Im only on 3k inf too and that is technically the end game for outpost despite there been many tiers beyond that.
Grab the flag then flee and it becomes a draw nothing lost nothing gained either side.
Except the 1 gas every time you try (which will go up to 2) So match making costs have gone up to 10 TG, 1(2) gas and possibly a hospital stay if you get bruised running to the flag.
This is what we [I] were talking about when we [I] said that things would be rocky.
A lot of high-level players who were purposefully tanking their influence are in the wrong matchmaking cohort. This has made it so that lower-level players will be matched with them more often, which is what I see happening on this thread. We need those players to play and win more matches so that they rise in influence to where they belong and get out of the way of the lower players.
You can see the rarity of the survivors your opponent will be using. Use that info as a 'fuzzy' difficulty indicator.
We'll be running this cycle as-is with the increased rewards for players who have more than middling influence in order to entice them to come play more and sort themselves out. After the event & cycle, we'll analyze the data and plan the next move.
If you are only able to play an outpost at the end of your session with your last Gas, that should still see you get some good rewards now and then, and not reduce your session length if you weren't coming back for a few hours anyways.
As I mentioned earlier [maybe in this thread, I dunno], we're looking at modifying healing times permanently, have already changed that particular defense map, and are strategizing on further changes that might be needed in different outcomes. Thanks for giving it a whirl, please consider trying again, and as always, I appreciate the feedback.
Then don't focus on influence for match making - make comparative survivor strength more important. Then it won't matter if people are purposefully tanking their influence because they will still need to fight relatively equal toughness opponents, not bottom feed.
@ABGrok Matchmaking used to be far less, many many months ago. It has been 10 TG for a long time now. As for spending 10 TG and 1 or 2 gas, then fleeing if needed (rural map 3!), it's a viable and profitable option. I made over 40k TG this way 3 days ago.
Well I was trying to save you from losing 10 influence I wasn't trying to help you gain your gas and trade goods back. You already lost the trade good doing the search anyway not from accepting the match. Every mission costs gas and there is never any guarantee for a victory whether exploratory, story, challenge, or outpost and that 2 in gas should have got you some XP at least. Lesson learned, I won't try to help you in the future.
@Vudnik I'm sure it can be profitable if I tank my influence so I can possibly get a match i can win without hospital stays, but as it is right now it would likely take 15-20 gas to get a match i can win which isn't a viable strategy and i don't want to give in and tank my influence to fix the issue, as people doing that seams to be the issue in the first place.
@ABGrok Respect that. We each play our own way. I personally don't care about influence for the moment. I only lose when fleeing, which I don't do much. When I snatch and grab, opponent doesn't lose inf. points or TG, and I get TG and never go to the hospital. Win - win. This is not bottom feeding by the way. It's a tactic we are forced into since NG nerfed half our challenge rewards then started charging TG for most things in the shop. Now they are charging real money for TG. If you are a "noob" you'd better get used to this! They are masters at it!
Sadly even though it a match i would win both influences and TG, i still suffer a 2hr 45min hospital stay with 6 more queuing. (I assemble 3 team without weapon/armor boost).
Although i get to win 80% of the time. But it take every 3hr for 1 raid which seem pretty long
Like what I've been saying all along: you can mofify whatever logic or algorithm you have going on behind the matchmaking, but as long as you don't do something about the ridiculously long hospital time, and you don't make the rewards more lucrative, you ain't got no buyer of this new outpost
I thought I was going to be the only one but i'm reading a lot of posts from players not agreeing with the new so-called "improvement" for the outpost section. Next Game, we need a better update and fast! This game is awesome, now outpost is 15 to 20% chance of winning. Significant decrease for players since the new update. Does anyone drop in trophies way faster than before?
Me too @ABGrok ! I fought like hell one cycle ago to get (finally!) to gold tier II. Cashed in at 10:00 that night, got my 3k TG,then went to bed with my influence points @ 3012. Woke up the next morning to find I'd been raided. Lost only 1 inf. point but my total went down to 2999. Do the math: 3012-1=2999. Put in a ticket. That was 2 weeks ago. They are "looking into it." I started tanking my inf. so I could get a better matchup because, though I'm stacked with lvl 19 leg srvrs, most with lvl 21 and 22 gear, I'm gushing blood after meeting up with lvl 17 and 18 defenders. This game is broken in SO many ways, yet it seems they always have the time to masterfully manipulate and reduce and monetize. We whales are simply doing what we can to survive the bugs and poor designs (of late anyway). Too bad because I used to really love this game.
Hey i dig what they did with the balance system now. Lol i hate the outpost, before it was ok, but then i started to be attacked every day all day by people 5 to 6 levels ahead of me. And since the balance.....crickets lol i don't mean to be a jerk, but seriously, the logic behind this, "only the strong survive" is Bs. In the case of this game, it is he who pays the most scores the most. Like i said in other threads, i don't pay for the game. I only sit through the ads. And despite the fact I've been jamming on this game just about every day straight since it's first release I still don't have a chance when it comes to raids. So as it is now, i will do just enough to maintain the tier I'm in. No more. No less. There's no point.
I went 92 days straight (a while back) without any raids. Now I'm getting hit a dozen times a day! Mind you I dropped my inf. and pulled my walkers so people could more easily get TG. Maybe that's why.
Comments
If you cant affect luck and/or dodge even temporarily before next update please consider this...
Those past events, 50% more damage with hunters or warriors was much much better solution and much more fun.
Perhaps if the players could understand the developers goals for the changes, then the players could be more help in giving feedback. Invariably, there's either one of two problems with changes like these: either the design goal is just plain wrong or the implementation to achieve the goal is off the mark.
If the design goal of these changes is to restrict players to matches that Next Games considers an "equal rank", then I suggest that the design goal is not what the players want. Players are not going to engage in an optional PvP battle that they don't believe they will have a high chance of winning. If the players believe that there is only a 50% chance or less of winning an outpost raid, then the players don't believe the risk is worth the rewards. The decision players are making is that trade goods won and influence won in a raid is not worth the costs of a likely extended hospital stay for their survivors. Players will elect not to raid in this scenario.
I am not sure if Next Games understands how bad players feel about survivor hospital stays. It's not something they can get from their data about game play, or something they can understand in a test environment. Most players try to avoid hospital stays in any way possible. Hospital stays often mean that players stop playing the game for a while, when all the players really want to do is just the opposite - play the game.
With the current system of raiding risk and reward, players want a high chance of winning a raid, maybe on the order of a 75-80% chance of winning. There's only 2 ways to give an attacking raiding team this high chance of winning, either:
#1, give raiding parties a significant advantage in an equal match, or
#2, allow players to find opponents that they think they can beat , i.e. let players find an unbalanced match in their favor.
You really don't want to continue to do #1, give raiding parties more advantages to fix the problem. You do not want to warp outposts by buffing the attacker even more because that would make defense nearly impossible. If you make outposts something into which you cannot defend at all in an even match, you ruin the concept of outposts. People will give up on even trying to defend their outposts, and they will concentrate on just attacking all the time. This is not what anybody wants.
So what this really means you want #2, let the player find what they believe is an unbalanced match in their favor in the matchmaking.
Allowing players to find unbalanced matches, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, also gives players a chance for an epic underdog victory against a higher ranked opponent. These underdog victories should not be underestimated as a source of potential player enjoyment. Also, in the long run, players don't want to be continually forced into even matches pitting them regularly against the similar players with the same equipment and tactics.
You can provide incentives that entice high level players into not picking on lower level players, which can be a problem with allowing them to find unbalanced matches. Just make the risk/reward situation for the higher level player so bad they won't regularly pick on lower level players.
Players want to find a match they are interested in at the moment. Perhaps the players is looking for an almost sure win with little reward, or they will be shooting for that underdog victory with higher rewards. Or perhaps they want to play against a certain outpost map, or find opponent survivor types of their choosing, or they want a revenge chance at a certain opponent. Let the players choose what type of raid they want, and then outposts will be more fun, and there will be higher player participation with outposts.
So, in my opinion, fixing unbalanced matchmaking is not an appropriate design goal. It is not a problem that needs fixing in the first place. However, trying to fix an unbalanced matchmaking system with blind matchmaking of equal opponents is just throwing salt on the wound. Next Games is trying to fix a problem that is not really a problem with a solution that makes the situation even worse.
Maybe the secondary goal for Next Games of the blind matchmaking is to prevent people from tanking their outposts to create sanctuaries. I can certainly understand the desire to try to fix that problem. The blind matchmaking now does put a serious damper on the concept of sanctuary (not defended) outposts. But the changes done toward achieving this goal create even bigger problems. A good solution to the problem of sanctuary outposts would be to find incentives for players to properly defend their outposts. Many players frankly just don't care about their influence and since they don't lose trade goods anymore, they do the logical thing and leave their outposts undefended. If there is no good reason to defend their outpost, some players won't do it.
If there were other goals with these changes, perhaps Next Games can chime in here with these goals so the player base can help achieve them. Us players want outposts to work, and we want more players actively involved with outposts too. And yes, we realize these changes have to work for Next Games for also.
There are some good ways to let the outpost raiding matchmaking system balance itself, with proper player rating techniques and good raiding and defending player incentives. I believe the system as designed now, with limited choices, high risk, and insignificant player incentives, misses the mark of trying to increase player participation in outposts. If the folks at Next Games are interested in hearing some ideas, the player base would be more than happy to help. Next Games is reaching out more to the player base for their feedback in other aspects of the game, which I believe is a good step in the right direction.
I can tell you that it should be a negative sign to the game developers when they have to add more and more complexity in an effort to fix problems. With added complexity comes unexpected consequences, communication issues, and player dissatisfaction. Often the best solution is to throw out the complexity and look at the problem from a different, simpler angle for solutions.
These are my opinions. I have been a regular raider. I am regularly in the top 100. With these changes, I will stick to just defending my outpost and spend my gas elsewhere in the game. Hopefully, other future changes will entice me to take another look at raiding again.
Remember to use your charge abilities
Even though i can win against lvl19 opponent, most of the time i wont be leaving unscathed. Usually at least 2 if not all 3 will spend 2hr 45min in hospital.
So it quite frustrating that i only can do a raid every 2-3 hour.
And this made the 1 gas cost redundant since i cant do multiple raid
I liked outposts when they first came out. Now I'm not saying go back to it but rather I would like to point out what I thought made them fun was you had a good chance of winning on offense and a good chance of losing on defense. To gain either TG or influence a good tactic was to assume that as soon as you log off you would be attacked and lose so do 5-7 raids at least and then be prepared to give back a small portion of that. Shield problems not withstanding, if you could be attacked and lose 3 times in 24 hours, then winning 4 or 5 battles offsets this and anything else is "profit" or put you in the black or however you want to say it.
When we had hunter week a few weeks ago, the level of fun I received from outposts increased during that week because that extra damage from the hunter was enough to undo rebalancing efforts that NG has made to the game and outposts. I always play outposts but for the last 2 months it is a necessary task and not something done for fun. I'm sure they had good intentions with the rebalance but to me the rebalancing wasn't working. During that week I felt like I could still defend against players that I should easily beat and my winning percentage against players that I can beat some of the time and lose to some of the time was just about right.
In order to promote outpost play and make it enjoyable a good balance in outposts between offense and defense is clearly needed and that balance should be shaded slightly in favor of the offense and not defense. That way the more you play the more you win.
A lot of high-level players who were purposefully tanking their influence are in the wrong matchmaking cohort. This has made it so that lower-level players will be matched with them more often, which is what I see happening on this thread. We need those players to play and win more matches so that they rise in influence to where they belong and get out of the way of the lower players.
You can see the rarity of the survivors your opponent will be using. Use that info as a 'fuzzy' difficulty indicator.
We'll be running this cycle as-is with the increased rewards for players who have more than middling influence in order to entice them to come play more and sort themselves out. After the event & cycle, we'll analyze the data and plan the next move.
If you are only able to play an outpost at the end of your session with your last Gas, that should still see you get some good rewards now and then, and not reduce your session length if you weren't coming back for a few hours anyways.
As I mentioned earlier [maybe in this thread, I dunno], we're looking at modifying healing times permanently, have already changed that particular defense map, and are strategizing on further changes that might be needed in different outcomes. Thanks for giving it a whirl, please consider trying again, and as always, I appreciate the feedback.
Please note: Development is a fluid process, and suggestions and implementation take time and iteration. Any discussion of future features, deadlines, updates, balance changes, and such should be considered prospective and subject to change.
I'm only in Gold tier II !
When are you developers going to realize that we all aren't at end game?!?
You try to balance things out to make it competitive and fun for people that already have max everything, but you make it harder on the people who are trying to get there. If you continue to make it unreasonably hard on new players to catch up, you are going to drive them away.
You do realize that if you don't replace the end game players that get board and quit with new players that the game is going to die, right?
MAVERICK'S 1 Million Star Club | OG | USA | NOC
Analyze This with ALF4reals | v1 | v2 | v3 |
| My YouTube Videos | My 1st Interview | Best Analogy Award!! |
Freemium... the "mium" is latin for 'not really'
Im intentionally de ranking now, for one i dont want to play the same map over and over even if everything else was work as intended which it isnt so tge 3 hour hospital trip isnt worth it. In general the whole risk vs reward on outpost is out of whack.
Im only on 3k inf too and that is technically the end game for outpost despite there been many tiers beyond that.
2. Remove Rural Field
3. Decrease healing time
If those 3 things will be fixed.. Then Outpost will work properly.
Although i get to win 80% of the time. But it take every 3hr for 1 raid which seem pretty long
Next Game, we need a better update and fast! This game is awesome, now outpost is 15 to 20% chance of winning. Significant decrease for players since the new update. Does anyone drop in trophies way faster than before?
This game is broken in SO many ways, yet it seems they always have the time to masterfully manipulate and reduce and monetize. We whales are simply doing what we can to survive the bugs and poor designs (of late anyway). Too bad because I used to really love this game.
No change there then!