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nekodracones · 4 years

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Gauntlet: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t

Alternatively titled: Concrete Reasons to Hate Gauntlet that Also Make Me Want To Quit The Game.

I’m starting this post 5 days past after when I had originally intended to post this. Typically one might say that no one needed to know this unnecessary info, except I can probably relate the procrastination directly to my disengagement with the game this past week, which is definitively directly linked to the unhappiness of my teammates during Gauntlet, as we each tried to hit our higher-than-normal personal prize tiers. Also, while I stoned like a shitty teammate in WD this week, I played Call of Duty Mobile and it’s actually a decent game that rewards my grinder tendencies, so I’ve been occupied with that.

I should make it clear that while this, being the shittiest discount-period PvP possible, made it a particularly shitty Gauntlet to have to grind out, my points stand for any Gauntlet, in general. Gauntlet being the discount PvP simply highlighted it’s most hateful facets and drove me to analyse where and how exactly this event went all wrong.

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FOUNDATIONAL PROBLEMS

1. Too little opportunity for teams to differentiate themselves by consistent activity- and possible activity is limited.

In higher leagues, many teams have most if not all of their PvE islands on cool down at any given time. Some larger islands even see people setting timers for their appearance, just so that they can get in hits before said islands disappear. The rest of the time, everyone just waits for PvP islands to appear once every 3h. This means that differentiating one’s team from the competition falls to PvPs, which come with their own slew of negative implications.

2. PvP and PvE islands die too quickly and regenerate too slowly.

This week, I watched my teammates congratulate each other for getting hits in on Gustav island. The typical teammate would only get in one hit, and then have to wait another 4h for the largest PvE island to reappear. In the meanwhile, they would hit the other islands, and at multiple instances this event, we’d have all the islands in cooldown...at the same time, leaving us with nothing to hit.

Current island health seems like it was balanced for supers, not megas. When islands appear once every 4h only to disappear after 3 minutes, this seems poorly designed. It should not be possible for no islands to be open at any one time.

3. The first few islands are worth fewer points for each attack for no reason.

For most players in Sapphire and Diamond, all the PvE islands are equal in difficulty. Not only is it unnecessary to force us to all spend energy and inner fires at suboptimal rates at early parts of the event, it also creates competition for the PvE islands with better value, and elicits unnecessary consideration of the conundrum ‘Do I kill earlier islands at terrible rates to contribute to team points, or focus on getting personal points for better value by waiting for larger islands to reset?’ I don’t think it’s fair to force people into having to consider the value of personal progress against helping their team; isn’t the point of a team-based game to incentivise teamwork?

4. PvE is meaningless and unsatisfying.

PvE bases have low point value and take precious time to grind, but are also unchallenging and boring. This isn’t to say that I think making them challenging will fix this, but rather that their point value should be increased and the work needed to get those points decreased, with, say, a raid button, instead of wasting our time.

5. 70% is a win.

Unless every single base on a team is a maxed base, most bases optimised for strength, under level 550 hit 70% at an earlier point as compared to bases optimised for a longer time needed to reach 70% completion, which are often weaker. This places forces players to choose between having a strong base, or a long base. With a single defensive base design meta and the latter being generally detrimental with it’s only benefit being a longer completion time, should it be an encouraged base design?

Should sudden spikes in performance be rewarded over constant high performance? Does the ability to have a fraction of the team complete bases to 70% a few seconds faster really determine a superior team?

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IMPLICATIONS

1. The deciding moments of Gauntlet occur in literal seconds.

As pointed out, the deciding moments of Gauntlet are the PvPs. Between two competent teams who spend enough megas to finish off a PvP island in one wave, the difference between a loss and a win is very often mere seconds. This is bad for multiple reasons.

First and foremost, 2 minutes (or less!) of PvP every 3h is both too draining over 4 days and too insignificant to excite and satisfy when it happens. Additionally, any internet connection problems or PG server glitches, which are common, within those two minutes can cost your team the entire PvP. Finally, it’s idiotic that these few seconds to 70% matter far more than the hours of grinding a team does on PvE islands. All in all, flying a base a few seconds faster comes down less to skill and more to fortune, which makes it a very idiotic metric to determine whether a team should be winning the entire event.

PvP rounds should be decided by some other metric other than completion time.

2. Longer bases > Stronger bases.

This is an unfortunate meta that has been becoming more and more prevalent in recent times. It rewards the wrong things- logically, shouldn’t planning ahead and building strong towers be encouraged? Farms give an unequal % of base completion as compared to actual damaging towers of the same or higher level, as they have higher HP. As most bases have no hope of stopping recent dragons stronger than their towers, if said base isn’t endgame, it’s ideal that a base backload a larger comparative percentage of HP with it’s farms by having lower level, and hence a lower HP kill island ahead of the farms. Rewarding poor base building not optimised for damage tower strength seems bad.

Somewhat tangentially, shorter bases are preferentially attacked over longer bases in order for teams to win PvPs. Sacrificing points and risks taken on larger bases just because they take too long to complete devalues defenders and makes PvPs a pure speed race instead of valuing skilled flying.

Stronger bases should be rewarded instead of bases that take longer to complete simply because their HP was backloaded.

3. Defence is undervalued.

Say you shut down an attack on your team’s PvP island before 70%, sacrificing the opportunity cost of being able to launch your own attack on the enemy team and having it land, helping your team complete the PvP island faster, potentially winning the round. However, while your defence may screw that one attacker, the next enemy hit to land will probably finish off the island, so multiple defenders are needed to make a noticeable dent in the enemy wave. Additionally, defences are unrewarded in the PvP, your attacker only needs to kill 70% of the defended base with three dragons; in the case of a failure will likely still score a percentage of points from their unsuccessful attack, and also have the choice to receive an energy refund if they drag out their attack for long enough. Also you’ve probably spent a bunch of hammers and boosts.

Defence should be rewarded more strongly in PvPs, as dragons and bases are two sides of the same coin (and people tend to spend more on bases than dragons, as a rule)

4. If your team isn’t competing for points, your team isn’t good. If your team is competing for points, your teammates are selfish.

Obviously, while this statement, while echoed in the sentiments of many players, may be logically untrue, the reality is that individual sandbagging is rewarded in this event. In a less competitive team with fewer competitive teammates, players are able to access and earn more high-value personal points with less stress and time management. This is bad; isn’t the point of a team-based game to encourage teamwork?

One might argue that such sandbaggers would miss out on team prizes, but the fact remains that personal points are easier and less stressful to earn on shittier teams, and that alone makes the sacrifice worth it for some. Team strife is never fun to have to deal with; some may feel any animosity unintentionally caused by competition with teammates for high-value points is undesirable and wish to avoid such a situation.

More points should be made available to decrease the scarcity of points and hence intra-team competition for points.

5. PG isn’t maximising profits from this event.

By creating a PvP where some point sources are more valuable than others, PG has artificially caused some to believe that it’s not worth it to push for higher personal prize tiers if their teammates are constantly causing said point sources to be unavailable. This may cause some to spend less PvP resources than they might have otherwise, since they may think it’s ‘not worth it’. PG isn’t very good at this comparative pricing thing!

The value of certain point sources should be increased relative to each other.

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CONCLUSION

Gauntlet is a pretty terrible PvP as is. Most of it’s problems arise from it’s not providing enough comparatively high-value point sources; I’d like to posit that island HP were never adjusted appropriately after the introduction of megas.

(Megas are a fine high-value introduction to the game; if I had a gripe about them it’d be that IF costs were never adjusted after the energy pack discounts, and 20 IFs to launch one is far too expensive for how ubiquitous and necessary megas are in more competitive leagues now. This is probably another post, though.)

Where PvP islands used to take 10+ minutes to be cleared with supers; now they’re cleared in a single wave. If you’re not clearing your PvP islands within 2 minutes, you’ve probably lost that wave, too. This is obviously bad.

I’m not asking that island HP be adjusted accordingly, or for PvP islands to spawn more frequently, since this would only increase the necessity for megas in this PvP and exhaust team resources more rapidly, but the PvP should be adjusted for their addition to the game.

A few suggestions:

1. PvE islands should have shorter regeneration times in general.

2. PvE islands can have shorter regeneration times based on how rapidly they’re cleared by the team, since PvE island clearing speed can be a fair indicator of the activity of the team, and hence their greater need for point targets. Obviously, this also gives greater advantage to teams with generally higher team activity, since they can kill the same island more times than a less active team that clears islands more slowly. Maybe a point multiplier to be applied on team/personal points based on how many times each island is cleared?

3. Point value of each attack on the smaller PvE islands should be increased to be more in line with the point values that larger PvE islands provide.

4. Install raid button for PvE attacks. I’m tired of Krelos being used as an excuse for going half-lazy. Always go full-lazy. #RaidButton2k20

5. No points awarded below 70%; instead, a full energy refund is provided. This point is controversial; in higher leagues this would punish players legitimately trying bases outside of their expected ‘ez point’ range. At the same time, others disagree that people should get ‘free tries’ on enemy bases until they get it down, since it further devalues defenders.

6. 70%ing a base still remains a win; but no points are awarded until farms and mills are killed. Most bases have their farms and mills behind all their defensive towers, this solution ensures that no one needs to adjust their base so they’re not 70%ed until later into their base. At the same time, higher level bases remain advantaged as it would take longer to clear/skip islands before the farms, to kill them. However, this also punishes players hitting above their weight class, and puts a defensive focus on defending farms.

7. Reward defenders by awarding points for dragons shot down; scaled according to dragon DP as compared to base tower level. Or something.

8. Let all attacks started against PvP islands land, and have bonus hits that land after the enemy island is killed earn bonus team points, with a significant multiplier. This is good as it rewards teams that have more attackers online and ready to go for their higher blanket activity, instead of just the speed of their fastest attackers.

Mainly, I’d just like this event to not punish active teams for their activity. It’s tiring to have to entertain thoughts of leaving for a smaller team every time this event runs. My team’s really nice, so it’s actually a pretty serious internal debate. #ChronicSandbaggerCat

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