[Suggestion] Give something for non-resign PVP losses

I want to like PVP, but I keep losing to any non-AI player. Mostly it's because they have better cards (by far) but sometimes it's due to bad draws. I'm at the point now where I just resign as soon as I see a non-AI pop up in the window, and keep retrying until I get my one win for the day and pathetic one loot chest. (No point in going for more.) I'd actually like to play against humans, but when I get nothing out of it, why bother? I suggest that if you lose without resigning, you should get something: maybe half progress on the chest line, or a non-rare chest, or even just some minor amount of gold. Something to keep those of us that keep dying in PVP a reason to play.

Also, the ranking system can be manipulated by serially resigning matches. I don't know if that's why I keep running into players with all these gold and silver cards in the low ranking levels or not, but it probably ought to change if you want new players to have a chance in PVP.

 

One random piece of treasure, but only if your opponent wins on points, not if you resign or time out.

 

I don't see avoiding bots to be that much of a problem. Give a reward only if you do damage to an opponent during the match, perhaps. Or go really web-tech and make the loser do a captcha to get their loot. Not a lot of effort needed on the programming side of things.

 

Are you a programmer? Actually, I ask that in all seriousness. It is AGONIZINGLY hard to program something that covers "anything a human could do." Tangentially, that truth colors every bit of AI design.

But when it comes to defeating "cheats" . . . yeah, "Measure, countermeasure." You put in one measure, and you get a delay of a few days before the humans change how they cheat.

 

I am, though not in games specifically. The captcha idea has been implemented dozens of times in easily available code, so even if it was hard it could be copied and modified fairly easily. Wouldn't have to be complex, something like "x + 5 = seven" is probably enough to defeat most bots. But I wasn't intended to say this would be zero effort. There would certainly be some, and I believe it would be worthwhile to make the learning-by-losing experience less frustrating.

 

The captcha idea is the better one, yes: I was mostly concerned about the "define a minimum amount of play" route. Among other things, once you've set that bar high enough to stop enough cheats, you've also shut out real players who were trounced before they could "play the minimum."

So, if Blue Manchu wanted gamers to have to go through a captcha, it stands a better chance of working without too much pain. (Obviously, improved text recognition means there are anti-captcha programs.) The next question: will they? Once you tell people that they CAN score loot this way, many of them will start at the task, and now the bots (even if most of them fail at the captcha) are on the loose.

 

Maybe you could limit the the number of chests you can win a day through losses. For example your first and fifth lose of the day grant you a chest with one item of rare quality or less. This would limit people from farming epic and legendary items.

 

I'd say this is a good idea, and that it seems a reasonable and relatively easy proposition to give a consolation prize, perhaps a couple gold, depending upon how many stars or how much damage the player earns in the match. I also think a system like this wouldn't encourage sandbagging, while keeping those who try and lose from coming away completely empty handed. OR, you could restructure XP to do something like that too.

 

Few gold wouldn't hurt.

Although due to abysmal selling prices, even 3 gold would be more than typical loot value from "normal" pvp chest.

 

I would say one random item if you earn at least 1 star is adequate. You have to play to get a star after all and one random item can keep players going

edit: maybe 2 stars is better

 

I was about to make this suggestion but I found that this thread already existed. My suggestion is: give a "standard chest" item reward for every two stars you get (rounded down) if you lose without resigning. So if you lose with 2-3 stars you get a single standard item, if you lose with 4-5 stars you get two standard items (equivalent to a Standard MP Chest), and if you lose with 0-1 stars you still get nothing. This will reward actually playing in a non-botting way and will reward effort and close games. Winning of course is still better (even though you get two standard MP items for winning as well) because it advances you closer to the next gold/purple chest which is the real incentive. Besides, if the game is close enough that you get 4 or 5 stars then you fought well and you deserve a reward (2 "standard" items is rather underwhelming most of the time anyway). Note that these "consolation items" should probably not give a club reward because that's probably too much when a single item is rewarded.

Hopefully this would fix the problems Jon mentioned while rewarding playing through a match in a reasonable way.

 

I really like this one. Reminds me of the ebay feedback system.

 

Just have it happen when they lose by HP loss or VP. If they take the time to throw the match like this, let them have the consolation prize, I mean, the consolation prize should be considerably inferior to the victory prize, right? As for AFK losses, sadly, those would be the hardest to determine whether they're gaming the system or legitimately having connection troubles, so just don't have those count on either end. No win, no loss.

 

I suggested this a few times before and i still think it would be good to give losers some loot to let them feel they are actually going forward even if its slower than the winning guy.

 

I was actually thinking of a similar voting system for user-generated scenarios with my ranked SP suggestion, so that fun scenarios could be identified, and dumb scenarios could be dropped: https://forums.cardhunter.com/threads/suggestion-ranked-sp.3034/

 

Sorry to dredge up an old thread, but there was an excellent suggestion over here:

This both encourages continued engagement in the match and makes idle/bot farming harder.

 

This was my suggestion from another thread, similar to what's being suggested here. I'd really like to see something like this implemented.