As a lot may know, there was a poll from the devs on Twitter where 60% of voters preferred a 30 minute match timer, and 40% of voters preferred 45 minutes. A few days later, the timer was reset back to 30 minutes with the point being that only 1.3% of matches exceeded 30 minutes. The recent developer letter says that "feedback suggests that players are extremely frustrated when they get 'locked in' to a 45m match." Before I get into detail, I would like to say that reducing the match timer does nothing in making defensive matches less frustrating, and really takes away from what could be some amazing matches. I'll explain why.
The frustration with longer matches comes with the inability to make progress at a fun pace in a defensive match rather than the match length itself. Needless to say, the reason why matches ever last long is because at least one player in a match is able to heal. To add onto that, the one thing that has long been a problem in this game has been the inability to counter heals reliably unless you are the Death school. The ability to weaken a heal should not be almost entirely exclusive to any one school or archetype. This is because the ability to stop effective heals is directly related to the ability to end a match against a healer. As a result, players have to wait until a defensive player runs out of heals before going for the win rather than having a way to interact with the heals themselves. This cycle of attack spamming, seeing a massive heal, and doing it over again causes a single match to feel boring, repetitive, or like it isn't making any progress.
I want to make my point clear: Reducing the timer to 30 minutes does not take away the frustration of not being able to do anything against a defensive player, it just shortens it. At the end of the day, whether I'm watching my opponent heal off all the damage I've dealt while not being able to do anything about it for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 4 hours, it is annoying every single time. I would MUCH rather spend 44 minutes in engaging gameplay weakening my opponent's heals and dealing damage to win because of my skill, over 30 minutes helplessly watching my opponent heal off every hit and then be given a pity win from Diego because I was more aggressive.
I believe that we need more counters to defensive playstyles rather than making them unviable or unattractive to play. Allowing a defensive player to play defensive but allowing the aggressor to actually do something about it is a much better solution than phasing out a slow playstyle through a shorter timer or by keeping heals as weak as they are now. The fact that the meta was slowed down but only 1.3% of matches lasted 30 minutes should be an alarming sign that defensive strategies don't have enough support to do what they're intended to do (take time and win off points from Diego or outright win late game), or are unattractive to play. Hopefully healing becomes viable again so defensive strategies get the help they need, and hopefully we're given the counters to cope with healing so that it's still engaging gameplay that doesn't feel like you're "locked in" having to deal with that match.
Re: Match Timer: Why 30 Minutes Doesn't Fix Anything
PVPKing, I agree, they are still running around the problems, and not fixing the problems. Ratbeard's Karamelle PVP Update #2, shows that Players want more damage and less Critical. So they reduced critical and critical block, stop wasting time playing with Critical. Remove Critical, it does nothing but Add RNG to the game, it's not needed.
To control the damage, you need to control the Resist, and KI had refused to do what makes sense. Jades should have never been allowed into PVP, period, it should have been limited years ago. Control resist by having a limit cap, 65 for Ice, and the rest are somewhere below 50 or so. Simple, and they can move these levels in PVP as the game grows.
This was asked for 7 years ago, and it's still a problem that needs to be fixed.
Many of the Fixes have been needed for some time now, but it's past due for these two items.
Re: Match Timer: Why 30 Minutes Doesn't Fix Anything
PvP King on Dec 10, 2020 wrote:
As a lot may know, there was a poll from the devs on Twitter where 60% of voters preferred a 30 minute match timer, and 40% of voters preferred 45 minutes. A few days later, the timer was reset back to 30 minutes with the point being that only 1.3% of matches exceeded 30 minutes. The recent developer letter says that "feedback suggests that players are extremely frustrated when they get 'locked in' to a 45m match." Before I get into detail, I would like to say that reducing the match timer does nothing in making defensive matches less frustrating, and really takes away from what could be some amazing matches. I'll explain why.
The frustration with longer matches comes with the inability to make progress at a fun pace in a defensive match rather than the match length itself. Needless to say, the reason why matches ever last long is because at least one player in a match is able to heal. To add onto that, the one thing that has long been a problem in this game has been the inability to counter heals reliably unless you are the Death school. The ability to weaken a heal should not be almost entirely exclusive to any one school or archetype. This is because the ability to stop effective heals is directly related to the ability to end a match against a healer. As a result, players have to wait until a defensive player runs out of heals before going for the win rather than having a way to interact with the heals themselves. This cycle of attack spamming, seeing a massive heal, and doing it over again causes a single match to feel boring, repetitive, or like it isn't making any progress.
I want to make my point clear: Reducing the timer to 30 minutes does not take away the frustration of not being able to do anything against a defensive player, it just shortens it. At the end of the day, whether I'm watching my opponent heal off all the damage I've dealt while not being able to do anything about it for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, or 4 hours, it is annoying every single time. I would MUCH rather spend 44 minutes in engaging gameplay weakening my opponent's heals and dealing damage to win because of my skill, over 30 minutes helplessly watching my opponent heal off every hit and then be given a pity win from Diego because I was more aggressive.
I believe that we need more counters to defensive playstyles rather than making them unviable or unattractive to play. Allowing a defensive player to play defensive but allowing the aggressor to actually do something about it is a much better solution than phasing out a slow playstyle through a shorter timer or by keeping heals as weak as they are now. The fact that the meta was slowed down but only 1.3% of matches lasted 30 minutes should be an alarming sign that defensive strategies don't have enough support to do what they're intended to do (take time and win off points from Diego or outright win late game), or are unattractive to play. Hopefully healing becomes viable again so defensive strategies get the help they need, and hopefully we're given the counters to cope with healing so that it's still engaging gameplay that doesn't feel like you're "locked in" having to deal with that match.
I agree, I am saddened that the timer has been made 30 min in the first place. 45 allows for more interesting gameplay 30 seems like we are being rushed to kill and can't doge our opponents hits with enough time to come back and launch our onslought of hits to win the game. Regarding the defensive playstyle issue. I believe most of these complains comes from people who vs jade gear. When the resist system gets changed id like to see the match timer be increased to 45 minutes again. Your suggestion of adding more counters to heals could work. However if we are given more counters to heals to defeat jades then normal players with hitting stats need to have their heals buffed so that they can heal still if there are new stronger debuffs to healing. If we were all allowed to heal like jades (even in normal hitting gear) and we all were given tools to debuff healing effectively including suppressing jade healing (which would be the norm level of healing of none jade players too) then jade gear would be less appealing and it could be countered if someone was smart enough to pack the counter healing suppression cards. The reason I say that normal hitting players that heal should have a heal boost buff on their gear if stronger heal suppression cards are put in to suppress jade heals is that they will be cast on normal players and it will make normal players heals absolutely useless since us normal none jade hitting players already have low heal boost and healing is hard to pull off unless your jade right now.
