Post by Deleted on Jan 23, 2017 6:10:52 GMT -5
There has been a lot of controversy recently about the abundance of mid-range bots (specifically Trident Fury) on High.
While some say the aphid buff pushed the meta in this direction, I can't be so quick to agree. From the outside looking in, it seems to be a few factors...
#1: Galahad: Yes, I had to say it. A plasma Galahad's only true weakness is 500M+ Rockets. It's fast enough to backpedal the majority of a DB salvo, and can soak up tons of plasma/bullets before it's shield pops off. Galahad quickly became the "Go-to" bot for upper level play after it's release, with a few players on here posting 3 plasma gal, 2 tri-tri Fury hangars. This, from a balance perspective, looks more like a food chain than a Rock-paper-scissors scenario, with Trident fury on top
Tri-Tri Fury
V
RDB Griff
V
Plasma Galahad/ DB/PDB Griff/Rhino (Maybe Ancilot post 2.5)
V
Everything else
With Aphids now reasonably balanced, if the mid-range meta sticks, Shield bots will be the primary reason (equipment wise)
#2: Player progression & population: let's face it, it takes months to get from 10/10 to 12/12 without using Au. Pixo has been shifting away from fremium into pay-to-win since it was bought out. Items and gear being on a pay scale is one thing, having a huge paywall in the way of using items bought, is something completely different.
With only a small trickle of players making it to the upper echelons of gameplay, higher level gameplay becomes severely homogenized. If one player brings bots and weapons that aren't on the A-list, they get slaughtered. When the only people that have a hangar with nothing BUT A-list gear are either money whales, or players that have been here for years, it isn't appealing to get in scraping distance of them, especially when it looks like one NEEDS to be one of the two to get to that level of play from scraping (2-3 lv) differences.
There aren't enough players able to reach the 10/10+ brackets fast enough to introduce any sort of diversity over "it is what it is", which brings us back to Galahad, Rhino,RDB Griff and Tri-Fury. Why try anything else when this:
A:Works
And
B:Costs so much time and resources, anything else is a costly gamble
I'm fairly certain that most people grind out more of their Au items over actually purchasing them, so, by default, the only non-money whales that have hangars worth 20k+ Au have been around for quite awhile.
I can't remember if it was Strayed or Weed that spoke about how rare Fury was (and how it was just as OP as today, just super rare) when earning Au was difficult, and the game was still young enough for very few of them to be within the player population. So, remember, that's a lot of money and time spent no matter which way you slice it, (unless you're one of the people with Gawdrike luck that won some of these in the casino pix is calling "events"), and those that are trickling into those higher tiers are using it because of this recent abundance.
I'm not making judgments on the new MM yet, but from the looks of it, they didn't use enough weight for hangar rating. Even with a seed of 0 elo, the system would have worked a lot better if they added the Elo rating to the previous hangar scoring system,at most raising the elo floor for amount of slots. Whatever preliminary calculations they put in, were done very, very sloppily, especially if they tried to reinvent the wheel and screwed it completely.
While some say the aphid buff pushed the meta in this direction, I can't be so quick to agree. From the outside looking in, it seems to be a few factors...
#1: Galahad: Yes, I had to say it. A plasma Galahad's only true weakness is 500M+ Rockets. It's fast enough to backpedal the majority of a DB salvo, and can soak up tons of plasma/bullets before it's shield pops off. Galahad quickly became the "Go-to" bot for upper level play after it's release, with a few players on here posting 3 plasma gal, 2 tri-tri Fury hangars. This, from a balance perspective, looks more like a food chain than a Rock-paper-scissors scenario, with Trident fury on top
Tri-Tri Fury
V
RDB Griff
V
Plasma Galahad/ DB/PDB Griff/Rhino (Maybe Ancilot post 2.5)
V
Everything else
With Aphids now reasonably balanced, if the mid-range meta sticks, Shield bots will be the primary reason (equipment wise)
#2: Player progression & population: let's face it, it takes months to get from 10/10 to 12/12 without using Au. Pixo has been shifting away from fremium into pay-to-win since it was bought out. Items and gear being on a pay scale is one thing, having a huge paywall in the way of using items bought, is something completely different.
With only a small trickle of players making it to the upper echelons of gameplay, higher level gameplay becomes severely homogenized. If one player brings bots and weapons that aren't on the A-list, they get slaughtered. When the only people that have a hangar with nothing BUT A-list gear are either money whales, or players that have been here for years, it isn't appealing to get in scraping distance of them, especially when it looks like one NEEDS to be one of the two to get to that level of play from scraping (2-3 lv) differences.
There aren't enough players able to reach the 10/10+ brackets fast enough to introduce any sort of diversity over "it is what it is", which brings us back to Galahad, Rhino,RDB Griff and Tri-Fury. Why try anything else when this:
A:Works
And
B:Costs so much time and resources, anything else is a costly gamble
I'm fairly certain that most people grind out more of their Au items over actually purchasing them, so, by default, the only non-money whales that have hangars worth 20k+ Au have been around for quite awhile.
I can't remember if it was Strayed or Weed that spoke about how rare Fury was (and how it was just as OP as today, just super rare) when earning Au was difficult, and the game was still young enough for very few of them to be within the player population. So, remember, that's a lot of money and time spent no matter which way you slice it, (unless you're one of the people with Gawdrike luck that won some of these in the casino pix is calling "events"), and those that are trickling into those higher tiers are using it because of this recent abundance.
I'm not making judgments on the new MM yet, but from the looks of it, they didn't use enough weight for hangar rating. Even with a seed of 0 elo, the system would have worked a lot better if they added the Elo rating to the previous hangar scoring system,at most raising the elo floor for amount of slots. Whatever preliminary calculations they put in, were done very, very sloppily, especially if they tried to reinvent the wheel and screwed it completely.