Changes to Shatter

[Mawlzy]

Thoughts? Big changes to the ice spawning rates with a far greater emphasis on competition over big ice. It's like they took onboard the need for more actual PvP and then they... halved the points for kills.

Wut?

[Teno]

Thoughts? Big changes to the ice spawning rates with a far greater emphasis on competition over big ice. It's like they took onboard the need for more actual PvP and then they... halved the points for kills.

Wut?

They want people to move around the group fights more which is not a bad thing since usually packs of players are being farmed because they lick the ice forever. Will have to see if people catch on and finally do pvp.

[Commander_Justitia]

Forcing more PvP in PvE Frontline, while reducing points from PvP. They almost had it right.

Players will run after big ice now, having to kill 40 players or destroy 1 big ice, that respawns every minute - what is easier to do in 30s? Maybe ice reward points should have been reduced further, while max ice needed to win as well, then they could reward 5 points per kill.

Also think they should bring back higher point rewards for taking out battle high targets, like in the past.

[OcieKo]

Finally played it a minute ago... and my fears from reading the patch notes were right, it just exasperated the issue of 72s having too many people around to be enjoyable on Shatter. Pretty much been a game of 1 Step Forward 2-3 Steps Back with every PvP update since they removed 48s (16v16v16). Too many bodies in an area with too few things to do, and Shatter feels super formulaic now. Though it's ironically refreshing that their steps back were on the game mode this update not the combat itself, Purify was a nice change. Unless they finally concede that PvP where the only real win/loss condition is how many people happen to target the same person isn't fun, I feel we will be stuck in this place.

[Teno]

Finally played it a minute ago... and my fears from reading the patch notes were right, it just exasperated the issue of 72s having too many people around to be enjoyable on Shatter. Pretty much been a game of 1 Step Forward 2-3 Steps Back with every PvP update since they removed 48s (16v16v16). Too many bodies in an area with too few things to do, and Shatter feels super formulaic now. Though it's ironically refreshing that their steps back were on the game mode this update not the combat itself, Purify was a nice change. Unless they finally concede that PvP where the only real win/loss condition is how many people happen to target the same person isn't fun, I feel we will be stuck in this place.

It's actually very wrong, there are less bodies in a single area now since there are 2 big ices... So far and from the games I've played alliances are more spread out and there are more 1v1 depending on where the spawns are.

But why they had to reduce points awarded for doing pvp is weird, games take forever.

[Eastwall]

I think they want people fight over big ice so there are some actually pvp. Camping in spawn for small ice is even more brainless than getting sastash in leveling.

[Mawlzy]

It's actually very wrong, there are less bodies in a single area now since there are 2 big ices... So far and from the games I've played alliances are more spread out and there are more 1v1 depending on where the spawns are.

But why they had to reduce points awarded for doing pvp is weird, games take forever.

I only got to play one before the switch to Onsal. It seemed overall a significant improvement, but halving the KO points doesn't make any sense to me at all.

[Hik3n]

This is all you need to know about the new Shatter, you win if you don't fight, or you win if you have a DK and Dragons in party to wipe out the entire alliance instantly so you can have the crystal all for yourself. And in this case on the image, there is no team with a DK who team wipes, this is normal PVP, the teams who fought, lost.

[OliviaLugria]

The changes are pretty dumb and misguided. Fighting for big ice is a terrible idea right now. The ramp team (safe ice team) has such a huge advantage that it will usually need 2 teams to overcome, but with 2 big ice always being up you can basically ensure this will never happen. The way they removed small ice spawns also makes the top sections of the map almost useless and empty space. It also greatly limits the areas where battles actually take place. Most of the major engagements took place in the upper area with walls and structures to use as hiding spots and cover. Now, most fights will take place in an open pit. Once in a while there is a mid fight where it will either be a 2 team or 3 team face off. This portion is actually pretty good, but the lower hp of the big ice means it does not last very long. You end up with a game mode where 2 teams lick safe ice while the 3rd team either feeds a team points by trying to attack, is strong or coordinated enough to bulldoze through anyways, or forced to twiddle their thumbs and do nothing.

The previous shatter (shatter 2) was in my opinion an amazing map. It's main problem was that if your team didn't coordinate, it had no chance against a coordinated team. I don't actually see this as a problem, and this is just as prevalent in the other maps, but I digress. There was a lot of decision making to be done. Which ice to go for? Do we use it as bait for the enemy team or just take it and go? Should we harass the big ice team to lower their points or compete with the other team for smalls? What route should we take to maximize points? The mode was all about point efficiency and it was very hard to 2v1 a team if they got close to winning like with what happens in seal rock and onsal. The recent patch took out all this decision making, nerfing commanders' ability to swing games through tactical superiority, but really does nothing besides lowering the contribution of pre-mades just being stronger and wiping regular players over and over.


I do not know what the dev team's design goals were, but if it was to make the mode simpler, longer, and more monotonous they definitely succeeded. It makes me feel like that they do not play this mode at all and are very content to sit back and let it burn. Instead of throwing changes at us out of the blue, they could have done some A-B testing where both modes of the map were in the game and randomly chosen each match, or they could have listed the reasons for the changes like they do for jobs, or they could have made a new map with similar rules (secure) instead of ruining a decently acceptable map. From the matches I've played, most teams are going to end up hitting a glorified training dummy for twenty minutes with a 3 button rotation. I just wished that the PVP situation was better. It feels like they constantly take things away and when they do give stuff back, it's worse than before.

[HermitUK]

We won by just walking back and forth between whichever of the two large ice spawns wasn't heavily contested. I rarely queue for Shatter anyway since the last rework, but that was heaven compared to this. I barely saw the enemy teams for the first 10 minutes of the match.