PVP Manipulation: is this possible?

Unknown

Everyone in your alliance runs two accounts. One account is not in the alliance and intentionally loses every match against every one in the alliance, giving those players free points. This has the added benefit of tanking the alternate account for the next event. Since shielded players still get points from wins, those characters could just sit there shielded for an entire event and just rack up tons of points doing nothing but teaming up and intentionally losing with alts. Next event, remove the main players from the alliance and let the alts win. Repeat forever.

Unknown

Considering you'd have to actually get all of those accounts within the same MMR range, it sounds like it is theoretically achievable, but something that in reality would be far more work than say, winning another match on your own account.

Unknown

j12601 wrote:

Considering you'd have to actually get all of those accounts within the same MMR range, it sounds like it is theoretically achievable, but something that in reality would be far more work than say, winning another match on your own account.

Really, wouldn't you only need one alt from your alliance in an event? You could beat them, they could retaliate and lose intentionally, and just repeat the process over and over. This might not seem feasible for most alliances, but for huge groups like the X-men, if everyone was running alts, it definitely seems possible.

Winning another match on your account really isn't the way to win either. You can win non-stop in the last two hours of an event and end up with a net of -400 to -500 points from constant attacks from other players. Getting free points while you are shielded is definitely the way to go.

Unknown

First off... "Everyone running alts" In Xmen is not accurate. There are 100 unique people in our chat room.

Secondly... This doesn't even sound like something that would be worth it.

Consider the amount of work in this. You get up to 1500 in a PvP and lets say you spend the $20 or so to get your other account up to 1500 pts. You would have to unshield your primary account to make it available to que for your alternate account. (Which leaves you at risk for attacks from others) At that time you'd maybe be able to lose/retreat twice which would give your original account maybe 40 pts total. Each time you'd do this your points would be less and less. All the while you'd be spending money on two accounts shields and spending the time to buff your score when it'd be actually easier and cheaper to just do it the way it's done by top players/spenders now.

You really didn't think this through....

Unknown

Why use alts when you have 100 alliance members who all are close to the same MMR. All they need is internal communications. One person can beat several alliance members and shield, each of those can then either retreat to push the shielded person higher or retaliate to earn free points without any loss. Points up to one level are easy enough to earn back so can have many 'grunts' pushing the 'officers' up to sky high levels and still pulling very strong finishes themselves with the net effect is several people with top tier scores and some people with otherwise impossibly high scores leading to an alliance average that would be much higher than a conventional alliance could manage even if full of very high level players.

Still involves a lot of spending/organization/motivation/drive/competitiveness that seems mad to most but what they are doing clearly works for them, so good job?

Unknown

WorldRunner wrote:

First off... "Everyone running alts" In Xmen is not accurate. There are 100 unique people in our chat room.

First off, I never accused anyone of doing anything. I only mentioned Xmen because they are the largest group of players I have personally seen as they are the only multiple alliance team I have seen.

Relax, I'm just asking if such a thing is possible. I don't even think it's a bad thing or cheating. It's a game. Any way, within the rules, to manipulate it is 100% okay by me.

Also, you would never need to shield the alt. They could just get wins against people not in the alliance to get points back. And saying it might be expensive means nothing, there are people with 10 cover Nick Fury's for pretty much no reason. They just have money/HP to waste.

Unknown

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Why use alts when you have 100 alliance members who all are close to the same MMR. All they need is internal communications. One person can beat several alliance members and shield, each of those can then either retreat to push the shielded person higher or retaliate to earn free points without any loss. Points up to one level are easy enough to earn back so can have many 'grunts' pushing the 'officers' up to sky high levels and still pulling very strong finishes themselves with the net effect is several people with top tier scores and some people with otherwise impossibly high scores leading to an alliance average that would be much higher than a conventional alliance could manage even if full of very high level players.

Still involves a lot of spending/organization/motivation/drive/competitiveness that seems mad to most but what they are doing clearly works for them, so good job?

This sounds like a valid plan, good teamwork, and I have no problem with it. I wouldn't think you would need to push up the officers though, just the people that need the covers. Everyone could take turns.

Unknown

rooter wrote:

WorldRunner wrote:

First off... "Everyone running alts" In Xmen is not accurate. There are 100 unique people in our chat room.

First off, I never accused anyone of doing anything. I only mentioned Xmen because they are the largest group of players I have personally seen as they are the only multiple alliance team I have seen.

Relax, I'm just asking if such a thing is possible.

Also, you would never need to shield the alt. They could just get wins against people not in the alliance to get points back. And saying it might be expensive means nothing, there are people with 10 cover Nick Fury's for pretty much no reason. They just have money/HP to waste.

I don't think you understand that this method of yours that you have concocted would be more expensive and less efficient. So what's the point? I understand that money alone may not stop people but when you throw in the fact that it would take double the time, money, and effort of the way it is done now... Why would anyone even bother?

Furthermore... You can't keep an account unshielded above even 800 points without it getting hammered down. Your alt at less than 1000 won't even give you more then 2-3 pts per retreat/loss. If everyone spent more time playing lightning rounds to buff their rosters, more time organizing their current alliances, more time communicating and playing with their group and less time trying to out think the room we'd all have higher scores

And fair enough... After reading your original statement again you're correct you didn't say we were using alt accounts for sure. However, that is something that frequently gets thrown around.

ADD: There is no "Hierarchy" in Xmen where lower guys push higher guys up. If anything it's the exact opposite. Anyone can get any score they want here. If you want 900 fine, if you want 1600 that's fine too. Your score at the end will be a direct result of how much time, effort, and money you put in and as always a little luck.

Unknown

WorldRunner wrote:

I don't think you understand that this method of yours that you have concocted would be more expensive and less efficient. So what's the point? I understand that money alone may not stop people but when you throw in the fact that it would take double the time, money, and effort of the way it is done now... Why would anyone even bother?

Furthermore... You can't keep an account unshielded above even 800 points without it getting hammered down. Your alt at less than 1000 won't even give you more then 2-3 pts per retreat/loss. If everyone spent more time playing lightning rounds to buff their rosters, more time organizing their current alliances, more time communicating and playing with their group and less time trying to out think the room we'd all have higher scores

I didn't say I concocted any plan. I wouldn't ever be in a position to do this or even want to waste time with it. I just asked if something was possible. I never said you or your alliance ever did anything. You can stop being a **** now.

Unknown

True, the retreat push, does seem inefficient for the alliance as a whole. All it should take to get sky high scores is a group of people willing to climb that high with you and lots of shields. Shield hopping has always been a thing but it seems some take it to an art form and a coordinated effort with it should let a group keep all the hops in the family when in the old days you had to hop with your competition.

Flare808

Just wanted to make sure I got this right. This is what you think happens:

1) 100 people have a main account and a retreat account.
2) Mains 1, 2, and 3 stay unshielded long enough for retreats 1-100 to cue them up and then shield to avoid the zombie horde.
3) Retreats 1-100 all lose to Mains 1, 2, 3. Mains 1, 2, 3 gain 2-3 points each, with diminishing returns as they climb higher.
4) Repeat steps 2-3 until desired score.
5) Then do it all again next group of 3 until the desired score of 1500+
6) Swap out all the mains for the retreaters after the event ends.

Man, I'm glad you think we're that organized. I mean, we have a bunch of great leaders in the X-Men, but that's some next level coordination there.

Couple things I'd like to point out about the plan.
1) There's no feasible way that 100 people are going to be online at any one time. We have people from all over the world. Different time zones, different schedules means that there are people in X-Men that I barely have contact with. Realistically, there are maybe 10-20 people in our chat at any given time. That would severely cut back on the efficiency of your plan and increase the number of shields needed to accomplish that.

2) Your plan also features swapping the mains and retreaters. While there is turnover in X1 and X2, you don't see wholesale lineup changes between events. Most of the changes you see are people stepping down between seasons because they want to commit less time and/or money to MPQ. Those spots are filled from X3, 4 or 5 or with new members. The members you see now in X1 and X2 will be the same ones you see in every event.

3) In regards to multialliances, X-Men aren't the only ones that have multiple alliances. If you look at the final scores of any PvE, you'd be likely to find both immortal rage/r4ge alliances there. Furthermore, X-Men aren't even the largest group of players in MPQ. That honor goes to 5DeadlyVenoms/Poisons/Hexes/Banes/Omens/Curses/Toxins. If you watch any PvP, you'll see anywhere from 1-3 of them on the top 10, usually Venoms and Poisons. If this tactic worked, they would be scoring much more with their pool of 40 extra members.

BearVenger

I don't think you could have a continually-losing "feeder" account that would give another account a meaningful points boost once the winning account gets to the 400-point level.

There's just no value in an account that doesn't have points on its own. You'd have to spend as much time beating other tykes just to be proper nutrition for the boosting team. And then, you'd have to be visible to them.

That's more patience than I can muster.

OTOH, most people play to win. I can't imagine anyone voluntarily racking a sub-.750 winning percentage. It would be interesting if d3 looked at user win percentages to detect outliers and did what they needed to with that data.