Higher brackets and later start times, related?

mjh

Has anybody else noticed a change in their bracket points?
The guys in my alliance and I noticed that with this 1 hour later shift of pvp end times, the points for placements have all gone up. 800pts used to be a high chance of top10 and definite top25, now it gets you top50.
Top10 in my bracket for the last two pvps were all above 900pts. Another reported top10 having all over 1000, just dumb.

Is this extra hour giving people more time to shield hop or play during their lunch break (EST FTW)?

Or has the MMR system changed?

Regardless of the change, it seems to have once again made it harder for 2* teams to progress.

atomzed

I suspect it's because Lcap, BP are covers that people needed. So the competition is stiffer.

Expect the same for Predator and Prey cos Sentry is also a highly sought after cover.

JamieMadrox

I've noticed scores creeping up slowly since the beginning of seasons. I think as the player base grows and the dedicated player base gets better we're going to see higher scores for top spots. I'm sure a lot of it has to do with MMR and sharding too, but I bet that the high number of max level Sentry and UDaken amongst top players has a big part to play in it too.

WilsonFisk

I think sharding is back, and I also think days played may effect it. A new recruit in our alliance is 48 days in, he played before but start over, so he's not a noob. He spent some money and has a fairly solid 100+ level 3* roster already. He won his bracket with a 783, 2nd was 690. The rest of us were dealing with needing 1k pts for top 5.

Unknown

WilsonFisk wrote:

I think sharding is back, and I also think days played may effect it. A new recruit in our alliance is 48 days in, he played before but start over, so he's not a noob. He spent some money and has a fairly solid 100+ level 3* roster already. He won his bracket with a 783, 2nd was 690. The rest of us were dealing with needing 1k pts for top 5.

Sure isn't happening for me. On day 48 as well, still using lvl 94 **'s, managed 828 and it wasn't even good enough for a top 25 in a bracket filled with 1k+ scoring 5DV's.

Could definitely be a demand issue as the recent covers are all high tier, but I still suspect something has changed since last season.

Shadow

WilsonFisk wrote:

I think sharding is back, and I also think days played may effect it. A new recruit in our alliance is 48 days in, he played before but start over, so he's not a noob. He spent some money and has a fairly solid 100+ level 3* roster already. He won his bracket with a 783, 2nd was 690. The rest of us were dealing with needing 1k pts for top 5.

Definitely not days played related. I have less days than some of my alliance mates who are in easier brackets. More likely, there's some formula involving how many pts you managed to obtain in the last few tournaments and what your placement were in those.

Unknown

I started slightly over 24 hours before the end, and I got #13 with 90X points. It's weird because I thought 3* Daken was highly sought after, and I got #5 with 90X points in that PvP. I think people want Daken more than Panther. So it's either I'm really wrong, or they changed the damn system again.

WilsonFisk

I stand corrected then. It just happened to be the lowest bracket I've seen in a long time, and it also happened to our youngest player so I drew a conclusion. Just the wrong one apparently

Unknown

i noticed hard brackets just before the steve rogers first avengers event because i thought people wanted his cover. but it was as hard for the first avenger event too.

Tharos

I am experiencing the same thing since season 4.
Yes, sharding seems to be back, but I do not thing it is the only explanation.

From a personal point of view, I finished pvp event to about 400 points since True Healing changes. Since season 4, I go to 700+. I may not be the only one, and sharding have nothing to do with this increase of points.

Why am I doing more points in these events? Here are my answers.


1. One hour shift allows me to grab points in the last minutes. Before that, I only shielded 8h before the end, and slept until the end. Now, as I am awake at this new hour, I can play to gain some final points.

2. Balance of Power was really fun, and it pushed me back into this game. Being able to try more team was nice, but the best effect is that now, I no longer fear "big and scary" opponents. In a normal pvp, I skipped scary opponents, because I could not affort to lose due to True Healing and play schedule. During BoP, I didn't care losing a team, as I had other maxed 1*/2* to continue playing. So I tryied every battle, and found out that some teams are no longer that scary. Consequences on normal pvp were obvious: Big teams not so scary => far less skip => easier to find juicy targets => far less frustration => more fun, more play time, more points

3. Rewards are now mid/high 3* characters. Psy, Cap and Black Panther are rather interesting for 3* transitionning players as me. So I am more attempting to win these char than loki/daredevil/rag/doom covers. Add to this the fact that these characters were given easily in the past months (much more than patch, magneto or others). So a lot of people (me included) have them at 8/9 covers. Having a few more covers seems nice.

4. With Lazy Cap covers were given in a recent pve (the hunt pve), boosted in the current (with progression reward covers), and was a reward in first season 4 pvp, so boosted in the second season pvp: it's a lot for a single character! And with all these covers, he is really fun to play with (got my fifth red cover)! I pushed harder in psylocke pvp for top 25, played more in Cap pvp because it was fun (and because I needed this black BP cover).


With all theses reasons, I nearly doubled the points I did after true healing. Instead of aiming for a 300+ result, I now aimed for a top 25 place (which I missed: finished #31 and #28, but I don't care anymore, thanks to the dev for forcing me to take a step back).

But in this new pvp, no way I will compete for a Sentry cover: with only 2 covers for him, I doubt I will be using him before ages (in this game, it means: never). So I'd rather take it casually and concentrate another time on the next character I really want.

Spoit

Those points may hold for transition people. But it's definitely sharding, I am pretty sure most of these people with the 1k for top 10 really needed the covers that badly, especially when it's super common ones like LC

squirrel1120

I'm not even a 'transitioning player'. I'm just a 2* player since none of my 3's are remotely viable yet. From what I understand it's likely my MMR putting me into silly difficult brackets. The last one had the top 25 all shielded up to 900+, where if I break 600 I start bleeding off points faster than I can earn them. Days played only just crossed over the 100 mark a week ago.

I don't mind tough battles, I really dont. I highly dislike going from placing top 10 pre True Healing to struggling to keep a top 25 place... and now with the new brackets, scratch that and insert struggling to keep a top 50 place.

Unknown

The average points you see in a bracket is solely a function of the number of games played + the number of shields being used. Being good has literally nothing to do with it. If everyone is super awesome then those who don't shield will just constantly lose hundreds of points by being attacked by equally awesome players who are 400 points below them, though it's true that if everyone is super awesome then you'd probably end up with more total games played because super awesome guys usually aren't hampered by health packs and can play more total games.

If points are consistently high, that likely means the overall player pool has expanded. If it's something unique to a particular event, then most likely it's because that event has a coveted prize which led to people playing more as well as shielding more.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

The average points you see in a bracket is solely a function of the number of games played + the number of shields being used. Being good has literally nothing to do with it. If everyone is super awesome then those who don't shield will just constantly lose hundreds of points by being attacked by equally awesome players who are 400 points below them, though it's true that if everyone is super awesome then you'd probably end up with more total games played because super awesome guys usually aren't hampered by health packs and can play more total games.

If points are consistently high, that likely means the overall player pool has expanded. If it's something unique to a particular event, then most likely it's because that event has a coveted prize which led to people playing more as well as shielding more.

Is seriously doubt that happened

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

If points are consistently high, that likely means the overall player pool has expanded. If it's something unique to a particular event, then most likely it's because that event has a coveted prize which led to people playing more as well as shielding more.

Is seriously doubt that happened[/quote]

I know, which is why I'm extremely skeptical this is going to be happening on a regular basis.

Tharos

Spoit wrote:

Those points may hold for transition people. But it's definitely sharding, I am pretty sure most of these people with the 1k for top 10 really needed the covers that badly, especially when it's super common ones like LC

Sharding is definitly in effect, more than during last season. Take 25 players that usually end top 5 in their own brachet with 900 points, and put them in the same bracket. I doubth this new bracket #25 will be 900: it is more likely that these high end players will struggle, and top 25 will be are about 1100. This will have an effect for other players that used to reach top 25 with 700 points before.

Phantron wrote:

If points are consistently high, that likely means the overall player pool has expanded.

Or it means that the average number of games per player have increased.

I think it is what happens:
- high end players are playing more due to sharding (much more competition for the top placements means more games played to achieve these ranks)
- transitionning players are playing more due to the points of my previous post (I do not think I am the only one in this case) and the higher points cased by high end players (because now, we need more points for top 10/25/50)

Spoit

Nah, it's not quite that bad. 1100 is top 10, top 25 is like, 1k

Unknown

This might just be me, but my MMR got messed up after the last pre-season tournament. Before then I was almost exclusively facing max level 3* opponents, but ever since I've been seeing max 2* and a few lvl 100-ish 3*. So with easier opponents I'm able to grind a lot more than I was.