Assorted questions

Videocrazy

I've been since approximately the beginning of January (I remember the first Thick as Thieves event, and was playing the prologue prior to that), and while I've been picking a few things up as I go along (and asked a few questions in the guild chat), I've found my knowledge to be spotty at best in regards to several things. For example, despite having scored over 10k in Season 3, I only discovered in the last week that health packs regenerate if you have less than 5 less than a week ago. I skimmed though the forum and topics, but haven't found the answer to my questions yet.

1: I've heard a lot about MMR, and while I understand it determines what group of players you're competing against in any given event. I've made a few observations, but apparently there have been changes to matchmaking in this time, as well. I'm going to list what I've noticed; I'd appreciate it if someone could explain or clarify them and mention what I've missed.

1a: When I was forced to take a two-week hiatus due to a busted iPad (around the time alliances started being able to place in events), I noticed I was going from being set upon by strong 3* teams immediately to fighting nothing but strong 1* teams for 3-4 weeks. Still not sure why that affected me. 1b: I've heard that taking damage in fights, as well as losing them, can pit you against lower strength opponents, but I've never seen it in happen, either in the same event or future ones. 1c: If I fight a chain of opponents at a high point rank, it seems that I keep ending up with 2* opponents next (usually at 15-20 point value). If I hit the skip button, I'm cycling between half a dozen 3* max teams. 1d: When the Lighting rounds come up, I've tried fighting and retreating (placing at 0 points) and winning once (placing at 25 points, and neither seem to affect my overall bracket. 1e: Finally, in an event about 3 weeks ago, I tried breaking my shield 15 minutes early to place in the top 25, and hadn't been attacked for a while. I used 2* Magneto/Storm, and I'm beset upon by about a dozen assailants within the last 15 minutes. It was a miracle I even managed to stay above the 100 mark. That being said, after that event I seem to be fighting less high-powered teams (generally only near the top 30-35 mark or so).

2: Regarding TU and PvP, if someone fights your team, how does the game determine what TU you have?

3: How is the user of a TU determined?

4: Why is it in PvE that I can bea really low rank in a sub-event but a good rank in the main event, or vice versa?

5: How do I buy boosts? Do I need to be out of a particular boost before I can buy it?

6: What is shield-hopping? I assumed it meant putting a shield up, attacking, then putting a new shield up to avoid retaliation, but I recall someone saying it was an exploit, and I'm not quite sure how.

I think I had a couple more questions, but they're lost to the fog of sleepiness. I'll post them here if I remember them, and thanks in advance to anyone who answers!

Unknown

1b.Losig against lower MMR opponent's will lower your MMR more drastically than stronger or equal opponents. However, it will take a few games vefore you start seeing a difference. If you just down your entire roster in PvP, you will definitely see a difference.

1c.The reason why they keep cycling is the fact that after arond 600 or so, MMR is less of a factor and focuses more on points. So the higher your points are, the harder it is for the matchmaking to find a "suitable" opponent.

1d. Lightning Rounds no longer affect MMR. Secondly, retreats have only a small impact to your MMR compared to having your team eliminated.

1e. C Storm+MN Mags is a very easy team to beat. Given how you are at high nimber of points and had a frail team on defense, you became a very attractive target for people to make a last minute climb. All those attacks and losses impacted your MMR.

2. Believe it is randomly from your pool of stored Teamups.

4. Brackets. Brackets are determined by when you enter the event (Complete one node). If you join a PvE event really late, you also join a bracket with other late starters. Subevents are subject to the same thing. The reason why it is possible is the leaderboard/bracket you got put into in the subevent might already of been filled with players who have already been playing the event for some time. However, since you just started, the people in your main bracket probably did too. Because they did not have as much time to accumulate as many points as one who started early, the top rankings have lower required score

5. On the Boosts screen, select a boost you have none of and it will popup saying if you want to buy more.

6. No you are right. That is the gist of shield hopping. However, it is to avoid point loss from retaliation.

atomzed

Chaotic ryu has answered all the questions excellently.

I just want to add on about shield hopping.

Shields have 2 purpose. It makes you (1) "invisible", so that people can not target you in the nodes and (2) unable to lose points if people win you.

When you are invisible, you have no risk of being attacked unless you are already in someone node, or it's due to retaliation.

So when you shield hop, you are playing 1 to 3 games quickly after your shield is dropped. That 1 to 3 games worth of time is the time which you can be targeted. The faster you are, the less time people have to attack you.

Generally speaking, if you only play 1 game during shield hops, people don't have enough time to finish their game against you. Hence you are "safe"

Unknown

Videocrazy wrote:

2: Regarding TU and PvP, if someone fights your team, how does the game determine what TU you have?

It's random across all available TUs, including ones that should be locked.

Videocrazy wrote:

3: How is the user of a TU determined?

If anyone works this out, they will be lauded as the greatest mind of our time

Videocrazy wrote:

6: What is shield-hopping? I assumed it meant putting a shield up, attacking, then putting a new shield up to avoid retaliation, but I recall someone saying it was an exploit, and I'm not quite sure how.

There's a good thread here on the subject.

killerkoala

Videocrazy wrote:

I've been since approximately the beginning of January (I remember the first Thick as Thieves event, and was playing the prologue prior to that), and while I've been picking a few things up as I go along (and asked a few questions in the guild chat), I've found my knowledge to be spotty at best in regards to several things. For example, despite having scored over 10k in Season 3, I only discovered in the last week that health packs regenerate if you have less than 5 less than a week ago. I skimmed though the forum and topics, but haven't found the answer to my questions yet.

1: I've heard a lot about MMR, and while I understand it determines what group of players you're competing against in any given event. I've made a few observations, but apparently there have been changes to matchmaking in this time, as well. I'm going to list what I've noticed; I'd appreciate it if someone could explain or clarify them and mention what I've missed.

1a: When I was forced to take a two-week hiatus due to a busted iPad (around the time alliances started being able to place in events), I noticed I was going from being set upon by strong 3* teams immediately to fighting nothing but strong 1* teams for 3-4 weeks. Still not sure why that affected me. 1b: I've heard that taking damage in fights, as well as losing them, can pit you against lower strength opponents, but I've never seen it in happen, either in the same event or future ones. 1c: If I fight a chain of opponents at a high point rank, it seems that I keep ending up with 2* opponents next (usually at 15-20 point value). If I hit the skip button, I'm cycling between half a dozen 3* max teams. 1d: When the Lighting rounds come up, I've tried fighting and retreating (placing at 0 points) and winning once (placing at 25 points, and neither seem to affect my overall bracket. 1e: Finally, in an event about 3 weeks ago, I tried breaking my shield 15 minutes early to place in the top 25, and hadn't been attacked for a while. I used 2* Magneto/Storm, and I'm beset upon by about a dozen assailants within the last 15 minutes. It was a miracle I even managed to stay above the 100 mark. That being said, after that event I seem to be fighting less high-powered teams (generally only near the top 30-35 mark or so).

2: Regarding TU and PvP, if someone fights your team, how does the game determine what TU you have?

3: How is the user of a TU determined?

4: Why is it in PvE that I can bea really low rank in a sub-event but a good rank in the main event, or vice versa?

5: How do I buy boosts? Do I need to be out of a particular boost before I can buy it?

6: What is shield-hopping? I assumed it meant putting a shield up, attacking, then putting a new shield up to avoid retaliation, but I recall someone saying it was an exploit, and I'm not quite sure how.

I think I had a couple more questions, but they're lost to the fog of sleepiness. I'll post them here if I remember them, and thanks in advance to anyone who answers!

this is all theory i have no proof of what i say, just observation.

1a) i think MMR is based on how many wins you get so since you had taken time off the MMR bucket moved forward since everyone is winning, so the bucket you were in the people moved onto the next bucket, people below you moved up into the bucket in which you were in, sooner or later you are winning more than the people in that bucket, so you catch up to the next bucket.
1b) it's been said that losing would slow down your bucket progress hence what i said about bucket moving and you staying in while other people move forward into your bucket
1c) MMR thinks you can handle more powerful opponents. from what i observed once you hit certain points thresholds (300, 600, 800) the amount of opponents getting to the higher points can be obtained by higher rosters.
1d) i remember that lightning rounds MMR is separated from pvp/pve events
1e) from what i observe while you are shield you are less likely to be hit because MMR kinda ignores you while shielded and less likely to be put into someone's fighting nodes. but when you break shield it takes a few minutes to get you back into back into MMR rotation. and using MNmags and Cstorm is an easy target to most teams since computer AI doesn't play it was well as players do; so you are open to attacks after a few minutes of breaking shield.

2) random TU's are on your def team, i hope they change it one day, to either to what you go into battle with or random from a players stockpile instead

3) from what i think it should be it's whoever you are targeting is the one that uses the TU

4)PvE is based on what MMR bucket you are in. brackets members are based on when you join them and when bracket gets full. they are all independent between main and all the different subs, it just matters how many points you score based on your particular bracket.

5) idk about buying boost it's not an option for steam players. if it's anything like buying health packs there is probably a button somewhere on one of your screens.

6) shield hoping is a strategy of breaking shield or letting it run out and attacking whoever you set up to attack in your fighting nodes, then reshielding before MMR puts you back into rotation which is about a few minutes. it's not an exploitation other than MPQ to fleece your money from your pockets.

Videocrazy

Chaotic Ryu wrote:

4. Brackets. Brackets are determined by when you enter the event (Complete one node). If you join a PvE event really late, you also join a bracket with other late starters. Subevents are subject to the same thing. The reason why it is possible is the leaderboard/bracket you got put into in the subevent might already of been filled with players who have already been playing the event for some time. However, since you just started, the people in your main bracket probably did too. Because they did not have as much time to accumulate as many points as one who started early, the top rankings have lower required score

Except in both instances, I started the main event and subevent at the same time.

atomzed wrote:

Chaotic ryu has answered all the questions excellently.

I just want to add on about shield hopping.

Shields have 2 purpose. It makes you (1) "invisible", so that people can not target you in the nodes and (2) unable to lose points if people win you.

When you are invisible, you have no risk of being attacked unless you are already in someone node, or it's due to retaliation.

So when you shield hop, you are playing 1 to 3 games quickly after your shield is dropped. That 1 to 3 games worth of time is the time which you can be targeted. The faster you are, the less time people have to attack you.

Generally speaking, if you only play 1 game during shield hops, people don't have enough time to finish their game against you. Hence you are "safe"

Shields also prevent you from being found randomly via the nodes? That explains so much.

Regarding whether TUs are used from all available ones or from your stockpile, I have noticed that a lot of TUs in PvP are 2*s at level 94, or 3*s at level 40, which makes me inclined to think it's pulling from a player's personal pile.

Also, thanks to everyone that took time to answer my questions. I really appreciate it!

mohio

As with pvp there is likely some sharding going on with brackets, so there may be more than one open one at a time. The other thing going on is the size of brackets are usually different. Usually main brackets are like 1000 people but sub brackets will be only 200. So you can be top 10 in your sub and think you're doing great but that might translate to only top 50 in the main since that bracket is 5x as large. The reverse is happening currently with the dead pool pve as main brackets are smaller than subs.

Videocrazy

Oh, right, I forgot to account for the different sizes of the events. XD

Though, that does remind me. I keep hearing the term "sharding", but I have no idea what that means.

mohio

Videocrazy wrote:

Though, that does remind me. I keep hearing the term "sharding", but I have no idea what that means.

It's come to be synonymous with "death brackets" around here on the forums, but it's basically what the devs used to refer to them using different servers (or "shards") to host different brackets. It was their solution to ease the load on their servers, which was getting pretty out of hand as there were multiple instances every week of "comm link disrupted" and severe delays in getting rewards. Name a server issue and they've probably had it. Anyway, sharding boils down to the game having several servers with brackets on each server, which means each server has an open bracket which could lead to 2 people joining at the same time but being in different brackets, which was pretty much impossible before (unless one guy was the last in one bracket and the next guy the first of a new one natch). They've added some logic into how they determine who goes into what brackets, which is where the "death brackets" thing is coming from, and you see people talking about "gentle nudge", which again is a term the devs themselves used to explain the logic behind putting people in brackets based on their amount of days playing the game (thinking more time = better roster, higher scorers).

Videocrazy

I think I get it, thanks. The "number of days playing" thing seems kinda silly, since building a roster seems to be more luck-based than not. In regards to standard tokens, I got a Purple Loki in my first few days of playing, then went about four months without another 3* cover, then got something like eight 3* covers in as many days. Really, the most consistent way I've had in regards to building my roster is placing high in PvP tournaments.

Videocrazy

Sorry for the double post, but I remember another question. Why do some characters have mismatched power colors and strong match colors? Grey Suit Black Widow, Classic Daken, and Classic Magento come to mind, and until recently Modern and Mohawk Storm had this issue, too. Also, why does Ragnarok, and Ragnarok alone (AFAIK, at least), have only two strong match colors?