The joke is no longer funny; end death brackets.... now!

Spoit

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

sms4002 wrote:

One of my alliance mates. There is still 8 hours to go and they are all creeping up. This is so dumb. bring back time based brackets!!!

That is some FABULOUS shield hopping at work there. This actually has nothing to do with skill but your reservoir of Hero Points. Though here's the thing, due to how well they did all of the previous 3 seasons, it just fed into itself. The top gets higher while the lower ranks are pushed further back. Seen this coming since the beginning of shields.

I'm skeptical how far up you can really get without also having an alliance who has other shield hoppers to let you know when there are high point people to actually be matched with

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

sms4002 wrote:

One of my alliance mates. There is still 8 hours to go and they are all creeping up. This is so dumb. bring back time based brackets!!!

That is some FABULOUS shield hopping at work there. This actually has nothing to do with skill but your reservoir of Hero Points. Though here's the thing, due to how well they did all of the previous 3 seasons, it just fed into itself. The top gets higher while the lower ranks are pushed further back. Seen this coming since the beginning of shields.

I'm skeptical how far up you can really get without also having an alliance who has other shield hoppers to let you know when there are high point people to actually be matched with

1690. Verified. Others may have gotten more.

HailMary

stephen43084 wrote:

1690. Verified. Others may have gotten more.

DjangoUnbuffed denies any role in helping stephen achieve his score. Truth be told, his ambition brings great shame upon us all. Rest assured that he will be dealt with.

Unknown

I am getting quite sick of the sharding this season frankly.

I took season 1 off, played season 2, took season 3 off and played season 4.

Season 2 Most of the PVP Winners had 800 Points. My team barely changed and it's 1100 for Top10 now. My MMR should be complete garbage yet here I am.
I don't even mind "high" scores. 1300, whatever. But a 2 Star/lvl 100 3 Star Team simply cannot get that high. At 700-800 I am hitting a brick wall where I lose more points than I win while I am in a match.

And since all everybody in here is seeing are those insane death brackets you just know there is a whole sea of brackets of people placing 3rd with a lvl 30 1 Star Team.

I do have a question about that shield hopping that is necessary for those brackets. Since Shield-hopping is insanely expensive, it's mainly reserved for people spending money in the store. This is the equivalent of an opponent in Street Fighter having twice as much life as you because he bought it before the match. Thus I consider shield-hopping an exploit of the shielding system(which by itself is fine). One that the devs apparently don't care about because it drives revenue. And from what I have seen most people are ok with hopping being a thing.

Paying money should get you to the goal faster, you can buy ISO and Covers, great. But you shouldn't be able to warp the complete tournament structure by literally "buying Points".
The system currently is a deterrence for free players, so if this gets even more prevalent then in the future all the whales will be just playing vs each other and the bottom class disappears. (conspiracy theory: Maybe that's the goal all along. Put all newcomers into supercushy brackets until they are too invested to quit and then throw them into the death brackets to force them to spend money)

/rant

atomzed

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

That is some FABULOUS shield hopping at work there. This actually has nothing to do with skill but your reservoir of Hero Points. Though here's the thing, due to how well they did all of the previous 3 seasons, it just fed into itself. The top gets higher while the lower ranks are pushed further back. Seen this coming since the beginning of shields.

I agree that with shield hopping, it's only about how much you are willing to spend on hp.

But I disagree that the "top alliances" success brings them more success. Winning top 2 gives you an additional 250 (iirc) hp. To reach up to 1300, you typically need around 2 to 3 shields. To reach up to 1500, you probably need 5 to 7 shields at least. Those people are running a deficit for every pvp.

I personally see this less as a system issue, but more of a group of players (*cough x cough *) willing to spend way more money than what the average players are willing to.

Edit: this is a different matter from the sharding problem.

Spoit

Also: money

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

Edit: this is a different matter from the sharding problem.

Depending on if they actually actively force people into those ridiculous brackets specifically so they spend HP. So they may be related.

Companies are constantly looking for ways to increase revenue. What seems to be the trend with a lot of those Mobile Games is to put people into those impossible situations where they need to spend to stay competitive. I wouldn't trust them to have your best interest at heart.

Let's take the True Healing as an example.
First of all I'll say that I have no problems with true healing and the game feels fine with it. I still can get 700-800 Points without twisting my panties.
Now you may know they put out an announcement regarding it claiming the healing was warping the game and it was never intended to be like that blahblah. This makes a lot of sense and is plausible but the conversation that transpired during the meeting where this was decided doesn't necessarily have ANYTHING to do with the official announcement and for all we know might have went like this: "Our Healthpack sales are dropping. Get rid of healing and sell it to the people somehow."

For this one they might have figured that too many seasoned players have no incentive to spend HP on tournaments and looked for a way to make it more competitive. I am 2-3 transitioning player and I can tell you with confidence that I am shielding almost every tournament ever since I have to fear being bumped out of the top100. Right now even all 30-40 placing Players in my bracket are shielded, so yeah.

That's my theory at least. I see no other way how all of a sudden there are those 1900 Scores popping up when earlier it was almost impossible to get to 1300. The 1300 Progression Reward used to be a pipedream not too long ago, now its necessary to place in the top5. Where did all those spare points come from? Remember that Points are almost a zerosum with the exception of the seeds. For every point you win, somebody loses that amount.

( a hot tip . If you are going to shield you can use some garbage team that may actually win with the right cascades. I had to use Thor/Ares for my last fight since they were all I had with Health left. They've been hit like a million times in the time it took me to write this post and actually gave me a defensive win. Whereas OBW/Ares doesnt get hit a ton)

HailMary

PPPlaya wrote:

but the conversation that transpired during the meeting where this was decided doesn't necessarily have ANYTHING to do with the official announcement and for all we know might have went like this: "Our Healthpack sales are dropping. Get rid of healing and sell it to the people somehow."

While I don't generally doubt a fiscal reason for True Healing, D3 has never sold a meaningful number of health packs. It's never been a significant percentage of their MPQ revenue, per the VentureBeat article from a while ago. "Our health pack sales are dropping, and we need to fix that" is an extremely unlikely reason.

PPPlaya wrote:

That's my theory at least. I see no other way how all of a sudden there are those 1900 Scores popping up when earlier it was almost impossible to get to 1300. The 1300 Progression Reward used to be a pipedream not too long ago, now its necessary to place in the top5. Where did all those spare points come from? Remember that Points are almost a zerosum with the exception of the seeds. For every point you win, somebody loses that amount.

Buddy-boosting with high-volume shield-hopping. Points are no longer zero-sum when you're beating shielded opponents.

OnesOwnGrief

atomzed wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

That is some FABULOUS shield hopping at work there. This actually has nothing to do with skill but your reservoir of Hero Points. Though here's the thing, due to how well they did all of the previous 3 seasons, it just fed into itself. The top gets higher while the lower ranks are pushed further back. Seen this coming since the beginning of shields.

I agree that with shield hopping, it's only about how much you are willing to spend on hp.

But I disagree that the "top alliances" success brings them more success. Winning top 2 gives you an additional 250 (iirc) hp. To reach up to 1300, you typically need around 2 to 3 shields. To reach up to 1500, you probably need 5 to 7 shields at least. Those people are running a deficit for every pvp.

I personally see this less as a system issue, but more of a group of players (*cough x cough *) willing to spend way more money than what the average players are willing to.

Edit: this is a different matter from the sharding problem.

Keep in mind we haven't seen anything nearly as crazy as it is becoming now before Season 4. There was nothing stopping them from stockpiling then. None of these 1800+ scores being up regularly during that period. Hell, one PvP with that score is more than the sum of two of my runs on average.

Spoit wrote:

Also: money

Also this.

Unknown

i have no idea what "sharding" or death brackets are but im having fun kicking the **** outta people and im talking about so called heavy weights. finally realized how fun PvP is.

Unknown

If the Healtpack sales were low, then it makes perfect sense to try to find ways to get them up. It's very hard to find ways to make something profitable even MORE profitable. It makes more sense to examine where you are lacking and try to find new revenue streams. My "quote" was just an example of what might have happened, not a genuine quote that I overheard myself. Focusing on that particular part which I prefaced as a conjecture might not be productive.


Exactly, the reason for those higher scores must be shielding since there aren't any other ways to produce points out of thin air. So we must assume that since the scores increased the shield spending has increased appropriately. Which ties the sharding into the HP and shieldhopping debate. We can't rule out that they are messing with the sharding in a way that maximizes shielding. And even if this increase was accidental, you can bet somebody will look at this and think this is the way to go for the future.
This is why this thread needs to exist. To show that it ruins the game for many and has to get fixed.

GuntherBlobel

They should just be more generous with the 3* reward structure. Give the top half of the bracket a 3* cover. Why not?

Sharding may not even be the problem here. I think Alliances have created a breed of player that will earn as many points as possible regardless of the prize. It's tough for me to stay in the Top 50 and I play too much as it is.

If they are making most of their of money in shields from crazy people fighting over the top 5 spots, then it doesn't hurt their bottom line to make it easier for the rest of us to win something and feel rewarded enough to keep playing.

Flare808

I'm curious to see the scores from the other brackets out there. I had a decent bracket with top 5 at 1394, top 10 at 1118. I know there are more brutal brackets though.

Unknown

Anyone reach 2000 in the Storm PvE?

I know at one point late in the event, I was able to target a player in the 1900s...

Flare808

There were 4 X-Men who passed 2,000.

mohio

Flare808 wrote:

There were 4 X-Men who passed 2,000.

Thanks for the points flare . Hit you I think twice, but waited each time so hopefully you were shielded. Barely managed top 5 with like 1340, so all the points were needed.

Flare808

mohio wrote:

Flare808 wrote:

There were 4 X-Men who passed 2,000.

Thanks for the points flare . Hit you I think twice, but waited each time so hopefully you were shielded. Barely managed top 5 with like 1340, so all the points were needed.

Thanks for waiting man- I think they both bounced off. The 2 times I got hit this PvP were from a Taco and a 5DSomething. Glad I could help another forumite out!

over_clocked

Gentleman22 wrote:

i have no idea what "sharding" or death brackets are but im having fun kicking the tinykitty outta people and im talking about so called heavy weights. finally realized how fun PvP is.

So, what did you do to get sandboxed? Just curious. A trainer of sorts?

Unknown

locked wrote:

Gentleman22 wrote:

i have no idea what "sharding" or death brackets are but im having fun kicking the tinykitty outta people and im talking about so called heavy weights. finally realized how fun PvP is.

So, what did you do to get sandboxed? Just curious. A trainer of sorts?

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=13686&start=140#p202569

Unknown

Gentleman22 wrote:

i have no idea what "sharding" or death brackets are but im having fun kicking the tinykitty outta people and im talking about so called heavy weights. finally realized how fun PvP is.

It doesnt really count as "kicking the tinykitty outta people" when NOBODY can even see you. If it takes you to cheat to have fun then so be it, just realize you are in no way whatsoever "amazeballs" Your're really only just playing with yourself. Make sure your bedroom door is locked.