Why scoring is so high in PVP.

wymtime

I have seen a lot of threads about death brackets and crazy scoring and I wanted to give my opinion on why it is hapening. First I want you to know I am a F2P player and my main teams I play with are BP 166, Pun 166, Sentry 153, patch 153, Cmags 91 (4 in blue). I have a couple other 140 3* but I don't really use them.
So are you ready for the answer to why scoring is so high? The answer is for a 3* rster to climb above 1100 points consistantly is.... IT IS EASY!!!

Here is why. When you have a 3* roster and you are making an initial climb o 700 points or so I sill see a lot of 2* teams. When a 3* team hits a 2* team do you think the 2* team will attack back, nope. If a 3* team has a choice of attacking a 3* roster compared to a 2* roster with similar points the 3* gets skipped. A 3* roster can climb to 700-800 points without getting majorly attacked back. This means it climbing take less time, 3* can take more damage so you also get longer play time. The big reason for this is tue healing. People are smarter about who they attack.

The second biggest reason is AP boosts. Once a 3* roster has to face 3* teams it is all about the boosts and shield hopping. 3* have significantly more health some with true healing, so when you boost a 3* team can win 3-4 matches without using a health pack. It cost 200 ISO for 5 AP boost. 400-600 ISO to climb quickly and not take damage is totally worth the investment. You will make up the ISO in progression rewards 2* cover drops, and overall rewards. So with boosts and lining up matches worth 30+ points a solid 3* team can go from 800-over 1000 in no time. In Cat 5 I went from 815-1100 in the last 3 hours without getting attacked. Once I shielded I only got attacked 2 times!!

The last reason is shield hop. remember a really good roster and player can climb to 1100 points using boosts before ever using a shield. Now with everyone using shield hopping to place scoring points is even easier. When you are shielded you line up 3 high point teams. You boost and then you go. since so many people are shielded over 1000 points 3* teams can play 5-7 matches and climb 200-300 points and shield again. Because of boosts the climb is still fast 15-20min and because so many people around you are shielded you are more likely to be lined up for a shield hop then actually attacked. If you hop 2 times that can easily get you above 1300 points and still come out HP positive.

I am not saying this does not suck for 2* teams. I wanted to open everyone's eyes to the fact that it has gotten easier for 3* to score so high. Overall 3* teams probably play less and don't have to fight as had in PVP because of this. Yes some people have taken it to the extreme to see how many points they can score, but the reality is 1000+ points has become very easy for a 3* team. I hope this opens some peoples eyes to why scoring has gotten so crazy. For all those 2* teams keep fighting. There is a glass ceiling in PVP once you get some solid 3* covers. It will take time and a lot of patience.

Unknown

You have a very optimistic vision of shield hopping. 5-7 matches before another shield when you are at 1000+ is not possible. 2-3 at most if the matches were real quick.

Unknown

I think the issue if why are all the very high scorers always clustered into one bracket.

My MoStorm Bracket Top 10 needed 1k. Back in previous seasons, that was Top 3, maybe Top 5.

wymtime

Chaotic Ryu wrote:

I think the issue if why are all the very high scorers always clustered into one bracket.

My MoStorm Bracket Top 10 needed 1k. Back in previous seasons, that was Top 3, maybe Top 5.

I think it was because to start season 4 a lot of 3* people said "ok let's get a big fat score for my alliance and new season. Let's see how high I can go." Then people started getting high scores and not getting attacked. It was like I am not loosing points at 700 so let's keep going. 850 points and no attackes ok I will keep going. I was not attacked during my shielded time? The perception was if you try and shield hop for more than 2 or 3 games you will lose 100 points . Players started pushing the envelope and realized you can actually get a lot more matches in without loosing points. It was a glass ceiling once people were climbing to keep up they realized it was not that hard.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

You have a very optimistic vision of shield hopping. 5-7 matches before another shield when you are at 1000+ is not possible. 2-3 at most if the matches were real quick.

This is correct.

Depending on when you play and what your score is versus the high end you may be able to sneak in 5 matches but that's not typical. The first issue is you can only get 3 qs lined up. At 1000+ I have no issues doing 3 matches but you have to be fast as you will frequently get sniped during those 3 matches. If you're getting matches with those with a similar score you're only getting 25pts per match or 75 pts per shield hop. All the while your opponents are getting as much as 50 pts from you with one single hit. Staying out long enough to hit 5-7 people is too risky. The most I've ever done was 4-5 and that was because I was lucky enough to quickly find someone that still had high points after I hit the first 3 people in my nodes.

However once you've reached 1300+ You can't expect to do more than 2-3 and after you get 1500 you will pay the price for hitting more than 1 person per hop... Sometimes you can get away with 2 but if you are hitting 2 people her hop regularly you will pay for it eventually. It's usually no worth the risk as I said before you can lose 50 pts fast.

You left a big part out of why scores are so high.... Sentry. I'm not part of the group that thinks he is OP and needs to be nerfed. I'd rather see characters developed that can counter him rather than just neutering him. But his ability to kill extremely fast (as fast as 3 turns) makes it possible to go out at 1500,1600,1700+ pts and kill fast enough to not get hammered.

Scoring high is not as easy as simply paying for shields. There's a science to shield hopping (Although it's not THAT difficult) and you need luck. A lot of luck. If you are one of the highest scores in a PvP you will get absolutely crushed if you stay out more than 2-3 minutes. More and more people are learning to shield hop correctly and efficiently every PvP. That is why you are seeing high scores from people you may have never seen them from before.

You also have to factor in the trickle down effect. The reason scores were so high in this PvP in large part because there was 10+ people at 1800 and 4 people at 2000+ Those points trickle all the way down to the bottom.

Bowgentle

wymtime wrote:

Chaotic Ryu wrote:

I think the issue if why are all the very high scorers always clustered into one bracket.

My MoStorm Bracket Top 10 needed 1k. Back in previous seasons, that was Top 3, maybe Top 5.

I think it was because to start season 4 a lot of 3* people said "ok let's get a big fat score for my alliance and new season. Let's see how high I can go." Then people started getting high scores and not getting attacked. It was like I am not loosing points at 700 so let's keep going. 850 points and no attackes ok I will keep going. I was not attacked during my shielded time? The perception was if you try and shield hop for more than 2 or 3 games you will lose 100 points . Players started pushing the envelope and realized you can actually get a lot more matches in without loosing points. It was a glass ceiling once people were climbing to keep up they realized it was not that hard.

Everyone with a developed roster has been going to 1100+ since season 1, that's nothing new.
We all know we can get to insanely high scores if there are targets, and the X-Men have been providing targets of 40+ points pretty much regardless of your score.
What IS new is that we HAVE to go to these crazy scores just to make t5, and that is all due to sharding that herds all of us into the same brackets.

Unless you are in an X-alliance, you are only going as high as needed for t5 - which has been up to 1650 in the Deadpool tourney. We don't go there because we CAN, but because we HAVE to.
I think most of us would stay at 1100 if we had a choice.

morgh

First and foremost - as it has already been said - anything over 2-3 fights and you are losing points - and those 3 fights had better be REALLY fast - with +6 AP up front

Secondly - let's assume 30 hops with a modest 25 points gained per hop - that's 750 points for ya - even if it starts at around 1000, you get 1750... and remember that usually the hops are more valuable (due to being 2-3 in the beginning or coordinating queuing high point targets who shield/reshield)

Of course at the same time you 'pay to win' since you spent 2250, but you generally feel really good about yourself to be able to put it in other people's faces that you earn so much in RL, that you can spend crazily and pay to win in a mobile game

Oh - and even considering some additional cost of +3 all boosts bought with HP it is still significantly cheaper then buying 4 covers at 1250 per cover...

wymtime

Thanks for all the additions to the post. My original point was more about the amount of players now over 1000 points compared to season 2 and 3. I also agree once you get to super high levels you are limited to the number of matches you can shield hop. I do think you can win more matches from the 900-1100 range instead of only doing 2-3 matches. My MMR migt be lower since I am not a fully 3* team but I was able to jump from 815-1100 without getting attacked.
There is defiantly an art to shield hopping, but I think some characters make it pretty easy. Sentry boost green and yellow and all. 1 green match 1 yellow game over.

I also feel people are complaining about the high scores because they either don't feel comfortable shield hopping, don't want to spend the HP, or have a 2* roster and cap out around 800. I totally agree that it is worth going negative HP for a cover you want. It is way cheaper than buying the cover. I just hope the Dev's don't get rid of the boosts. That will be the only thing that will really bring down scores going forward.

wirius

You face two's until about 700 points? My MMR must be F'd then. I only have a hulk and punisher at 166, and I face full 166 mags, patches LT's every day all day from 0 points on.

Unknown

morgh wrote:

First and foremost - as it has already been said - anything over 2-3 fights and you are losing points - and those 3 fights had better be REALLY fast - with +6 AP up front

Secondly - let's assume 30 hops with a modest 25 points gained per hop - that's 750 points for ya - even if it starts at around 1000, you get 1750... and remember that usually the hops are more valuable (due to being 2-3 in the beginning or coordinating queuing high point targets who shield/reshield)

Of course at the same time you 'pay to win' since you spent 2250, but you generally feel really good about yourself to be able to put it in other people's faces that you earn so much in RL, that you can spend crazily and pay to win in a mobile game

Oh - and even considering some additional cost of +3 all boosts bought with HP it is still significantly cheaper then buying 4 covers at 1250 per cover...

You calling it "pay to win" is because of your very modest 25 points per shield hop. If you are only doing 1 fight per shield hop then you are at least taking the time to queue up targets worth 40-50 points. If you assume 75 points per hop instead which would be 2 fights against good targets then you are looking at 750 HP which is attainable for a free player. Not sustainable every PVP but you could afford to do it every other week at least.

Unknown

morgh wrote:

Of course at the same time you 'pay to win' since you spent 2250, but you generally feel really good about yourself to be able to put it in other people's faces that you earn so much in RL, that you can spend crazily and pay to win in a mobile game

You can also only enjoy contributing to your Alliance's ranking, and yes, be happy you could get the covers needed.

Pay/Free is not really the problem.

The P2W players should not be blamed to make use of a system set up by a Developer.

If you want everyone to be equal, just ask D3P to make it "Free for All" and change their business model. Until then, there's nothing to be done.

HailMary

wymtime wrote:

I think it was because to start season 4 a lot of 3* people said "ok let's get a big fat score for my alliance and new season. Let's see how high I can go." Then people started getting high scores and not getting attacked. It was like I am not loosing points at 700 so let's keep going. 850 points and no attackes ok I will keep going. I was not attacked during my shielded time? The perception was if you try and shield hop for more than 2 or 3 games you will lose 100 points . Players started pushing the envelope and realized you can actually get a lot more matches in without loosing points. It was a glass ceiling once people were climbing to keep up they realized it was not that hard.

As a person who, short of climbing during off-times and buddy-boosting alliancemates, climbs pretty optimally, I never hop for more than 4 fights once I'm above 1100. Three fights is my norm. Just about any hop with a fourth fight in it is followed by a slew of attacks immediately after I reshield, and sometimes, the first of that wave of attacks comes before I reshield, which makes me sadpanda.

D0C70RF4U57 wrote:

morgh wrote:

...
Secondly - let's assume 30 hops with a modest 25 points gained per hop - that's 750 points for ya - even if it starts at around 1000, you get 1750... and remember that usually the hops are more valuable (due to being 2-3 in the beginning or coordinating queuing high point targets who shield/reshield).

You calling it "pay to win" is because of your very modest 25 points per shield hop. If you are only doing 1 fight per shield hop then you are at least taking the time to queue up targets worth 40-50 points. If you assume 75 points per hop instead which would be 2 fights against good targets then you are looking at 750 HP which is attainable for a free player. Not sustainable every PVP but you could afford to do it every other week at least.

Indeed, in this last PVP, scores were so inflated that at 1400+, I could still reliably find threesomes of 37+ point nodes. In total, I spent 300 HP to hit 1441, which is a perfectly viable expenditure for veteran F2P players. If I were in a horrifying bracket, I imagine I'd've probably spent another 150-225 HP to hit a 1600+ T5.

wymtime

wirius wrote:

You face two's until about 700 points? My MMR must be F'd then. I only have a hulk and punisher at 166, and I face full 166 mags, patches LT's every day all day from 0 points on.

Yes I still see a lot of 2* teams. I tank in the simulator to keep my MMR lower. I also use my 2* to win my first couple of matches. I do see transition 3* up to 700 but rarely do I see 3 166 players below 700. If I do. I just skip if they are not worth the points.

I also think the shield hopping is the best way to spend your HP. You can earn a ton of HP in most PVE and in PVP you can still score above 1000 and be HP positive. Yes if there is a cover like Deadpool and you really want all the covers you will need to shield hop more, buy boosts and go negative HP. If the cover would cost you 1250 to buy how much of a discount do you want to spend to get the extra cover? If you can spend 300 HP or 4 shield hops to get the extra cover isn't that a wise investment? You saved 950 HP earned extra progression rewards, a possible 4* trophy cover, and a good chance at the 3* cover you want.
It is also a gamble because someone else since you have to place top 5, so if you are not willing to risk some HP for the reward you want that is your choice. it is simple risk VS. Reward. Right now the reward is worth the risk.

Unknown

WorldRunner wrote:

You left a big part out of why scores are so high.... Sentry. I'm not part of the group that thinks he is OP and needs to be nerfed. I'd rather see characters developed that can counter him rather than just neutering him. But his ability to kill extremely fast (as fast as 3 turns) makes it possible to go out at 1500,1600,1700+ pts and kill fast enough to not get hammered.

I would love to see some of the lower tier characters buffed, particularly the sad bastards with only two powers and a lower level cap, rather than just swing the nerf bat with abandon at every character who's actually good. But that said, Sentry is so insanely outside of what any other character in the game can do he's just screaming to be toned down at least a little. Even if you take boosts out of the equation, for 15 combined AP he can kill any team, by himself, while having hit points second only to Hulk. The closest you can get to that anywhere else is LThor, who is probably the second most powerful character in the game by a good margin (outside of CMags, who exists in a category of his own), who for one AP less does considerably less damage, or BP's black, which for three less also does considerably less and can cause you trouble if it doesn't end the match.

Now they're probably not going to touch Sentry any time soon, Sentry = shields = money, but if you're not prepared to call a character who can kill an enemy team faster than the time it takes to get into and out of the match OP I'm curious what exactly it takes to meet your criteria. Because damn.

Phaserhawk

if you have enough ISO you can effectively watch for high players to be unshielded, skip until you find their nice juicy 50 pts and have them qued up for when you want to shield hop. I have done this effectively to easily get 120-150 pts per shield hop.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

if you have enough ISO you can effectively watch for high players to be unshielded, skip until you find their nice juicy 50 pts and have them qued up for when you want to shield hop. I have done this effectively to easily get 120-150 pts per shield hop.

More and more people are learning this. However you still see a lot of people who simply don't know any better. Unshield at say... 1200 or so and just stay out for 20 minutes hitting everyone they see expecting to net points out of the deal.

Ryz-aus

WorldRunner wrote:

You left a big part out of why scores are so high.... Sentry. I'm not part of the group that thinks he is OP and needs to be nerfed. I'd rather see characters developed that can counter him rather than just neutering him. But his ability to kill extremely fast (as fast as 3 turns) makes it possible to go out at 1500,1600,1700+ pts and kill fast enough to not get hammered.

I don't see how a sentry counter would even work in the current game - I'm not worried about being beaten by other sentry teams because when I'm shield hopping I am going to be shielded most of the time. If I don't care about my defensive team being beaten by sentry, why would I ever use a sentry counter unless it let my team win even faster? It doesn't matter if a strong counter exists if no one uses it, and at the top end the only concern is winning fast so a defensive counter won't be in use. The only options I see if this is viewed as a problem by the developers are nerfing sentry or a game mechanics change to nerf shield hopping as a whole.

Spoit

Ryz-aus wrote:

WorldRunner wrote:

You left a big part out of why scores are so high.... Sentry. I'm not part of the group that thinks he is OP and needs to be nerfed. I'd rather see characters developed that can counter him rather than just neutering him. But his ability to kill extremely fast (as fast as 3 turns) makes it possible to go out at 1500,1600,1700+ pts and kill fast enough to not get hammered.

I don't see how a sentry counter would even work in the current game - I'm not worried about being beaten by other sentry teams because when I'm shield hopping I am going to be shielded most of the time. If I don't care about my defensive team being beaten by sentry, why would I ever use a sentry counter unless it let my team win even faster? It doesn't matter if a strong counter exists if no one uses it, and at the top end the only concern is winning fast so a defensive counter won't be in use. The only options I see if this is viewed as a problem by the developers are nerfing sentry or a game mechanics change to nerf shield hopping as a whole.

The only hard counter I could think of would be, like, gold bullseye with a 3rd power that is actually useful. And even then, sacrifice and supernova would probably out damage it

Unknown

The scores are high from a combination of more people paying/more people playing (and perhaps more intelligently). I was looking at the mobile gamer chart and it shows MPQ went to around #25 during the Deadpool event and even if that's a one time deal that still implies activity probably went up a lot during the last week or so. There's nothing particular clever about looking for people worth a lot of points and all it takes is a matter of time, but the more people playing the game in general the higher the available pool of points is going to be. Sentry favors high scores because you can assume there's a fixed lag time between the time you're unshielded to the time someone attacks you, so the quicker each game is the more games you can sneak in during this lag time. He doesn't slow anyone down but he doesn't have to in terms of contributing to high scores.

As shown in the event where a couple of XMen got to 2000 or whatever crazy score they did, all the score above around 800 is fairly artifical because they're 100% propped up by shields, and since this score is artificial there's nothing stopping this score from being as low or as high. All it depends on is how much combination of time+money people spent on any particular event.

Ryz-aus

Spoit wrote:

The only hard counter I could think of would be, like, gold bullseye with a 3rd power that is actually useful. And even then, sacrifice and supernova would probably out damage it

Something like storm's old raging tempest would work as well, but "fixing" one broken mechanic with a new one is a bad idea.

Making shield breaks have a minimum duration of like 30 minutes would be better - it would kill shield hopping because you would be open to attack, but still allow shielding for weaker teams to recover health packs and let people play on their own schedule (vs. the old pre shield last minute madness). No shield hopping means sentry's negatives actually matter a bit. I can't imagine them making this kind of change though - I think shield hopping has to be a decent part of their revenue.

Unknown

Ryz-aus wrote:

Spoit wrote:

The only hard counter I could think of would be, like, gold bullseye with a 3rd power that is actually useful. And even then, sacrifice and supernova would probably out damage it

Something like storm's old raging tempest would work as well, but "fixing" one broken mechanic with a new one is a bad idea.

Making shield breaks have a minimum duration of like 30 minutes would be better - it would kill shield hopping because you would be open to attack, but still allow shielding for weaker teams to recover health packs and let people play on their own schedule (vs. the old pre shield last minute madness). No shield hopping means sentry's negatives actually matter a bit. I can't imagine them making this kind of change though - I think shield hopping has to be a decent part of their revenue.

You mean 30 minutes before you can shield again?

Shields weren't a big part of their revenue when the chart for their revenue was shown. Even adding boosts, both come way to be way smaller than roster-related categories (roster expansion, cover upgrade, token packs). Although shield usage seems more common than before, it's not like people didn't use shields a lot back in the old days. Even if you tripled revenue from shields/boosts, they'd still come nowhere close to the major roster-related categories.