Psykopathic wrote: To start off here, I'm no longer an X-men. I left MPQ a couple days ago and you'll prolly never hear from me again after the next day or 2. So let's just air some things out here. Francky - you are so full of tinykitty it isn't funny. Francky + every1 else - you are arguments are ridiculous. 1 person throws in a tank team on a random pvp, and suddenly all x-men are using tank teams that any1 can beat on every shield hop? Absurd. Somethings happens once or twice and you act like it's the norm. You can't take an example that happens 1/1000 cases and act like it's standard. I also heard some1 say all the X does is sit in chat and isolate themselves and talk about every1 else. Says someone who's never been in our chat. Lol. No one talks about anything on the forums. We talk to ourselves and tinykitty amongst each other. No drama. No fighting. Just chilling and having fun. When we come on forums, are we a little more aggressive ? Yes. When I 1st started mpq, 9 long months ago, we had a great community. Most of what turned into Shield along with many other great players. Now, we have no community. We have a bunch of fkn **** holes like Francky and arktos. Can't post to a single thread without insulting some1 or blowing smoke out their ****. I would go as far to GUARANTEE, that are at least 3-5 alliances who talk more about x-men in their chat than we talk about all others combined in ours. TLDR: 1/2 this community turned into a bunch a naive ****. If you aren't an **** and we get along. You know who you are. Peace out btchs. Yeah I know, here comes a bunch of pissed off flamers to come call me a cocky something or other. (Broken records, cocky! Cheater!) Whatever, tired of listening to these immature haters running their mouths. So fk it. Suck on that you whiny hypocrites.
DuffManOhYeah wrote: <Snip> Case in point...
sms4002 wrote: Wow, first off, didn't think my post about PR would cause such an uproar lol but here we are. Just wanted to point out that Thugpatrol makes some awesome points.I just wanted to add really quick about the whole baseball thing and how it relates to this. The thing that is different about the Yankees "buying victory" compared to the x-men is that at least in baseball even though they spend the most, they are still making tons and tons of profits from all the merch, tickets, endorsements etc so it's worth it to them to spend a billion because it will help them make 3 billion. However what me (and most others ) can't understand about the x-men and MPQ is that they are spending 5kHP per pvp (jesus!) to get an extra 150HP from 1st/2nd place. The numbers just don't add up financially. I think in the end it comes down to how people view it in their mind. WR justifies his spending to himself by considering this game a fun hobby, like cooking or dog shows. So to him, the costs are justified. To me, I view it as a game. Games to me are a free or one time buy item. Barring dlc, I could never justify spending daily weekly or monthly on virtual items, let alone for being number 1 vs top 10 as f2p.
Moon Roach wrote: <Snip> How the heck do you get an offensive win at that level with that line-up? Is there a super-secret alternate way of setting up a defensive team that I don't know about?
GothicKratos wrote: I agree that you cannot buy skill or playing ability. You can, however, buy good tools to help augment your ability though, and my point was, that holds true in practically every professional/competitive environment ever. Shields exist simply as a manner to protect your points. Under normal circumstances, they would never earn you points, except from a retaliation win.
GothicKratos wrote: Also, I meant to ask earlier, as a sidenote, what kind of knives/sets do you own? Bit of a chef myself.
GothicKratos wrote: Shields are sneakers. Shields are baseball bats. Shields are cleats. Shields are not boot camp. Shields are not exercise. Shields are tools.
GothicKratos wrote: X-Men posts the highest scores. Period. Does that mean they're "better"? Not necessarily, but it does show that they have the drive to do what needs to be done to be on the top. Does that require a fiscal investment? Absolutely, but so does everything else, which is my point.
mohio wrote: Moon Roach wrote: <Snip> How the heck do you get an offensive win at that level with that line-up? Is there a super-secret alternate way of setting up a defensive team that I don't know about? Sorry I'm not going to find it for you but there was a thread awhile ago where one of the SHIELD guys/gals (sorry I forget, beee or reck I think, but not sure) had a couple videos of what "high level pvp" looked like. It was lots and lots of hitting the "skip" button while being matched with a seemingly endless string of 1-5 point matches, even sometimes being matched up with seed teams again. There are so few unshielded opponents at high point totals that you will see this happening sometimes even at 1100+, and most certainly at 1400+ like these guys reach routinely. So, you can load your 3 x-men high point targets, and when they're replaced by seed teams you can hit one of them with basically your tank team, and if people find you with that team out, then you end up with that picture.
tomuser wrote: It doesn't take 5k HP to get to the high score. If you are efficient, it takes around 1k to 1.5k HP to get to an average score of 1,500 easy. This means a 20k pack with last you for the entire season. If we have to talk about skills, it is how you get to the high score with minimum spend on HP/Shields. Xmen does a tremendous amount of coordination to ensure we get to the high score as efficient as we can. Our advantage over other alliances is organisation with good commanders to keep things in order. If spending money is to only way to get to the top, many others would be able to beat us as not all Xmen spends a ton of money in it. Some of us do spend zero money and just use the free HPs given in events to shield and yet get to 1,300+ every event. That's a skill.
tomuser wrote: It doesn't take 5k HP to get to the high score. If you are efficient, it takes around 1k to 1.5k HP to get to an average score of 1,500 easy. This means a 20k pack with last you for the entire season.
tomuser wrote: If we have to talk about skills, it is how you get to the high score with minimum spend on HP/Shields. Xmen does a tremendous amount of coordination to ensure we get to the high score as efficient as we can. Our advantage over other alliances is organisation with good commanders to keep things in order. If spending money is to only way to get to the top, many others would be able to beat us as not all Xmen spends a ton of money in it. Some of us do spend zero money and just use the free HPs given in events to shield and yet get to 1,300+ every event. That's a skill.
Jester Day wrote: That, and that it would be a great experiment to remove shields and see what happens.
Thugpatrol wrote: GothicKratos wrote: Shields are sneakers. Shields are baseball bats. Shields are cleats. Shields are not boot camp. Shields are not exercise. Shields are tools. I think we're basically going around in circles here, but I'll try one more time. Shields aren't tools that augment your performance, they are a part of the game itself. They are an intrinsic component of the scoring system that must be used in order to compete at any but the most basic level. If you do not use them, you will lose points, period, and buying more of them to hop up the score board gives you an advantage over anyone who buys and hops less. There is no amount of skill or game knowledge that can overcome this. You can hop more or less efficiently, but if you're willing to spend more and hop more you will always win. That is not the description of a tool that can give you a marginal advantage, that is the description of a central part of the mechanics of the game itself.
GothicKratos wrote: At this point, I do honestly think it boils down to a different of opinion, and I'd be more than happy to leave it at that if you'd like,
GothicKratos wrote: Thugpatrol wrote: GothicKratos wrote: Shields are sneakers. Shields are baseball bats. Shields are cleats. Shields are not boot camp. Shields are not exercise. Shields are tools. Shields aren't tools that augment your performance, they are a part of the game itself. They are an intrinsic component of the scoring system that must be used in order to compete at any but the most basic level. If you do not use them, you will lose points, period, and buying more of them to hop up the score board gives you an advantage over anyone who buys and hops less. There is no amount of skill or game knowledge that can overcome this. You can hop more or less efficiently, but if you're willing to spend more and hop more you will always win. That is not the description of a tool that can give you a marginal advantage, that is the description of a central part of the mechanics of the game itself. Our definition of "tool" (and "skill", too, I think) seem to be marginally different. Tools don't have to augment any skill what-so-ever. Look at a drill. you don't need any kind of prerequisite skillset to use it effectively. A shield is a drill. You can use a shield effectively, or you can use it ineffectively. You're either going to use that drill effectiantly and get a nice flush drive or you're going to drive your screw in sideways and it's going to look crooked - either way the tool did it's job. It's up to the person using the tool to use it to it's maximum potential.
Thugpatrol wrote: GothicKratos wrote: Shields are sneakers. Shields are baseball bats. Shields are cleats. Shields are not boot camp. Shields are not exercise. Shields are tools. Shields aren't tools that augment your performance, they are a part of the game itself. They are an intrinsic component of the scoring system that must be used in order to compete at any but the most basic level. If you do not use them, you will lose points, period, and buying more of them to hop up the score board gives you an advantage over anyone who buys and hops less. There is no amount of skill or game knowledge that can overcome this. You can hop more or less efficiently, but if you're willing to spend more and hop more you will always win. That is not the description of a tool that can give you a marginal advantage, that is the description of a central part of the mechanics of the game itself.
GothicKratos wrote: Yes, MPQ requires an investment in every event. We'll go back to LoL and CoD first - we'll say you're going to Nationals. Now, Nationals are generally held in high-density cities, and you're going to have to travel there. You're going to have to lodge yourself. You're going to have to feed yourself. If you flew there, you're going to need to rent a car, not to mention plane tickets. The same applies to athletics. You have to travel. You have to lodge yourselves. You have to transport yourself.
GothicKratos wrote: Additionally, the things I've mentioned prior; mitts, bats, sneakers, etc - do you think those are one-tie investments? They're not. Pinky Promise. Are they every game, not at all, but it's definitely a multiple-times-per-season deal.
Thugpatrol wrote: There's two things going on here. One is the definition of a tool. A tool is a device used to facilitate a task. You could make a hole in something with a pointy rock, but a drill does a much better job. A shield is a game mechanic that you can buy to prevent you from losing points. Your option other than using a shield is to just hope you don't lose points. This very rarely works. The shield doesn't facilitate the task. It is the task, and the only facilitator is money. The second thing is the question of skill. There's a lot of things to consider when using a drill: where to drill, how big a bit to use, how deep to go, etc. Unless you're a maniac who just likes drilling holes in everything, you need a firm understanding of how it works and the task at hand in order for it to be effective in any way. A shield, on the other hand, is a binary operation. It's either on or off, and there's no advantage to off other than you're forced into that position when you are actually playing the game. It doesn't require any skill or knowledge to use it other than "when you're not fighting, turn it on." And I still contend that it is an integral part of the game whose use is required to compete at anything beyond the most basic level, something which you have done nothing to dispute.
Thugpatrol wrote: You're confusing this argument by taking it to a place well beyond the scope of a match-3 game that most people play on their phones, but even so your argument is on shaky ground. In the cases where people are traveling and competing and incurring long term costs you're generally dealing with people who are either sponsored, employed, or competing for very tangible prizes worthy of their expenses. In MPQ you have people spending wildly to win in-game prizes the value of which is many times lower than what is being spent to win them. Not the same thing.
Thugpatrol wrote: There will always be people who overspend to win, but very few games provides them with an unbeatable in-game advantage for doing so, and it is not a given to assume that as a necessity for reasonable competition.
Thugpatrol wrote: The bottom line here is this isn't some professional league where the competitors are employed, equipped, and insured. This isn't some national event that people travel far and wide to compete in for cash prizes, often times with sponsors on board. This is a match-3 game people play on their phones and computers. You've taken this argument that expense is a necessary expectation for competition to an extreme place that doesn't apply here. And that still doesn't address the issue that shields are an integral part of the game rules that give an unbeatable advantage to anyone willing to buy significantly more of them than the competition, regardless of skill or knowledge or any other metric you want to use beyond money and time. No other game or example you've trotted out even begins to compare to that. Not equipment, or travel expenses, or medical bills. Nothing. Shields are not tools. They are a part of the rules of the game, and they are for sale. More power to the people willing to exploit that fact and other dicey game mechanics for their own gains, but let's not pretend this is an even playing field. It isn't.