X-MEN Shield Hopping Technique?

Unknown

So here's something interesting that I came across during PVP a few weeks ago





So that particular player is either sandbagging/tanking on purpose for a cheap retaliation for shield-hopping or they are letting fellow alliance members get cheap easy high-point wins while shielded.

But still though...how did that player win in the first place with a LEVEL 1 HAWKEYE in the 1000+ points range in order to set his defensive lineup? I'm not even sure I can do that with tons of boosts.

Arogntbastrd

Given how early they typically start and how often they shield hop it's probably easy to keep seed teams in their nodes if they choose to.

Worldrunner commonly threw in bagman next to sentry so people could get easy points. Don't read too much into it. Just suckle at the x-teet. It's delicious!

Unknown

If you asked a genuine question you might get more constructive responses than by starting another x-men conspiracy thread

But I'll humour you: as anyone who has reached very high scores knows, the malfunctioning MMR will then serve you up plenty of 1 star targets (worth 1 point) which are easy to beat with that line up if you feel so inclined.

I_am_Zero

2 ways I can think of:
1. he left one of his match-ups alone the entire pvp and only used the other 2 to find players.
2. his MMR is so high and his matches are either giving him seed teams or very low level teams to compensate for not having a lot of other people to match up with.

In either case, the X-Men aren't doing anything wrong. It's been brought up over and over. They use a lot of HP/money to do what they do. I'm pretty sure they've been watched and verified as non-cheaters, so just let it go, it's getting old.

Arogntbastrd

mikeydollar7 wrote:

If you asked a genuine question you might get more constructive responses than by starting another x-men conspiracy thread

But I'll humour you: as anyone who has reached very high scores knows, the malfunctioning MMR will then serve you up plenty of 1 star targets (worth 1 point) which are easy to beat with that line up if you feel so inclined.

On an unrelated note, i didn't appreciate you destroying my sacrifice tile earlier today Mikey. I hope you enjoyed my 8 points

Unknown

Arogntbastrd wrote:

Given how early they typically start and how often they shield hop it's probably easy to keep seed teams in their nodes if they choose to.

Worldrunner commonly threw in bagman next to sentry so people could get easy points. Don't read too much into it. Just suckle at the x-teet. It's delicious!

True, but those seed teams in your queue disappear once you get attacked and turn into red retaliatory nodes...unless of course, you start shielding VERY early in the event (which doesn't make sense) to preserve those 1-star nodes. Plus, with a high MMR at the start of a PVP, you're probably not going to see 1-star opponents early on.

Unknown

Arogntbastrd wrote:

mikeydollar7 wrote:

If you asked a genuine question you might get more constructive responses than by starting another x-men conspiracy thread

But I'll humour you: as anyone who has reached very high scores knows, the malfunctioning MMR will then serve you up plenty of 1 star targets (worth 1 point) which are easy to beat with that line up if you feel so inclined.

On an unrelated note, i didn't appreciate you destroying my sacrifice tile earlier today Mikey. I hope you enjoyed my 8 points

And I was happy to keep that one just between the two of us AB

Unknown

mikeydollar7 wrote:

If you asked a genuine question you might get more constructive responses than by starting another x-men conspiracy thread

But I'll humour you: as anyone who has reached very high scores knows, the malfunctioning MMR will then serve you up plenty of 1 star targets (worth 1 point) which are easy to beat with that line up if you feel so inclined.

Ahh...did not know that. Now you know that I have never reached very high scores

Arogntbastrd

mikeydollar7 wrote:

Arogntbastrd wrote:

mikeydollar7 wrote:

If you asked a genuine question you might get more constructive responses than by starting another x-men conspiracy thread

But I'll humour you: as anyone who has reached very high scores knows, the malfunctioning MMR will then serve you up plenty of 1 star targets (worth 1 point) which are easy to beat with that line up if you feel so inclined.

On an unrelated note, i didn't appreciate you destroying my sacrifice tile earlier today Mikey. I hope you enjoyed my 8 points

And I was happy to keep that one just between the two of us AB

Haha, sacrifice tile got matched, so then I tried again. Had world rupture out, had another sacrifice tile out but your sentry hit me in the face with red right before they went off. Sentry died mid world rupture. It was a meaningless match. Last one on my last hop.

You treasure those 8 points. TREASURE THEM! *shakes fist*

Kelbris

do you guys not see how this is possible?
anyone who's been playing this for more than two weeks should be able to figure this out.

join a bracket as soon as the event starts so that you get seed teams

Find the two easiest teams to beat and save them. since environments don't matter one bit anymore, you only need to repeatedly play that 3rd node. (you can save just one if you'd like, but two is easier just in case a retaliation covers up a node.)

get to 1000 as fast as possible using the scariest **** on your roster, then beat one of the seed teams and shield.

that wasn't really that complicated.

after that, they can coordinate shield hopping. I'm going to assume everybody knows how that works, but I can explain that too I guess.

player one unshields when a few alliance members are around, and tells them they're doing it.

players 2, 3, & 4 queue them up, and tell player one when they found him/her.

player one reshields and informs the alliance.

Everyone attacks the shielded player.

Flare808

mikeydollar7 wrote:

If you asked a genuine question you might get more constructive responses than by starting another x-men conspiracy thread

But I'll humour you: as anyone who has reached very high scores knows, the malfunctioning MMR will then serve you up plenty of 1 star targets (worth 1 point) which are easy to beat with that line up if you feel so inclined.

Can confirm-At the highest PVP scores, the game will actually q you with people with 0 points (often with unleveled 1 stars), leading to easy 1 point wins and out of place teams.

Unknown

Kelbris is exactly right.

Unknown

Do losses while having a sheild up effect MMR?

babinro

The unfortunate thing is that there is nothing that can be done to control these meta-game techniques. Any number of alliances can choose to work together to adjust their scores in this manor. I think it's clear that this wasn't the intended design of how PvP scoring and tournaments were created but it is a reality of the highest levels of play.

I'd recommend another method of handling PvP's but to be honest I can't think of something that wouldn't be a complete grind-fest or 'exploitable' while still offering a meaningful method to monetize play for the business.

simonsez

babinro wrote:

offering a meaningful method to monetize play for the business.

That's really what it comes down to. As long as the current design leads people to spend 8k HP on shields, the devs would be crazy to make any changes that would alter the metagame.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

babinro wrote:

offering a meaningful method to monetize play for the business.

That's really what it comes down to. As long as the current design leads people to spend 8k HP on shields, the devs would be crazy to make any changes that would alter the metagame.

Exactly. The developers need money to keep the game going. Am I okay with that money coming primarily from people other than me? Yes. Yes, I am.

Unknown

babinro wrote:

The unfortunate thing is that there is nothing that can be done to control these meta-game techniques. Any number of alliances can choose to work together to adjust their scores in this manor. I think it's clear that this wasn't the intended design of how PvP scoring and tournaments were created but it is a reality of the highest levels of play.

I'd recommend another method of handling PvP's but to be honest I can't think of something that wouldn't be a complete grind-fest or 'exploitable' while still offering a meaningful method to monetize play for the business.

Actually this could easily be controlled. Make it just a tad harder to find specific people when looking for a match - There are several hundred thousand people playing this game apparently so it shouldn't be so easy to hit a specific person within a minute of the siren going off that they unshielded.

Allow people to retaliate for the same or at least close to the same amount of points you lose. Then expand the range at which you can see other people so you don't get locked into a loop of the same 5 people over and over.

Give shields a cool down timer. If you unshield - you can't shield again for 15 minutes. or 30 minutes. or an hour.

Just 3 quick ideas but I'm sure there are many more solutions to fix pvp.

BearVenger

Similar technique, using back-of-envelope thinking:

Teammate A opens up PvP early on, triggering seed teams. Teammate A beats seed team with equal or even worse team.
Teammate A tells teammates B-T that he's available to queue up.
Teammates B-T line up Teammate A's easily-beatable team, continue playing everyone else in their queues.
When each of Teammates B-T is tired/beat-up/ready to shield, he pulls up Teammate A's team and beats him with his easiest lineup.
Teammates B-T tell the rest of their alliance they're ready to be queued up.
Everyone else queues them up. The new target shields. Everyone attacks.
Rinse. Repeat.

My only question is that I rarely see an easy team for a high score. I'd love to learn how to do that, but I'm afraid that the more this is openly known, the more this will be required strategy to get Top 10/25/50 placement.

Unknown

Ok I'm just going to clear the air here because it's mind numbing to watch you guys guess.

Seed teams aren't involved. For me personally I am shield hopping 3 targets at a time from whenever my first shield is. Whether that be at 800 (If I start really early) or 1300 (If I start really late). So the first time I am starting to look for qs I'm skipping on all 3 nodes to find people.

Someone mentioned my use of bagman/loaner doom in the Doc Orders PvP in over the 4th of July. I was doing that to be ridiculous. I wasn't doing to benefit anyone I wasn't doing it to provide an easy target. I was doing it for 100% selfish reasons of proving I could score highest in the PvP with simply a maxed sentry.

Now the other reason someone might do this is to benefit the alliance. It's not done frequently. It's typically done by a person who has scored all the points they care to in the PvP and is simply hitting a 1pt easy target to provide a target for the alliance. I've done it before but it was really more because I accidentally placed a 3 hour shield instead of an 8 hour so to fix that I went out with patchneto at 2k points and hit some guy with a level 45 she hulk and 25 iron man or something of the sort for a quick win. Seed teams aren't necessary. In fact I would bet that it's impossible to play an entire pvp (With a high score) and keep your seed teams around. When you have a high score the only people you will find in your nodes are guys with high scores who have recently unshielded and 1pt targets. If you search enough you'll find someone with a truly horrible team that can be defeated quickly with just match dmg.

It's not part of our overall strategy and people don't do it every pvp. There are guys in the alliance who are totally selfless and will risk losing their points to benefit the team as a whole. I'm not going to get into any "strategic" uses of this but that's what it is in a nutshell. Gaming the system? It sure is. But it's used so infrequently that it's really not worth mentioning as a part of our overall strategy.

It really benefits the more casual players who maybe don't have the roster to take down max sentry or whoever. I don't care about soft teams... Use whoever you want I'm still going to blow you up. But the guy who scores 700 with his **** roster and never spends a dollar is as big a part of the team as the guys leading wire to wire in a PvP.

We are X. Who are you?

BearVenger

Runner,

Thanks for the post. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and I hope not a whole lot of alliances take this strategy to heart.

I have no grudge against the X'ers, the Fives, SHIELD, or Djangos. I get enough return for my spending habits (about 80¢/month) and grinding to be okay with where I place.

My theory was kinda exaggerated, but I was trying to extrapolate how an expensive-one-trick GSBW, a level-1 C.Hawk, and HT could have won a match at the 1800-point level. That takes a special level of dedication.