Venom Heroic - Aug 29 - Sep 1

Moon Roach

I had to stop after lunch, in the same bracket as Phantron, I was on 55002 and #32, with just over 2 hours to go.

I ended up in #197, just 5000 from 1st. Not playing the last 2 hours means a biiiiiiig drop.

We had a guy who came back from holiday with 20 hours to go, he got 47k and 2 covers. Aargh!

And we got #501 as an alliance.

Why was this so mad? It felt worse than Deadpool and Fury combined.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

ark123 wrote:

So TL;DR: If there are subs, join at least half way through the time. If there are no subs, join with 2 hours left on the clock. Got it.

Joining 2 hours left on the clock is really risky since you might get into an old bracket where the leader has a refresh up on you: its much safer to join ~1-2 days before the end of the event so you have time to rubber yourself into the top 10 and outgrind everyone on the last day with your super secret forum tech.

That's pretty much what I ended up doing though I joined a bracket right away and then didn't start playing seriously until the last day. In retrospect I should've just waited until today to join but I didn't particularly care about Beast so figure why not.

Heroic Jugg, Venom, and Unstable Isotope are pretty much lost causes so far as PvE events go.

Unknown

kerravon wrote:

Stopped play 3 hours before the finish as I had to work and was in the top ten. Came back after the end of the event for a top 200 finish.
Seriously this nonsense needs to be fixed. In future if I see a pve finishing at a time that I can't play on I won't bother playing.

Seconded.
I had to go to sleep, 4 hours before the end of the event. Was sitting 34th ( played essential nodes for the entire event duration ), woke up this morning placed 295th.

As it has been said, it's just nonsense

ballingbees

If they have to run a rubberbanded debacle event, at least they could have had the grace not to use it to launch a brand new character that will be required for the next PVE. This hands a huge handicap to everyone living outside that one protected timezone. They've done it with Capt Marvel launch, and now Beast.

HairyDave

At least Doctor's Orders (maybe the event after it) should have Beast rewards so you should have a chance at a cover or four before the next PvE kicks off.

Bowgentle

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Try starting your final refresh 2 hours before the end by grinding all of the easy nodes down to 1 first, and then doing the essentials down to 1 ~1 hour before the end, saving the hard nodes for the very last if you need it: that's been my strategy and it seems to be working. 40 minutes before the end isn't enough nowadays if you want to guarantee top 10, since thats what most people do and they end up underestimating how much time it takes to for clearing.

Starting the final refresh 2 hours before the end means 3am/4am for Euros like Arktos. So that strategy only works for you guys in the one true time zone(TM) of Murica.
Those old PVEs before subs are especially bad for us.

Myself, started with about 11 hours to go, did 2 clears before bed and then what I could in the last hour, sacrificing one hour of sleep, as usual.
Finished 44th, and wished there was a meaningful distinction between t50 and t150. T50 should get two covers instead of one.

Ah, I was unaware. My apologies and condolences then: being in EU sounds like a nightmare when it comes to playing MPQ. Getting into the top 10 must be impossible without sacrificing all your sleep.

Well I regularly can do it by sacrificing only the final hour of sleep on the final day, but I have to play somewhat optimally for the 24 hours before that. I never got up for the penultimate refresh and made t10/20 (whatever was needed for 3+1 covers).
I just can't be bothered to do that anymore for chars I won't ever use while Sentry is around.

_RiO_

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Bowgentle wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Try starting your final refresh 2 hours before the end by grinding all of the easy nodes down to 1 first, and then doing the essentials down to 1 ~1 hour before the end, saving the hard nodes for the very last if you need it: that's been my strategy and it seems to be working. 40 minutes before the end isn't enough nowadays if you want to guarantee top 10, since thats what most people do and they end up underestimating how much time it takes to for clearing.

Starting the final refresh 2 hours before the end means 3am/4am for Euros like Arktos. So that strategy only works for you guys in the one true time zone(TM) of Murica.
Those old PVEs before subs are especially bad for us.

Myself, started with about 11 hours to go, did 2 clears before bed and then what I could in the last hour, sacrificing one hour of sleep, as usual.
Finished 44th, and wished there was a meaningful distinction between t50 and t150. T50 should get two covers instead of one.

Ah, I was unaware. My apologies and condolences then: being in EU sounds like a nightmare when it comes to playing MPQ. Getting into the top 10 must be impossible without sacrificing all your sleep.

Yes it is, and yes it is.

Same story for me as for some of the other guys from the EU: finished for the night at #4. Woke up this morning and ended up at #225 with useless Magneto covers. Bye-bye to all that invested effort.

And it goes like this every time; E-V-E-R-Y time, a new character is introduced in a PvE. It's always only the final rush that matters and it's always only 'the one true time zone' (as was so aptly described) that has any ghost of chance to get some actual rewards out of it, no matter the invested efforts or average retained ranking of any other player from any other time zone. It's demoralizing, frustrating and downright unfair. And ofcourse, all those <insert non-US timezone> players that get **** out of their rewards this way also get knocked off the 'gravy train' for the next few PvE events as they won't have the requisite essential node character.

Wee! More handicaps for us. Why? Why do we even continue to play this game? The developers don't even seem to care or acknowledge that this is a problem. Probably they are content with the other time-zones being the game's in-built fall-guys so that their core 'Murican audience can keep on winning while we get to scrape what's left out of the barrel.

This is not just tinykitty anymore. We're talking several magnitudes larger; think tiger or lion.

yogi_

I am pissed off.

I slogged for about a day and a half (and with a few cycles before that) and made it into the top 10 with under a day of the end. Scored just over 50k.

Couldn't do more than a handful of rushed missions for the last 3/4 day (as real life intervened) at which point I left in 39th.

Just logged back in now and I ended up in 151st.

What an absolute waste of my time. Beyond frustrated (within the context of a computer game).

I shouldn't have given SO many hours to this game and only end up with a useless 2* and now can't join next part of event that requires Beast, cause I don't have any covers. (I still don't have a Nick Fury either, but I digress). Had I only played a few games casually, sure, no worries.

What. An. Absolute. Waste. Of. My. Time.

So frustrated.

Unknown

Went to sleep at 1AM in 2nd place.
Teething baby woke me at 4:40am - I was in 139th. Thank goodness for gum pain. Managed to grind myself into 54th place over the following 20 minutes without waking my wife. I felt a level of smug satisfaction I'd never experienced before.

It was only when I woke up this morning that I realised that the prize for 139th is the same as the prize for 54th. SON OF A BITUMEN!

Moon Roach

nunberry wrote:

Went to sleep at 1AM in 2nd place.
Teething baby woke me at 4:40am - I was in 139th. Thank goodness for gum pain. Managed to grind myself into 54th place over the following 20 minutes without waking my wife. I felt a level of smug satisfaction I'd never experienced before.

It was only when I woke up this morning that I realised that the prize for 139th is the same as the prize for 54th. SON OF A BITUMEN!

But if you hadn't done those last 20 minutes you would have ended up in 151st or worse. You worked harder than you had to, but without it...

Unknown

for 3 days i was ranked #1 in my bracket... 5 hour before the end: #1 with 600 Points infront than 3 Hours to go and #3 with 60 Points behind #1.
Than i loged in the last hour and was #86 and i did full rotations and were able 2 get up 2 #25.... all missions on cool down and only 30 Points left 2 get.... no Chance 2 get to the top ten.
And that is frustrating considering that i played the whole 3 days....

These Kind of Events just suck! where is the sense in an Event where you can win it in the last 20 hours when you havent even played the rest of the time.

And i am from europe but this rubberband nonsence is more a Problem than the time Zone!

_RiO_

Moon Roach wrote:

nunberry wrote:

Went to sleep at 1AM in 2nd place.
Teething baby woke me at 4:40am - I was in 139th. Thank goodness for gum pain. Managed to grind myself into 54th place over the following 20 minutes without waking my wife. I felt a level of smug satisfaction I'd never experienced before.

It was only when I woke up this morning that I realised that the prize for 139th is the same as the prize for 54th. SON OF A BITUMEN!

But if you hadn't done those last 20 minutes you would have ended up in 151st or worse. You worked harder than you had to, but without it...

Without it, he would've been in the same spot that we are in now... again ...

It's damn unfair and the devs don't give a toss.

The PvP is a damned mess thanks to **** MMR and for anyone not in the US, the PvE is unmanagable thanks to malarky with ending times and rubberbanding.
The devs may just as well put the entire game behind US-only regional restrictions and be done with it. Atleast that way they'd give off a clear signal that if you're not based in the US you shouldn't be playing this game...

over_clocked

nunberry wrote:

Went to sleep at 1AM in 2nd place.
Teething baby woke me at 4:40am - I was in 139th. Thank goodness for gum pain. Managed to grind myself into 54th place over the following 20 minutes without waking my wife. I felt a level of smug satisfaction I'd never experienced before.

It was only when I woke up this morning that I realised that the prize for 139th is the same as the prize for 54th. SON OF A BITUMEN!

At least you secured a cover for yourself. I am betting you 1000 bucks that had you not woken up and played those 20 minutes, you would end up well out of top 150.

Unknown

I managed to still get 4th despite more or less skipping the hardest three nodes after about mid-day yesterday. Let's never do one like this again. I wish they wouldn't release new characters in heroics.

Unknown

HairyDave wrote:

And while we're having a moan, get rid of the damn 2.5 hour refresh cycle! It was a tinykitty terrible idea when it was implemented and it hasn't gotten any better. At least when everything was on a 12 hour cycle you could go and do other things like work, sleep, have a life...

To qualify my statements to follow let me just say first I ended up finishing 2nd in my bracket, by a good degree of working the system rather than grinding and a fair amount of luck that my bracket wasn't super competitive. I bring this up not to brag but merely to erase any question that anything I'm about to say is sour grapes. I live in a favorable timezone and the flexibility of my schedule allows me to profit from the current system more often than not when I'm motivated.

That said, if they cared in any way about the people who play their game, they would stop this 2.5 hour refresh madness immediately. The damage people are doing to themselves to play optimally for extended periods when Fury covers and new characters are dangled out there as bait is really insane. You can watch the scores and see the people who aren't sleeping properly for days at a time. That's messed up.

Can we go back to 12 or even 8 hour refreshes? I'd like to see this whole hamster-wheel mess of rubberbanding and global scaling go away in favor of something far more skewed toward personal progress and incremental challenges based on individual accomplishments, but in the absence of radical change can we at least abolish this 2.5 hour cycle of insanity? It's not a reasonable burden to place on players for the sake of competition and it's definitely not healthy. It needs to go.

Unknown

I am an EU player as well, after being continuously cheated out of covers because of the bad system and ending time, I decided not to care. I joined 8 hours before the event ended, did 1 run, farmed some more after refresh (much more) and I got #24 with 51k points, and went to sleep with 5 hours left.

I realize that I got lucky that I got placed into a new bracket, but still. It is just stupid.
It felt good however not to feel frustration about insane scaling and holding on to top 10 for several days before falling out of cover range in the last hours.

Good thing too, because some of the nodes were hard. You know what is a terrible idea? Putting Daredevil on a limited roster where a lot of nodes have Daken, and some places level 190 of that...

Also some nodes I cleared 6 times (in total) and still got 1/4 rewards (crit boost) after that. That system seriously pisses me off.

_RiO_

Thugpatrol wrote:

HairyDave wrote:

And while we're having a moan, get rid of the damn 2.5 hour refresh cycle! It was a tinykitty terrible idea when it was implemented and it hasn't gotten any better. At least when everything was on a 12 hour cycle you could go and do other things like work, sleep, have a life...

To qualify my statements to follow let me just say first I ended up finishing 2nd in my bracket, by a good degree of working the system rather than grinding and a fair amount of luck that my bracket wasn't super competitive. I bring this up not to brag but merely to erase any question that anything I'm about to say is sour grapes. I live in a favorable timezone and the flexibility of my schedule allows me to profit from the current system more often than not when I'm motivated.

That said, if they cared in any way about the people who play their game, they would stop this 2.5 hour refresh madness immediately. The damage people are doing to themselves to play optimally for extended periods when Fury covers and new characters are dangled out there as bait is really insane. You can watch the scores and see the people who aren't sleeping properly for days at a time. That's messed up.

Can we go back to 12 or even 8 hour refreshes? I'd like to see this whole hamster-wheel mess of rubberbanding and global scaling go away in favor of something far more skewed toward personal progress and incremental challenges based on individual accomplishments, but in the absence of radical change can we at least abolish this 2.5 hour cycle of insanity? It's not a reasonable burden to place on players for the sake of competition and it's definitely not healthy. It needs to go.

I can thoroughly get behind this.
(And thank you, thank you for the moral support from across the pond.)

yendi

So this is the first time I was competitive enough to score the new character (I'm an FTP mainly-2* player, but having Patch even at a low level gave me lots of points). I managed a top-100 finish mainly off the three Patch nodes plus the two all-Hammer ones. But the bouncing was amazing -- I'd go to bed in the 40-60 range, wake up at 350-400. It definitely felt a lot more stressful than the long adventures with subnodes.

So do the new characters tend to be the required ones for the next PVE, or do they get a PVP first? PVEs tend to feel like they reward the rich (just having Patch ensured I'd get enough points so that I could get another Patch cover in this last one, for instance).

simonsez

Thugpatrol wrote:

That said, if they cared in any way about the people who play their game, they would stop this 2.5 hour refresh madness immediately.

I can get behind this, but if the means to that is to have ridiculously high rubberbanding like this event, then I would say please don't. This event was awful. Rewarding people for not playing is just as unhealthy for the game as making them play too much.

_RiO_

yendi wrote:

So do the new characters tend to be the required ones for the next PVE, or do they get a PVP first? PVEs tend to feel like they reward the rich (just having Patch ensured I'd get enough points so that I could get another Patch cover in this last one, for instance).

They usually get to be the required character in both a PvP and a PvE event. The PvP one awarding a different, older 3* cover and the PvE one offering another debut 3* character. Odds are about 50/50 for there being a PvP opportunity at getting the character cover rewarded before the next PvE taking place. If there is, it will usually have that same older 3* cover as the featured character, so if you lack that one (and lacked the debut 3* to get a leg up on earning it), you're at a disadvantage there as well.

Basically, the entire thing is part gravy train and part rodeo bull:
once you get on you get the easy ride points-wise, but you'd better make sure to ride it all the way to the end and hold on for dear life, because a single weak moment means you drop off the bull and you can start over from square one.