how are brackets made?

loroku

When I join a PvE event it will say "Players 200" or "Players 1000." Seems like these are brackets, which is nice considering that otherwise I guess we'd all be up against thousands of other players and just getting smashed constantly by whoever's played the longest. My question is: how are these brackets created? Are they based off a PvE MMR or is it just random or does anyone know?

Similarly, are PvP events also bracketed (but less obvious about it) or are they against anyone ever?

Also how are alliances handled re: brackets? Seems like they may not actually be bracketed but it's hard to say. Also since alliance rank seems to be additive instead of percentage-based, I'm guessing the biggest (active) alliances are always at the top? (Not complaining just wondering.)

FierceKiwi

loroku wrote:

Similarly, are PvP events also bracketed (but less obvious about it) or are they against anyone ever?

Depends they are bracketed (500 people) and it's your score vs. the other 499 guys...but you can attack people who aren't in your bracket and they can attack you.

loroku wrote:

When I join a PvE event it will say "Players 200" or "Players 1000." Seems like these are brackets, which is nice considering that otherwise I guess we'd all be up against thousands of other players and just getting smashed constantly by whoever's played the longest. My question is: how are these brackets created? Are they based off a PvE MMR or is it just random or does anyone know?

It used to be almost entirely based on when you joined. The first 1000 in the first bracket next 1000 into the second. It still seems to largely be based on time for PvE. PvP the Devs have admitted to nudging people into different brackets based on something (MMR is one of the more likely options) for more info search for "sharding".

loroku wrote:

Also how are alliances handled re: brackets? Seems like they may not actually be bracketed but it's hard to say. Also since alliance rank seems to be additive instead of percentage-based, I'm guessing the biggest (active) alliances are always at the top? (Not complaining just wondering.)

Alliance ranks are unbracketed and you will tend to see the same handfull of groups at the top of every event.

loroku

Thanks for the info! I wondered if PvE had a kind of MMR as well. I noticed when I did extremely well in one PvE event, the very next one had a bunch of REALLY good players in it - but that could be coincidence. Glad to know that PvP is also bracketed - I'd hate to go against all the top players at once!

The alliance thing makes sense as well because at least once I saw that my alliance was X out of like a few hundred thousand. Just wondering if it was like that for all events.

FierceKiwi

loroku wrote:

Thanks for the info! I wondered if PvE had a kind of MMR as well. I noticed when I did extremely well in one PvE event, the very next one had a bunch of REALLY good players in it - but that could be coincidence. Glad to know that PvP is also bracketed - I'd hate to go against all the top players at once!

The alliance thing makes sense as well because at least once I saw that my alliance was X out of like a few hundred thousand. Just wondering if it was like that for all events.

There is a PvE MMR but from my understanding the only thing it really does is effect the scaling you see. It might have a bit of an influence on the bracket you end up in but I've never seen any evidence of that.

Unknown

FierceKiwi wrote:

loroku wrote:

Thanks for the info! I wondered if PvE had a kind of MMR as well. I noticed when I did extremely well in one PvE event, the very next one had a bunch of REALLY good players in it - but that could be coincidence. Glad to know that PvP is also bracketed - I'd hate to go against all the top players at once!

The alliance thing makes sense as well because at least once I saw that my alliance was X out of like a few hundred thousand. Just wondering if it was like that for all events.

There is a PvE MMR but from my understanding the only thing it really does is effect the scaling you see. It might have a bit of an influence on the bracket you end up in but I've never seen any evidence of that.

I can definitely confirm that there is also sharding in PvE. Even if you join immediately after a bracket has filled you might find yourself in a bracket with 700/1000 people already.

Moon Roach

When a mommy bracket and a daddy bracket love each other very much they have a special hug, and nine months later a baby bracket appears.

rawfsu

How do you attack other players in PvP events? It depends to me every tournament and I wonder how I can do it back?

HairyDave

rawfsu wrote:

How do you attack other players in PvP events? It depends to me every tournament and I wonder how I can do it back?

If someone hits you and beats your team, one of the nodes should turn red and present you with the team that beat your guys. Then you just hit them back as long as the points are worth the effort (*shakes fist at final hour snipers*).

elusive

PPPlaya wrote:

FierceKiwi wrote:

loroku wrote:

Thanks for the info! I wondered if PvE had a kind of MMR as well. I noticed when I did extremely well in one PvE event, the very next one had a bunch of REALLY good players in it - but that could be coincidence. Glad to know that PvP is also bracketed - I'd hate to go against all the top players at once!

The alliance thing makes sense as well because at least once I saw that my alliance was X out of like a few hundred thousand. Just wondering if it was like that for all events.

There is a PvE MMR but from my understanding the only thing it really does is effect the scaling you see. It might have a bit of an influence on the bracket you end up in but I've never seen any evidence of that.

I can definitely confirm that there is also sharding in PvE. Even if you join immediately after a bracket has filled you might find yourself in a bracket with 700/1000 people already.

Definitely. I once tried joining a PvE in the last couple of hours and ran into people who had a ton of points (as in there was no way I could even come close to matching them). Two of them were in SHIELD, too, and I haven't been playing much lately (i.e. I've done nothing but log in and play one match a day to get daily rewards for the past two or three months).

GrimSkald

I know if i was doing the coding for this, I would let brackets fill to about 80-90% normally (as in as they enter the event, with modifications for MMR,) then shunt less people to the bracket - maybe 1 in 5 instead. This would have the effect of keeping the bracket open longer, and discourage people from joining the last minute and reaping great placement rewards. I have no idea if D3 actually does this or something similar, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard to code.

I also think that PVP brackets are based on MMR, at least in a very rough sense. Back when I was under a hundred days in, I think in the 50-70 range, I was able to take my budding 2* team, beat all the 1* transition teams (with the occassional 2* team) and get into the top 25 with 300-400 points. Then one day I was seeing nothing but 2* teams and that same 300-400 points was just not cutting it any more. I suspect strongly they have at least two divisions for brackets, say a "kiddie pool" and a "big pond."

I can tell you that I'm in the 2*-3* transition (no maxxed 3*s but three that are coming close,) and in my brackets I see both solid 2* players and 3* players.

loroku

GrimSkald wrote:

I also think that PVP brackets are based on MMR, at least in a very rough sense. Back when I was under a hundred days in, I think in the 50-70 range, I was able to take my budding 2* team, beat all the 1* transition teams (with the occassional 2* team) and get into the top 25 with 300-400 points. Then one day I was seeing nothing but 2* teams and that same 300-400 points was just not cutting it any more. I suspect strongly they have at least two divisions for brackets, say a "kiddie pool" and a "big pond."

As someone who is under 100 days, I can tell you that it is VASTLY DIFFERENT now. I have never broken top 100 ranked - ever - and I have only broken 300 progression points once. The reason is because once you get past ~250 points, you see nothing but 2*->3* progression teams, or all 3* teams. (This is as a 1*->2* person.) I am routinely destroyed by 3* teams all throughout every event. This is in the "kiddie pool" at BEST.

I don't know if enough people are tanking that it's impossible, or there are just that many more people, or what. But the only 1*->2* teams I see are the seed teams, and I don't even see them anymore. I saw them in about 4 events, and then I stopped - again, without ever breaking top 100 rank.

This latest event, I got REALLY close to breaking 300 progression points - and that wasn't even enough to break the top 300 rank. So the idea that there would be a time when you could get 300 points and get in the top 25 is completely foreign to me. Maybe they've changed how it all works? Either way, PvP is just not really fun.

y2fitzy

I feel for you Loroku, I was where you are now a couple of weeks ago. Trust me, it all turns around REALLY quickly with just a little bit of luck. Once I had my 1*s of Storm and IM maxed, I just started ploughing ISO into the 2* covers I had. I was also fortunate that the PVPs were giving out 2* covers for people like MNMags and Thor, so just scraping into the top 300 made a difference. I vividly remember thinking that hitting 300 was just a miracle at that point.

If you aren't already, try to find a 20 man alliance. I posted in the alliance thread that I was looking for an alliance to take me in as a beginner and help me figure out what the hell I was doing and got a message really quickly from a commander from The Fridge. There are other casual alliances that I'm sure can find a spot for you.

I've only been playing 40 odd days but have four maxed 2*s and a bunch of 3*s with a handful of covers, and have hit a wall of my own. I think that's how PVP works to be honest, but now I get to 500 (and sometimes not even that high) and just see 3*s everywhere. Stick with it and you too will be similarly frustrated, just a little higher up the chain, in no time!

loroku

Lol, thank you y2fitzy, for that brilliantly hopeful and depressing response!

kidicarus

It's time we had that talk son..

You see when a mommy bracket and a daddy bracket get together...

Moon Roach

kidicarus wrote:

It's time we had that talk son..

You see when a mommy bracket and a daddy bracket get together...

I refer m'learned friend to a post 8 further up the page

Ruinate

Could someone clarify whether you join a sub/event when you open it for the first time or when you win/lose the first mission of the event?

HairyDave

Ruinate wrote:

Could someone clarify whether you join a sub/event when you open it for the first time or when you win/lose the first mission of the event?

PVE = the first time you score points (the first node in Prodigal Sun for example won't put you in a bracket)
PVP = win or lose, as soon as you complete your first match you're placed in a bracket

Twysta

I'm glad you asked...

So how were these unimaginably strange brackets created? For centuries forumites thought the brackets always existed in a largely unchanged form, run like clockwork thanks to the laws of demiurge. But a H.AM.M.E.R priest and dev called IceIX put forward another idea. In March, he proposed that the brackets began as a large, pregnant and primeval set of shards, exploding and sending out the smaller shards that we see today.

His idea went largely unnoticed. But in April dev DemiurgeWill discovered that the brackets aren’t static but is in fact expanding. If so, some players reasoned that if you rewound the brackets's life then at some point it should have existed as a tiny, dense ladder. Critics dismissed this: the celebrated mod Nonce Equitar sarcastically called this concept the “Big Bang” theory, a phrase that would later be adopted by its proponents.

Undeterred by sceptics, forumites TheUnwiseOne, Clintman and mischiefmaker predicted that if there had been sharding, then a faint afterglow should linger somewhere in the brackets, and we should in theory be able to detect it. To do so would require one of the greatest pieces of fortune in science.

In the mid-May's MPQ legends walkyourpath and Nemek were having a tough time trying to tune into the player signals transmitted from the level scaling. The radio antenna they were using kept picking up a persistent weak hiss of radio noise. Rebuilding the antenna couldn’t get rid of the noise. Nor could clearing the pigeons that had roosted in there, or their mess. That’s because the hiss they tried so hard to remove was the echo of sharding, or the Cosmic Sharded Bracketing as it is known.

If the Death Sharding theory is true, how did it lead to all the brackets, progression and placement rewards we can see today? Thanks to a series of calculations, observations from slave workers in Asia and probes in south America, our best explanation is this.

Around 13.8months ago, all the matter in MPQ emerged from a single, minute point, or singularity, in a violent burst. This expanded at an astonishingly high rate and temperature, doubling in size every 10-34 seconds, creating the game as it rapidly inflated. Within a tiny fraction of a second brackets and all the other PvP's were formed. Code changed into segments of gems and superheroes, which largely destroyed each other. But luckily for us some heroes survived. PvP and story started to form within the first second; within minutes these PvP and story could fuse and form PvE's and events. After 300,000 hours, demiurge could finally capture players to form money, filling MPQ with swarms of ISO and Hero Points. After around 380,000 hours it left behind a bath of PvPs – the Cosmic Death Sharing that walkyourpath and Nemek accidentally detected. Within this were tiny ripples of matter that were stretched to enormous sizes during inflation, and in turn these became the seeds for the shard and level scaling we see today.

If this is how we think the brackets began, then how will it end? Well, that’s another story entirely.