The 166 Wall, and What Can be Done to Fix It.

Unknown

So, everybody has seen it. That massive wall of fully covered 166's just waiting to wreck your transitioning team of 2* and under levelled 3* characters. Now competition is fun, PvP is fun, however trying to compete while severely handicapped is not. It's frustrating and pointless.

I propose this. Brackets should be determined by how far your characters are capable of advancing.

Bracket 1 - Players who have 3 or more fully covered 3* (4* counts as 3* for bracketing purposes) characters.

Bracket 2 - Players who have 1 or 2 fully covered 3*'s

Bracket 3 - Players who have 3* characters that are not fully covered.

Bracket 4 - Players who do not have ANY 3*'s.

This type of breakdown leads to healthier competition, better chances of winning, and most importantly... more fun. Now I know you whales like to roflstomp the underdeveloped candy matches on your leisurely stroll to 1300 in every PvP, but it's poor game design. Give the little guys a fair shake D3, let them become the big guys, and in doing so replace the whales who burn out and quit. This would mean that pretty much everybody gets to play on a level field, and it effectively disables the whole "rich get richer" problem.

Shadow

Basically, what you are asking for is more spoonfeeding than what is already being provided. This is a bad idea.

In the first place, the brackets and the opponents you see are 2 separate things. If you're really seeing a wall of 166 all the time, perhaps you should evaluate the way you play. Perhaps you're not allowing yourself to get attacked enough such that your MMR is very much higher than what it should be.

As for brackets, the way it currently is already creates many death brackets which is an issue. What you're asking is basically saying is to let newer players get the 3*s easily and make all the veterans quit. During my transitioning period, I only managed to get 1 of the 3* covers from personal reward and only on the rare occasion did I manage to get 2 3*s. Of course being in a good alliance gave me another 3* cover. Now, my roster is fully covered except for the new chars - Deadpool, Beast, Colossus. So, it is possible to build up your roster eventually if you're able to rank top 100 and are in a top 100 alliance. What you are asking for is for this processed to be mass accelerated and that veterans all be put in death brackets. Well, no thank you.

ronin_san

I meet; just barely, mind you, the top tier. I get RIPPED in tourneys by guys with at least 7 maxed 3*. They often have a tricked out XFW. Luckily, there aren't a lot of maxed out Nick Furys. Hey's just as dirty.

Just deal with it, man. Play or not. I've put my time in to get my toons up where they are. It took FOREVER To max out Patch, Doom, and GSBW. I'm close with IM40, Punisher, Hulk, Thor. HOWEVER, even with covers I'm about 250k ISO away.

It will take some time. I enjoy the game. If you don't; if you want to be pandered to? You've already quit.

FaerieMyst

Nothing is broken. Competition is about striving. You don't make the race shorter for slow people.

The are match three games where everything is equal. MPQ isn't one of them.

I am in your top tier. I got there by constantly going up against tougher opponents. Losing is never fun but it is where you learn the most.

Unknown

The hard limit I noticed in PvP is the 700 point mark where I only get lvl 166 pitted against my lvl 100 3 stars. Personally I don't really mind this as I simply don't try to get any higher. Reasoning is that I don't have the resources to shield hop to the highest places. If you find pvp level too hard play some pve or simulator, that's what they're there for.

Unknown

I don't remember who posted it, but I always remember the message every time I see a post like this. I would hate to see the current young gamer play old school NES and Genesis games. Before saving progress was only found in Legend of Zelda and a few other games. I think the post mentioned Contra and I responded with the original Castlevania. But I digress.

The point is that a progression game is meant to be difficult. It may seem like the vets are **** on you, but we had to start with our first 3* cover, and then die alot. Then we had 5 3* covers, and we died alot. Then we had 15 3* covers, and we died alot, but not as much. We progressed. We accepted the challenge. Heck, in old school land we made our own challenge after beating the developers challenge.

Anyone ever try to beat the original Super Mario Bros without dying? Then bragged when you did it. Then beat it without using warp zones and not dying. Then bragged more. Not only that, you knew you were better than the majority cause you had proof. Come watch me go from 1-1 to 8-4 untouched and butt-smack the princess if you don't believe that I am THE MAN. Covered 3 and 4* characters are the MPQ equivalent.

Because these accomplishments are what separate the people who accepted the challenge from the people who just wanted in on the passing fad. The challenge is the thing. Take away the challenge, then what? You have all the best covers maxed and.......woohoo?

And before anyone says it, I am talking about the people who did it with little or no money. I am NOT knocking the whales, they keep us all playing, and they only did what they wanted to. They earned it THEIR way. Now earn it your way, and have the grand sense of accomplishment of separating YOURSELF from the rest of the pack.

Unknown

Ahhh, I see. So it's asking to be spoonfed to want a level playing field, but it's totally different to just be handed victory repeatedly because, worst case scenario, you have to fight opponents of equal level. Sounds to me like old heads wailing and gnashing teeth at the thought of the gravy train stopping.

The game dynamic has changed, there are more characters than there were originally, meaning that the chances of getting the covers you need to actually progress are an order of magnitude less than they were a year ago. That needs to be taken into consideration. I'm just trying to be helpful.

Now if any of you want to discuss this as a matter of game design, I'm all ears as that's what I went to college for. However if you have no better argument than "I got my covers by doing X and think everybody should have to do the same" then you are just stating personal anecdotes which have no basis in what the game is today and as such your argument is useless.

And for the record as far as retro gaming goes, you don't brag about beating Super Mario Bros in one life, you brag about how many times you can beat it in 1 life. My record was 7 with warpzones, 3 without.

acescracked

What your failing to understand is the game is actually fun this way. We've all hit the 166 wall, put our big boy pants on and got thru it.

The game is also designed that way to make players frustrated and some will pony up some cash and buy covers to beat the 166 wall. You really think D3 would change that? I have a trick for you. Its called tanking. You want to lose more matches than you win. It will push the 166 (used to be 141) wall further back. Sure you'll hit it still, just hopefully later and can score higher.

Eventually you'll get more 3* covers and more iso and you'll be part of the 166 wall. Trust us..we all did it. Once you are part of the 166 crowd you'll want to play a few lower level and 2* teams. Even when you have 3* maxed characters fighting only 166 teams wouldn't be fun.

I was exactly where you were not too long ago (day 250 now), it seems insurmountable. It isn't.

Raekwen

Frankly put, you shouldn't be able to compete at the same level as those with bigger rosters. Being able to consistently score at the top of pvp events is a reward for those who have either put in the time or money to get there. That's why we go through all of the trouble to do it. It's like saying they should restructure the NBA so your 14 year old brother can play. No, they shouldn't.. given time and a lot of work, maybe he can be there, but he's not ready yet.

Unknown

LordMojo wrote:

Ahhh, I see. So it's asking to be spoonfed to want a level playing field, but it's totally different to just be handed victory repeatedly because, worst case scenario, you have to fight opponents of equal level. Sounds to me like old heads wailing and gnashing teeth at the thought of the gravy train stopping.

The game dynamic has changed, there are more characters than there were originally, meaning that the chances of getting the covers you need to actually progress are an order of magnitude less than they were a year ago. That needs to be taken into consideration. I'm just trying to be helpful.

Now if any of you want to discuss this as a matter of game design, I'm all ears as that's what I went to college for. However if you have no better argument than "I got my covers by doing X and think everybody should have to do the same" then you are just stating personal anecdotes which have no basis in what the game is today and as such your argument is useless.

And for the record as far as retro gaming goes, you don't brag about beating Super Mario Bros in one life, you brag about how many times you can beat it in 1 life. My record was 7 with warpzones, 3 without.

You already have a level playing field until point level X. If you started off with a 166 wall then it'll be an issue. If everyone was able to keep playing similar players ad infinitum then there would be too many people reaching 1000+ points and getting the 3 star cover too easily. It would also mean way more grinding in PvP to keep rank which is not the direction demiurge wants the game to head. I'm a 2 to 3 transition players so I don't have top player bias

Unknown

One thing I can agree with is that the character pool is now bigger. It takes longer to have those 3* covers for the chars that you want. 3* transition is now delayed even more. However, this is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean what we want from the game is to have enough material to keep us playing for a long time. Adding more characters is one more step forward.

On the other hand, impatient and frustrated people will be "forced" to spend some money here and there. Well, that is a good thing too because D3 is actually in this for the money too. Yes there are flaws. Yes the game had more things to exploit before. Yes it was easier to get maxed 3* before.

However, look at what those players are doing now. The so called veterans they are so enraged having nothing to do but 2-3 more characters for them to max that will not change their game at all. Not to mention that they will need another year to max those 3* characters considering they are not in the tokens and they will not be given out as often as they'd want.

This coming from a 2*->3* transitioner (Who has also experienced frustration and anger. Especially in the Hulk PVP where I could not even hit Top 100 for the cover), enjoy this transition as much as you can. Because the excitement of making a useful pull is nonexistent in maxed 3* land.

Unknown

I'm all for difficulty and challenge increasing as you get stronger, but what I'd like to see is a comparable rise in rewards. Every RPG I've played gives bigger and better prizes for getting tough enough to take down bigger and badder foes. I realize this isn't a RPG, it just has certain elements from them, but something like a "bounty" prize for tough fights would help motivate the climb to victory and maybe decrease the skip button mash factor. Would I rather fight maxed Sentry/Daken/Hood than a team of maxed 2-stars for the same prize? That's nuts. Would I rather fight them if there was a bonus prize for their difficulty (extra ISO or maybe even direct exp. for the characters who fought)? Way more likely.

Sandmaker

LordMojo wrote:

Now if any of you want to discuss this as a matter of game design, I'm all ears as that's what I went to college for.

I find this doubtful... Either that or you weren't paying attention in class. Because I'm pretty sure one of the first lessons you should've learned is to avoid designing a system that is counter-intuitive to your game's progression path.

Under your proposed bracketing system, the optimal way to play would be to leave all your covers at 12 out of 13, so you can feed on all the newbies just barely joining bracket #3. Why would I bother max covering any of my guys if it's not going to make it any easier for me to earn covers?

So now instead of a wall of 166, transitioning players hit a wall of 153s in bracket #3. The only players in bracket #1 and #2 will be people uninformed about how the bracketing works. They get punished for having the audacity to think that covering your guys to max is a good thing. And they will quit the minute they find out about the system.

Bracket #4 doesn't even make sense... So new players play one pvp, and the top 150/500 of them are thrown into bracket #3 with the vets? That's way worst than the current system.

Unknown

TRANSLATION: "I want more covers. Here is an idea that gets me more covers. I will place the word 'fair' where I would normally put 'beneficial to me' because it sounds better. I will ignore the fact that players who have better rosters due to invested time/effort/money getting rewarded for that is fair because it doesn't go with my core aim of getting more covers for myself"

Translation courtesy of bull-be-gone translating services.

CrookedKnight

I just wish there was a slower ramp-up from fighting 2* opponents to running into waves of 166s rather than the abrupt wall that we have now -- I rarely see opponents in the 100-120 range without skipping through a lot of fully leveled teams first -- but that might just be a function of most people continuing to use 2* characters as their go-to PvP team until they have at least one maxed-out 3* to swap in.

Unknown

I thought the solution is there and it's PVE.

Unknown

The 166 wall is part of the game.

There was also a 94 wall for really new players.

They had to get over that as well.

Besides, this would heavily discourage purchasing covers because that would put you in a higher tier.

And if there's one thing we know about D3P is they want you to buy covers.

That's the entire purpose of Sentry and X Force Wolverine. To force you to buy covers in order to compete.

Unknown

Shadow wrote:

Basically, what you are asking for is more spoonfeeding than what is already being provided. This is a bad idea.

In the first place, the brackets and the opponents you see are 2 separate things. If you're really seeing a wall of 166 all the time, perhaps you should evaluate the way you play. Perhaps you're not allowing yourself to get attacked enough such that your MMR is very much higher than what it should be.

As for brackets, the way it currently is already creates many death brackets which is an issue. What you're asking is basically saying is to let newer players get the 3*s easily and make all the veterans quit. During my transitioning period, I only managed to get 1 of the 3* covers from personal reward and only on the rare occasion did I manage to get 2 3*s. Of course being in a good alliance gave me another 3* cover. Now, my roster is fully covered except for the new chars - Deadpool, Beast, Colossus. So, it is possible to build up your roster eventually if you're able to rank top 100 and are in a top 100 alliance. What you are asking for is for this processed to be mass accelerated and that veterans all be put in death brackets. Well, no thank you.

Perhaps D3 nerfed my top characters and I'm stuck facing 166 Hulk/Sentry/Lazy-Whoever versus my oh-so-threatening team of Maxed GS Black Widow, Level 150 Spidey and Magneto. Nerfing so many characters makes winning that much more difficult and yet the MMR doesn't get looked at? Just because I used to defeat maxed characters 6 months ago doesn't mean I can do that now against newly introuduced, overpowered characters. You think a "veteran", like me, who only has high level, older characters like Dr. Doom, Spiderman, Punisher and GS Black Widow is going to do well against teams of Black Panter, Lazy Thor and ... almost anyone else? This is just my personal experience, but I'm guessing others share the same feeling.

"Evaluate the way I play" ? ? ??? ? ? I'm not sure what you're suggesting; should we try to lose more? Tanking to try and lower your MMR is just a ridiculous mechanic and highlights this MMR issue.

Evalutating the way you play must be done all the time since D3 introduces new "Features" like team ups & endless nerfs amongst other things, like new characters. No way people are playing MPQ the same way that they played 2-3 months ago or 6 months ago.

OnesOwnGrief

What is this wall and where do I find it?

user311

I dont have a good solution for this, so I wont try to offer one. My experience is that I start out against lvl 94 2*s. At about 500-600 I start to see a mix of these and 166 3*s. At about 700 and beyond its all 166 3* or higher 4*s. I am averaging a bit higher than 800 per PVP and I have no 166s. I do not believe that I am the only one without maxed players. I would like to fight more people like myself up to a certain point. I have tried going up to 1300 and theres no way I can do it without significant spending. thats probably because I dont belong up there yet. Getting to 900 is another story.

metallicajake01

Wow! Its really easy for all the people that have awesome 166 rosters to say "screw the 94 guys" because you're well beyond it and had to go through it. It doesn't make it any more right! Also alot of you had it a helluva lot easier than we do to get covers.

I can't get above 600 points in a PVP unless I shield hop or play in the last four hours. Whats messed up is that we get a finite number of matches we get then after that the 166 wall. So if you play earlier, you make less points, hit the amount of matches to raise your MMR to the wall then you're screwed. The only way to be competitive is to play at the end. Well guess what I'm not playing this game and wasting my Friday night because thats what I have to do to progress. What's the point of a 3 day event if only the last four hours matter?

If we could actually play people at our roster level maybe we'd have a fighting chance to progress but instead we're stamped out by people with double our character levels and lose 150-200 points if we stop playing and don't shield because all of you guys tiny kitty the **** out of us as soon as we appear on your nodes.

I'm at day 130 something with the most covers on a 3* being 11 its just sickening to see over 300 hours being dumped into this game and still not even a glimmer of hope at having a viable team to make it beyond this. At this rate I will have all 94s maxed out before I have a viable 3* team to level.

I got no problems playing people at my level but you guys want to talk all high and mighty just because you had to do it and are done going through it is just a lame excuse for a broke system.

You feed on us because we're easy prey and try to justify a broken system with excuses because this helps you.

So call us trying to game the system and a bunch of whiner butts but that's exactly what you're doing with the rhetoric you're spewing you hypocrites!