Dark Avengers: Heroic - Sept. 25 - Oct 1

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

Unstoppable, Inedible is the ABSOLUTE WORST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not only is it Headbutt and Stun season, but they have a HAMMER Analyst who of course generates purple and red, it's so unfair, I burned all 5 health packs, and still barely won, and they are only lvl 128!!!!

Yup, that node is just silly. Got wiped in no time and barely did any damage.

FierceKiwi

orbitalint wrote:

Thanks, that's what I thought. I've just never seen someone get so excited for 3 tokens in the middle of a PVE. I thought most people are settling into their placement range by now or haven't started. Good for him.

You'll almost always see people immediately grind nodes down like that...I'm not sure if they're still operating under the now ancient rules of grind nodes down to 1 every 12 hours or if they are doing it so they don't have to play for 12 hours.

_RiO_

Phantron wrote:

FierceKiwi wrote:

loroku wrote:

FierceKiwi wrote:

What makes you think "joining late" would be any better? You'd probably just be about 300th but with half the points and no chance at progression rewards.

Read the earlier posts.

I've read the earlier posts and I don't see anything that says you'd be doing significantly better. Having a score that's good for first in a bracket that's existed for 48hrs less than the one you're in is pretty meaningless. If you were in that bracket you'd have 48hrs less play time and a much lower score. You'll have fewer grinders in a later bracket but that's really a pretty small segment of any bracket.

With this rubberband structure anyone with about 2 cycles of lead on you would likely have an insurmountable lead if their playing time is anywhere close to yours. The rubberband is weak enough that the missions might as well be constant points for most people and anyone with an early start has a huge advantage there, and that's more likely to happen if you join late unless you're extremely lucky. Not to mention the people who make these posts don't seem to fit the profile of a grinder so they'd have no particular advantage in joining late, even though with this rubberband even a hardcore grinder would not like his chances of making up even a 2 cycle lead.

That's a sad truth for me; the weakened rubber band paired with the short 2.5hr node refresh completely screws over PC users. I easily managed to hold a top 10 placement over the course of the weekend, when I could keep up with the node refreshes. This evening, I found that I had sunk to 100th and I've now barely been able to scratch the top 75 again after playing all my nodes. I'll be extremely lucky if I even manage to get one Doc Oc cover, where I was in the clear for all three for the entire weekend. Totally unfair to be taken out of the race like this. Bah!

Really, when Demiurge decides to tune down the rubber band, then they should also switch back to 12hr node refreshes.

FierceKiwi wrote:

orbitalint wrote:

Thanks, that's what I thought. I've just never seen someone get so excited for 3 tokens in the middle of a PVE. I thought most people are settling into their placement range by now or haven't started. Good for him.

You'll almost always see people immediately grind nodes down like that...I'm not sure if they're still operating under the now ancient rules of grind nodes down to 1 every 12 hours or if they are doing it so they don't have to play for 12 hours.

No. They're probably doing it out of necessity, because they are PC players and only have one playing window in the evenings.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

In this event the rubberband is weak enough that your gap to the overall sub leader does not shrink unless you can do all the hard missions as well. That is suppose you see your essential is worth 1000 and you do all 3 of them, and if you come back 2H 24M later you'll notice they're still worth 1000 points and sometimes more. If you cannot close the lead to the overall sub leader then joining time and rubberband are both meaningless. In the last sub I did the essential, the first hard, and all 3 easy nodes every 2H 24M and the gap between me and the leader never closed because my missions are worth roughly the same thing when I come back. This means from my point of view my missions might as well be constant points, and anyone who does less than this wouldn't even close the gap to the leader, so there's no way they could ever catch up to me either no matter what timing trick they used. Now, if you can do the other 2 hard missions then you have enough points to close the gap and at that point timing may become important again, but if you could beat all the hard missions in this event you really shouldn't need to resort to any fancy tricks to do well.

This is exactly it.

With the heavier backweighting of points onto the Hard Track nodes and the weakened rubberband, points balancing in PvE has reached a point where a player mathematically cannot gain ground on a leader that is actively working the Hard Track nodes while that player does not. In fact, the players that are capable of clearing the Hard Track will actually continue to pull away from those that even grind to dust all Easy and Essential Track nodes. As observed by others in this thread, over time, this gap compounds upon itself to tens of thousands of points.

As of the end of the second sub in my main bracket, 1st place (all prizes) has opened a 25k lead over 21st place (1 Doc Ock cover).

Another huge factor is variance/"luck". This event, because of the points weighting/rubberbanding changes mentioned above, incredibly favors those who are grinding every 3 hours over those who grind nodes to dust in one pass every 12 hours. This is easily explainable:

Assuming no health purchases....

-- A player completing one pass over the 9 nodes, with all 5 health packs, has at least 8 full lifebars (plus any character swapouts) to clear 9 nodes. Definitely plausible, even with the AI being "lucky" once during this pass and causing a 3 health pack wipeout.

-- A player grinding 3 passes over the 9 nodes, with all 5 health packs, must complete 27 nodes on those 8 lifebars. There is no room for error here. Even with skilled play, match-3 attrition will wear out a team. If the AI is "lucky" once, the remaining 2 health packs may be insufficient to cover the remaining attrition. If the AI is "lucky" twice, the player's run is over outside of purchasing health packs.

The combination of the two is what is causing the giant disparity in overall scores. Frankly, I can't remember scores being this wide open in a very long time.

That said, this is most definitely intentional in scope and "Working as Intended". Risk --> Reward. Of course, as always, risk can be somewhat mitigated through cash purchases (health packs).

Moving forward,

-- A player will be able to rubberband to Top 150 for 1 3*** cover via hard grinding on the Easy/Essential nodes, dodging the Hard track and playing it safe.
-- A player will practically never be able to rubberband into the Top 20 for multiple 3*** covers unless that player can clear out all of the hardest nodes of each sub, with accepting all risks from playing those nodes.

Unknown

loroku wrote:

loroku wrote:

I've got over 1.5x your points and I'm #300. That is absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah I checked: the point total that would make me #1 in your bracket makes me #300 in mine. So frustrating.

Since this bracket (I'm in the one you're talking about) did not start until after the first sub had ended, it would be impossible for you to have the same points in our bracket that you have in yours. You had access to the points from the first sub, we don't. Whether or not the amount that you are willing to play once you've joined would have translated into success in this bracket is something we can't firmly establish, but the points here are solely from sub 2, not sub 1 and 2.


Bracket update:
As a bit more info for people still looking to join, the bracket I'm in, which started 20 hours ago (7PM EST), is only up to 833 players. Meaning there are certainly going to be people joining this main who won't have access to the points from the second sub. Don't be one of those people... I just saw the number jump from 831 to 833 while typing this. Those players basically have no shot at . I'll update again as the numbers change there.

Thanos

j12601 wrote:

Bracket update:
As a bit more info for people still looking to join, the bracket I'm in, which started 20 hours ago (7PM EST), is only up to 833 players. Meaning there are certainly going to be people joining this main who won't have access to the points from the second sub. Don't be one of those people... I just saw the number jump from 831 to 833 while typing this. Those players basically have no shot at . I'll update again as the numbers change there.

Really appreciate the updates. Keep it up!

Unknown

I'm on PC and I don't think it's necessarily that much worse for the PC user. Given the nodes are quite hard themselves this isn't something you can sneak into the hallway to quickly knock out some nodes. The only model I can see where having mobile is advantageous is if you've a role that allows you to take on some kind of mass transit every 3 hours or so so that you can play MPQ while going to your next location. If you work in a place where you can play uninterrupted for the nodes that are clearly quite difficult it seems like you can sneak in a computer there too. The only nodes I can do in a hurry would be the easy track nodes, and those still aren't worth very much at all. Even the essentials I definitely need to stop and think about them, and forget doing hard track nodes. I suppose if you're using HP boosts you can do them quick, but that'd be very expensive to do on every cycle.

loroku

j12601 wrote:

Since this bracket (I'm in the one you're talking about) did not start until after the first sub had ended, it would be impossible for you to have the same points in our bracket that you have in yours. You had access to the points from the first sub, we don't. Whether or not the amount that you are willing to play once you've joined would have translated into success in this bracket is something we can't firmly establish, but the points here are solely from sub 2, not sub 1 and 2.

Excellent point. This particular example is a bad one since I did get about 2/3rds of my points from the 2nd bracket (which would have put me about where you are and thus also in the top 5) but your overall point is still correct - it's not apples to apples.

It still seems as though the competition is FAR less fierce, if nothing else because you only have a bracket that is ~80% full. And the difference between rank 3 and rank 300 is still pretty huge - and even further, anyone who joins after sub 2 ends can't possibly give you competition. Even assuming I had 1/2 the points I did from missing the first sub, I would still have been better off in yours. At the very least I would have given less overall effort for the same or better results in rank.

My main point being: the bracket you're in is quite possibly a bigger indicator of your ranking success than any other factor, including effort and playtime. And that is very frustrating, since it's pretty much a matter of luck.


So the current theory on these forums is that your PvE bracket placement is based 100% on time entered, with the added caveat that some brackets may partially fill, and then semi-randomly add more people as they go along (yet to be confirmed or disproved?). It's possible there are other factors but no one seems to know or understand them, or they're not sharing if they do. And so the theory was then further suggested that the most hardcore players - the toughest competition - tend to jump in early. But if the toughest players all jump in early, that could mean later brackets would be easier to actually rank in (as evidenced above).

A counterpoint (given earlier in this thread) is that more time playing = more time getting points, etc. And even though some people still seem to believe otherwise, any amount of rubberbanding still means it is mathematically impossible for someone to "slingshot" ahead of another person who is clearing nodes consistently. So the conclusion is that getting in early still gives an advantage because you have more opportunities to clear nodes / gain points.

While early clearing unquestionably helps progression rewards, it seems like getting into a weaker bracket actually makes more difference to your rank than clearing nodes as early and often as possible. Obviously there is some kind of "sweet spot" - a point at which you're joining late enough to be in an easier bracket, but still early enough that you can farm nodes as often as possible - and I'm sure it's as difficult to predict as the rules of the next PvE event. Not to mention that ANY attempt to "game" your bracket could just as easily backfire: you could end up being a later-joiner to a "death bracket" and then have the double-disadvantage of being behind while also surrounded by tough competition. (Interestingly, at least from the evidence presented above, in this event missing the first sub entirely was a great time to join for at least one person, as counter-intuitive as that may seem.)

Granted: you're still fighting against all the other people who missed the first sub. So the overall scores are lower. But if the general apathy of the group is potentially higher (which makes sense due to their joining later), then as long as you don't mind favoring rank over progression (which also makes sense due to the value of the rewards) you're still in a much better place.

Potentially.

Other non-negligible factors: progression rewards you might like, and overall alliance score / rank will be jeopardized by joining later, since alliances seem to be completely un-bracketed (a true rich-get-richer). The alliance factor is actually quite big if you're in serious alliance, since the rewards from those can potentially be almost as good as your personal rank.

_RiO_

Phantron wrote:

I'm on PC and I don't think it's necessarily that much worse for the PC user. Given the nodes are quite hard themselves this isn't something you can sneak into the hallway to quickly knock out some nodes.

Lunch break.

Given that you can fit in a max of 2 refreshes in the evening if you're a PC user, then even a single additional pass during lunch break means a mobile user already has a full third more potential scoring capacity.
And if you're allowed an afternoon coffee break, then 2 hours later you can still fit in a few more nodes at near-optimal score that a PC user won't be able to.

(And then you have the cases that go out for a smoke and play a node while doing so. Or those that take an extended leave on the toilet in the afternoon, because of 'something they ate'.)

The advantage is there, plain as day.

Unknown

Ack, just joined this event today. Doctor Ock is a pipe dream (sitting at 8k), but I'm hoping I can rubber-band enough for the Psylocke 120k cover.

dkffiv

M695_MPQ wrote:

Ack, just joined this event today. Doctor Ock is a pipe dream (sitting at 8k), but I'm hoping I can rubber-band enough for the Psylocke 120k cover.

This feels like a tighter event. I'm at the top of my bracket at 10k, this appears to be the last sub with 18 hours to go. The hard nodes have a very high chance of wiping you and the essentials can also be deadly if the board isn't favorable. The final 12 hours look like the main event only and if I recall from last time, the points there were pretty weak.

Unknown

so much for grabbing the 120k pyslocke cover as I already maxed it with a blue from pvp token and one from the event token. Why blue...

Unknown

M695_MPQ wrote:

Ack, just joined this event today. Doctor Ock is a pipe dream (sitting at 8k), but I'm hoping I can rubber-band enough for the Psylocke 120k cover.

Won't happen. Rubberbanding is off of the subs, not off the main. You'll be able to get to some of the mid level progressions, but achieving the top ones generally require that you play all of the subs. If you joined today, I'm guessing you're in my main, which likely means you missed out on sub 2 as well, so you'll be behind all of the people who had access to sub 2, and now sub 3.


Bracket Update

Closing in on 22 hours since my main started, we are now at 893 players.

loroku

M695_MPQ wrote:

Ack, just joined this event today. Doctor Ock is a pipe dream (sitting at 8k), but I'm hoping I can rubber-band enough for the Psylocke 120k cover.

They've reduced rubberbanding to the point that this is impossible. 120k is actually a pipe dream for many (most?) who started even from the beginning. I've been grinding pretty faithfully and I don't know that I will make it much past halfway. The hard nodes are REALLY hard, so unless you can clear all 9 nodes consistently, I don't think it's possible to get 120k even from the start.

vudu3

j12601 wrote:

Closing in on 22 hours since my main started, we are now at 893 players.

Thanks for the updates. Keep 'em coming! I have someone in my alliance waiting until your bracket fills.

I don't recall which PVE it was, but I was in one earlier this month that was open for 36 hours before it filled.

loroku

vudu3 wrote:

j12601 wrote:

Closing in on 22 hours since my main started, we are now at 893 players.

Thanks for the updates. Keep 'em coming! I have someone in my alliance waiting until your bracket fills.

I don't recall which PVE it was, but I was in one earlier this month that was open for 36 hours before it filled.

Very curious to hear how this turns out! I'm guessing they're waiting to optimally get bracketed in a near-empty shard?

vudu3

That's the goal! If she joins now she has a zero chance of a Doc Ock cover because most of the bracket will have a full sub on her and rubberbanding is only for the sub, not the main event.

GrumpySmurf1002

So if this has limited to no rubberband/non-repeatable 12hr finale, then this is basically as close as we'll get to a Euro-friendly tournament. Every sub ending at noon EST is a pain in the tuckus for a US schedule.

_RiO_

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

So if this has limited to no rubberband/non-repeatable 12hr finale, then this is basically as close as we'll get to a Euro-friendly tournament.

Think again.
The event ends at 5 AM, meaning you'd have to play the last hours in the dead of night.
The last sub closes at 5 PM, meaning everyone is still stuck at their job for the last hours of the sub.

It's about as EU-unfriendly as can be conceived.


Ofcourse; the sub does end at a favorable time for west-coast and central US players to put in one final pass of their nodes in the morning before/during breakfast or while commuting.
If I have my time-zone conversions right, then even east-coast US gets to play a last pass if they get up an hour early.

GrumpySmurf1002

_RiO_ wrote:

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

So if this has limited to no rubberband/non-repeatable 12hr finale, then this is basically as close as we'll get to a Euro-friendly tournament.

Think again.
The event ends at 5 AM, meaning you'd have to play the last hours in the dead of night.
The last sub closes at 5 PM, meaning everyone is still stuck at their job for the last hours of the sub.

It's about as EU-unfriendly as can be conceived.


Ofcourse; the sub does end at a favorable time for west-coast and central US players to put in one final pass of their nodes in the morning before/during breakfast or while commuting.
If I have my time-zone conversions right, then even east-coast US gets to play a last pass if they get up an hour early.

If there's no repeatable nodes in the finale, the 5am end time is irrelevant.
And I'd think 5pm is still better than 5am. It's not 11pm, but it's pretty clear 11pm isn't happening, at least in the near future.