Anniversary Tokens - Combined Arms and Venom: Heroic

orionpeace

Ben Grimm wrote:

scottee wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

scottee wrote:

After thinking this over for a full 30 seconds:

This is way better than regular lightning rounds.
This is not as good as Anniversary Tokens being in CA at 300/900 like they were supposed to be.

I think a TON more will be given out, unless there are only one or two LRs a day.

Yeah, I think the total number given out may end up being higher. But this solution does favor higher end players, who are more easily able to place in the top 25%, whereas 300 in CA is achievable but almost everybody.

But I also think that the people posting here are more likely to finish top 5 than they realize. Regular LRs have, what - 10,000 people participating? How many people in these are going to fight two matches and wander off? I suspect that the typical player who starts at the absolute start, fights all the seed teams, and does nothing else, will probably finish top 5/20 in 90% of brackets.

But also keep in mind that while you are only competing for ranking in your bracket, you are being hit by the world at large.

Basically, the 2* and transitioning 3* players will just be chum to help the leveled 3* players reach their numbers easier.

So, in the end it will come down to how they calculate and apply MMR for the LRs. If a 2* player is seen from the outset by everyone, they are going to get killed and the transitioning 3* will just be the next tier of fodder.

I'll withhold final judgement until I see this in practice, but I'm not hopeful at present that I will be able to recover the 4 Anniversary tokens I am missing from the PvE and PvP events I am already participating in.

Unknown

Okay.

My Steam account has a lvl 54 Thor,a lvl 50 Iron Man, a lvl 25 obw (with no purple), and a bunch of lower characters.

In PvE I didnt have much of a problem getting most of the progression rewards even in this horifically hard Venom event.

Explain how do I go about getting anniversary tokens in these events. See why this is going to be problematic?

Unknown

DuffManOhYeah wrote:

Does anyone here really believe they can hit 500 points without shield hopping in a LR? I don't even think the sandboxed players can do it.

I have done it multiple times. It requires a little bit of luck and pretty much the whole hour and a half though. If you can get up to 1st place as quick as possible you will eventually just start seeing seed teams again and you have to ride 3-5 point matches from 350 to 500. I just do it for the iso because more than half the time you end up getting hit around the 450 mark. But if you get lucky and nobody decides to attack you, and or you get a def win, it is definitely possible. I think the token should have been at the 250 or 300 mark. That is doable pretty much every round easily.

Unknown

orionpeace wrote:

I'll withhold final judgement until I see this in practice, but I'm not hopeful at present that I will be able to recover the 4 Anniversary tokens I am missing from the PvE and PvP events I am already participating in.

How many points do you usually finish with in an LR? What placement do you usually get?

orionpeace

Ben Grimm wrote:

orionpeace wrote:

I'll withhold final judgement until I see this in practice, but I'm not hopeful at present that I will be able to recover the 4 Anniversary tokens I am missing from the PvE and PvP events I am already participating in.

How many points do you usually finish with in an LR? What placement do you usually get?

Normally, I fight until I see a spread of 166 and their powered up brethren.

Depending on when I join, that is anywhere from 25 to 210 (my personal best in LR) points.

After that, I starting getting ripped apart and always finish under 100 points.

Unknown

I'm wondering if you can clear all the seed/tank teams to get to around 250ish, climb to 350+, shield, and do the last the 150 in the last 15mins or so? That would be 75hp for an anniversary token which isn't much steeper than the 50 hp for the daily deal and hopefully would net you a nice score for the ranking rewards.

Otoh, I don't really play LRs so maybe you can't queue the right teams but this seems like what you would do if it was a regular pvp event.

Unknown

Do LRs have different pricing on shields or am I taking crazy pills and making that up?

CrookedKnight

You may be taking crazy pills, but you're right about the different shields. I think it starts at 50 HP for a half-hour shield? Something like that.

Unknown

Can you explain more clearly how the 20 Person Lightning Rounds work? Is the tournament going to run for 90 minutes but the individual brackets form when you join? So if you join 60 minutes you end up in a bracket with people who join at the 60 minute mark?

I have to be sceptical that you can grind Seed Teams until 200 and score highly. Seed teams will only be there for the earlierst brackets, so chances are high everyone who joined that early is going to grind through the end. Maybe it makes more sense to join later without the seed teams but a bracket full of stragglers.

mohio

Yeah I don't think you really want to be shielding for these. Just play as fast as you can to get the seed teams right at the beginning and then play again the last 30-40 minutes so you have decent points for matches and don't get retaliated to death.

As for me I've gotten to 500 I think just once. It's certainly doable but like sauce said you kind of have to get lucky that no one attacks you and you have to be able to go nonstop for 90 minutes which is much harder these days with true healing. I'm willing to withhold judgment until I see what happens after it goes live.

wymtime

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mohio

PPPlaya wrote:

Can you explain more clearly how the 20 Person Lightning Rounds work? Is the tournament going to run for 90 minutes but the individual brackets form when you join? So if you join 60 minutes you end up in a bracket with people who join at the 60 minute mark?

I have to be sceptical that you can grind Seed Teams until 200 and score highly. Seed teams will only be there for the earlierst brackets, so chances are high everyone who joined that early is going to grind through the end. Maybe it makes more sense to join later without the seed teams but a bracket full of stragglers.

If you have MPQ open and don't close it, you'll have a queue of seed teams that should get you to ~100 even if you don't start right away. If you're there at the beginning but close the game out, then you'll only have the 3 seed teams that show up first. Might make sense to keep those teams there but start 30 minutes in so you get to 100 easy instead of 200, but maybe have an "easier" bracket?

itstime1234

wymtime wrote:

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Best comment ever. I was thinking the same thing. This is like the 3K points where only the 1% have a chance. So the easy obtainable 300 pointer from CA is gone and in its place is 500 points in LR. So what you had 2.5 days to get to you now must do in 90 minutes and score 66% more points btw.

BEST Bait and Switch ever.

Unknown

The amount of butt-hurt in this thread is rather amusing. Reminds me of something I see posted every once in a while on M:TG forums "Wizards could put a new $100 bill into their packs and people would complain about how they're folded".

Let's assume these were regular LRs we were talking about. You'd probably be using your own featured character if you wanted to place well, so likely three characters who might eat some health packs. With a borrowed , you'll only need two since she'll start at fresh health every match. Don't have a maxed whomever it is? Well then you're generally at a disadvantage in that particular LR. Here, everyone will get the same thing. You're not taking your low level or loaner against a 249. You'll get a level let's say...150, and so will your opponents.

So you get a bit of a break there on and roster.

From the data Ice has posted, let's think about a typical LR. Assume his mentioned average of 10k players. Top 100 get a heroic token. So assume we just did a swap of Anniversary for heroic , removed the double token for 26-50, and left the top alone, allowing for doubles in the top 8 I think. 1% of the players in each LR would get an anniversary (a handful would get a pair or three). Under this system with brackets of 20, and top 5 getting a token, 25% get the anniversary
You get another break there 25% versus the expected 1%

Now yes, sharding on the brackets could mess you up a little bit, but in general my assumption is that if you were someone who could grab a heroic token in a traditional LR, you're not going to have a problem getting one in these. There's also the possibility that sharding might actually help some of the lower transition players. If you get a bracket that's just 20 2-3 transitioners, you don't have to outscore the maxed vets, you have to outscore 19 people like you. Who probably don't want it as much because they lack the drive and determination that you, dear forum reader, possess in spades.

As for the 500 reward - that's a bonus.
I've hit 500 before in a LR. Once. Know why only once? There was no reason to do it again. For all of that effort I grabbed 1st and felt like the prize I got for doing so wasn't worth the significantly increased effort that I usually exert for a 26-50 finish with doubled heroic
With increased activity here, I'd think getting to 500 might be a bit easier in these than a normal one. Because more people will be trying. Same thing just happened in Tex-Mex. More people getting high scores means even more people can get high scores. Rising tide, all boats, etc.

I'm rather looking forward to these now. Since my 50 anniversary pack today was generous and gave me the final I needed, maybe I can win a few more that might give me his last 2 or a few more covers for my now 1/1/4 - his arms don't flail quite enough yet. Sooooon.

Unknown

mohio wrote:

... you kind of have to get lucky that no one attacks you and you have to be able to go nonstop for 90 minutes....

no one attacks you

no one

...

That's called "Magic Christmasland" in MTG - preparing for the best situation that can occur, instead of preparing for the worst I usually get attacked as soon as I get my 250 prog reward token, and I'm usually going 3*166 in LRs.

Pylgrim

Cryptobrancus wrote:

I think people are ~really~ underestimating the power of a 20 man bracket. Sure it is technically possible to be matched with 19 X-Men and yourself but the odds of ~every~ lightning round being a deathbracket is astronomically low. Also most people grab some iso and bail because they don't think they can win anything of value. What happens where they grab some iso and see they are 2nd in their bracket. Are they still going to sit the rest of the round out or are they going to fight to stay in the top 5?

I don't know about odds. I've been playing almost for a year, and ever since LRs started, I haven't been in a single non-death bracket, from my **** start, through my transtition, to the higher end I am now.

I believe that there's some strange mechanism in LRs that divide people's experiences. I keep hearing people talking about how they adore LRs, talk of "almost free" mines of Iso, seed teams all the way up to 300 points, and credit them with their fast growth. On the other hand, there is me and other people like me who no matter how early or how quickly we dispatch seeds never get more than 6 for 120ish points before being hit a couple times for 30 points and then facing a wall of buffed maxed-level featured character and two other ridiculously powerful characters depending on your level and team (used to be levels 120ish Patchneto, then levels 166 Sentry + Daken. Now? 270 Fury + X-Force everywhere. I kid you not.)

I'm guessing that the people who adore the LRs are the ones that have those highest leveled teams and get to crush the chumps like me that for some reason keep getting dragged into their brackets. Then, at worst, they have to duke it out with the other giants at their own level. I could have gotten 4 anniversary tokens out of the progression rewards. Now I'm almost positive I will get a shiny round total of 0.

Unknown

Something occurred to me - everyone is going to be using the exact same loaner Thor, presumably, since, by definition, no one has her. Depending on how covered and leveled that Thor is, your other character may not matter much, or at least, as much as they do now.

Unknown

Will the Lightning Rounds count towards the seasonal points? Because the 3k Progression is just a pipedream for anyone who didn't score at least 1400 in the Deadpool event. And there are not many team configurations that allow that.

mohio

Since this seems to be where we're discussing the LR I have a question regarding the lady Thor we'll be getting to use. Is this going to be the final version or the typical "things might change as her powers get rolled out over the coming months, but this is what we have right now" version? I guess I'm asking how much testing has gone into her or if this is kind of a beta test so you can use our play patterns to determine if her powers are on a good level or too weak/strong?

itstime1234

j12601 wrote:

The amount of butt-hurt in this thread is rather amusing. Reminds me of something I see posted every once in a while on M:TG forums "Wizards could put a new $100 bill into their packs and people would complain about how they're folded".

Let's assume these were regular LRs we were talking about. You'd probably be using your own featured character if you wanted to place well, so likely three characters who might eat some health packs. With a borrowed , you'll only need two since she'll start at fresh health every match. Don't have a maxed whomever it is? Well then you're generally at a disadvantage in that particular LR. Here, everyone will get the same thing. You're not taking your low level or loaner against a 249. You'll get a level let's say...150, and so will your opponents.

So you get a bit of a break there on and roster.

From the data Ice has posted, let's think about a typical LR. Assume his mentioned average of 10k players. Top 100 get a heroic token. So assume we just did a swap of Anniversary for heroic , removed the double token for 26-50, and left the top alone, allowing for doubles in the top 8 I think. 1% of the players in each LR would get an anniversary (a handful would get a pair or three). Under this system with brackets of 20, and top 5 getting a token, 25% get the anniversary
You get another break there 25% versus the expected 1%

Now yes, sharding on the brackets could mess you up a little bit, but in general my assumption is that if you were someone who could grab a heroic token in a traditional LR, you're not going to have a problem getting one in these. There's also the possibility that sharding might actually help some of the lower transition players. If you get a bracket that's just 20 2-3 transitioners, you don't have to outscore the maxed vets, you have to outscore 19 people like you. Who probably don't want it as much because they lack the drive and determination that you, dear forum reader, possess in spades.

As for the 500 reward - that's a bonus.
I've hit 500 before in a LR. Once. Know why only once? There was no reason to do it again. For all of that effort I grabbed 1st and felt like the prize I got for doing so wasn't worth the significantly increased effort that I usually exert for a 26-50 finish with doubled heroic
With increased activity here, I'd think getting to 500 might be a bit easier in these than a normal one. Because more people will be trying. Same thing just happened in Tex-Mex. More people getting high scores means even more people can get high scores. Rising tide, all boats, etc.

I'm rather looking forward to these now. Since my 50 anniversary pack today was generous and gave me the final I needed, maybe I can win a few more that might give me his last 2 or a few more covers for my now 1/1/4 - his arms don't flail quite enough yet. Sooooon.

Ummmm, thanks for those calculations but you missed the point where this was the reward structure before the mess up and the only thing they changed was adding the anniversary progression. So all these placing XYZ is irrelevant. The question is what is better for the majority of ppl a 300 CA Anniversary and 2 Heroic Anniversary tokens or this new 500 progression anniversary.

If you really think the 500 is the easier one for the majority of people you need to get our more. You hit the 500 before, good for you, but you also have 5 blue nick fury's so you are def in the outlier category. So just cuz you might get there doesn't mean everyone is in that boat.