PvP tournament thoughts

Unknown

In the last tournament I ran something as an experiment with a level 61 OBW, level 85 Wolverine, and level 1 Hawkeye. Since Take Aim's interaction with boosted enviornmental damage trivially results in an infinite loop, this combination is basically instant kill whenever you hit 8 purple AP. Of course, this team doesn't look very intimidating at all, and at the end I got hit by virtually every person out there fell to somewhere around 170, even though I was winning a match every minute or so.

This highlights a very serious problem with the PvP tournament. Even with broken, nearly infinite offense, you can still come nowhere to the top simply because you can't win games fast enough to make up for being hit, even when you're completely bulldozing all your opposition. Most likely the winner of your bracket is just someone who managed to get lucky enough to not get hit very often. While the experiment I ran is particularly vulnerable looking, it's unlikely any team is going to scare people around your MMR (e.g. if you got 3 maxed 3 stars, you'd be fighting other guys with similar characters). I guess this keeps things unpredictable, but not in a good way. Also, all your effort prior to the last 2 hours of the match is basically meaningless since you can easily go from 1 to 200 in 20 minutes if not less, so why even have these tournaments run so long?

I propose we should run something similar to PvE, where there's a limited stacks of point losses over a period of time. Let's say you can only lose points to 20 unique opponents over a period of 8 hours (stacks refill the same way as PvE over time), and this will reset with 90 minutes left on the tournament. You still get points for attacking someone who doesn't lose points, and if both players are under the 'can't lose point' status they cannot retaliate against each other (otherwise you'd just do that forever). This will also make the high PvP rating stuff achieveable. From my calculation, even if you somehow grinded up to 2000 rating while you're immune to losing points, in the last 90 minutes you'd probably lose 48+ points each time you're hit, and anyone who can see you have no reason to not attack you for the 48+ points, so you'd lose roughly 1000 rating points even if you started with 2000 rating, and under this system 1000 shouldn't be that high of a score. I"m sure the actual numbers need some work, but I'd want something where there's actually a point to play before the last 2 hours other than trying to sneak up to a high rating award while everyone is asleep. Ideally, it should work the PvE missions where while the #1 overall score leader is always within reach, he does start with a considerable cushion so there's actually a reason to build a lead prior to the last hour of the tournament.

Unknown

I remember seeing that team. Sorry!

Unknown

I saw it too. I thought it was a trap, that you would sub hawkay for a zillion level magnaros and retaliate for 1000 points, so I passed

Unknown

I am weak at maths so I can't validate the technical feasibility, but in general I like your proposal.

Or at least, I wholeheartedly agree with the problems you describe.

To add, playing the game seems to involve more "gaming the playing." Matching tiles seems to be the least significant aspect of the game relative to grinding vis-a-vis timing, with tanking and ranking manipulation.

Unknown

Psychosocial wrote:

I saw it too. I thought it was a trap, that you would sub hawkay for a zillion level magnaros and retaliate for 1000 points, so I passed

This is what I thought the first time I saw bagman in pvp (before I knew about the forum).

But in most cases something like that is just tanking. If you ever see me with a team like that feel free to hit me a million times. Even if I decide to get a progression reward later I always skip all the retaliations and start fresh, just to be a little more fair and so I don't feel as bad about it.

Unknown

ghostlightning wrote:

I am weak at maths so I can't validate the technical feasibility, but in general I like your proposal.

Or at least, I wholeheartedly agree with the problems you describe.

To add, playing the game seems to involve more "gaming the playing." Matching tiles seems to be the least significant aspect of the game relative to grinding vis-a-vis timing, with tanking and ranking manipulation.

I'm sure the actual numbers need work and it'd take time to make sure all the loopholes are covered (there must be a lot of potential for abuse here), but it'd basically be a PvP version of rubberbanding. That is, right now I see that Blazewings is #6 on the overall leader board, and he's someone who has been in top 10 pretty much the whole time in the tournament. So while all that hard work doesn't mean he's guaranteed to #1 it's also not exactly surprising to see him still retain his place. PvP should work the same way. If you're #1 consistently throughout the tournament, and assuming it's not just because nobody else was playing except you, you should be able to have some kind of cushion that at least covers say a top 20 finish.

Right now I think the only strategy is to try to figure out what team looks the most intimidating to other players, because there's no way you're actually going to defend successfully against any player that's on par with your team's strength, so you've to somehow figure out what team people would avoid. And while mind games should be part of the strategy, right now this part is literally the only part that matters, since nobody sure can actually withstand attacks in any meaningful capacity.

Unknown

I have ran a few test on the pvp events and you are correct in that in the last two hours you can easily place top 25 Ive done it in the second avengers while playing a lot in the first event and placed better in two hours than I did in two days mostly I think because of the late bracket I had and I tried it in the last no holds and place top 25 in both in two hours

Unknown

Hows that a problem? You sacrifice defense for offense. Find a better balance next time. The real problem are tanks like Rags who excell in both, and yet still has better or comparable offense to so-called glass cannons.