The Hunt - Oct. 24-28

GrumpySmurf1002

Joined late Sunday. Did the available nodes (1 or 2 subs at a time) once or twice per night. Finished top 50 w/ around 55k. Felt really good.

Unknown

Man did I get a lucky pull on my bracket for the event overall. Somehow netting a score of just 30k was enough to score me in the top 150. I didn't fight for Ms. Marvel (even though I knew she was likely to be required) and it looks like most of my bracket didn't either.

GrimSkald

I can't complain. I did this event by hitting every node I could at least once and hitting the essentials every 2.5 hours when I could. I did not lose out on sleep and didn't skip anything important - in general I hit each essential 6-8 times a day.

I made 15 at the end with a score of 107075 - first time I've collected two 3* covers from a PVE (I got 2 MsM covers from the last one, but I'm not sure that counts.) I do think entering after 10 hours helped a lot. I got top 50 in most of the subs, though once or twice I missed it by a few rankings. It won't show me the leaderboards, otherwise I'd give you a full report. Weird, usually it does.

I can tell you, I'm never entering a PVE until at least that evening...

GrumpySmurf1002

GrimSkald wrote:

I do think entering after 10 hours helped a lot.

One of the worst things you can do if you're not ready to grind is join a PvE quickly.

Unknown

Playing nodes minus the essential ones once when every time a new sub opened netted me around 20000 points which means no Ms. Marvel again and no Blade either.

DrStrange-616

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

GrimSkald wrote:

I do think entering after 10 hours helped a lot.

One of the worst things you can do if you're not ready to grind is join a PvE quickly.

So what's the best timing? I have about 7 2*s maxed and no really good 3*s yet, if that matters. I've been grinding these events, but it's, well, a grind.

Unknown

CrookedKnight wrote:

Man. There's nothing like your alliance going from 101st to 99th in the final two minutes. That got my heart rate going.

I actually joined a public alliance to see if maybe I could get some extra rewards here and there, and maybe MAAAAAYBE end up with a good bunch with a chance at top 100 here and there. At the end, I had about 111K. My alliance total was about 120K. Oy!

Vankysher

Fievel wrote:

CrookedKnight wrote:

Man. There's nothing like your alliance going from 101st to 99th in the final two minutes. That got my heart rate going.

I actually joined a public alliance to see if maybe I could get some extra rewards here and there, and maybe MAAAAAYBE end up with a good bunch with a chance at top 100 here and there. At the end, I had about 111K. My alliance total was about 120K. Oy!

My public alliance contributed 15,889 to our overall score of 125,584.
I typically hit the 200 point ceiling in PvP and refuse to spend HP to shield hop so my miniscule contribution to their PvP is a fair enough tradeoff.

Unknown

I don't play enough to give equal attention to PVP and PVE, so usually it depends on which one has the better reward that I'm actually interested in. PVP I usually play until I hit the 166 wall, then I stop. This is usually in the 600 range. I'm making a conscious effort not to shield anymore, unless it's something I really want.

PVE, if I don't care about the placement reward, I just play until I get the progressions and then stop and focus on PVP/Simulator.

I liked the looks of Blade, so I went full tilt into this one, though.

loroku

SunCrusher: There has been talk before of a "PvE" MMR but no one has really confirmed it. It's still possible that you both were just randomly ending up in different brackets and the other person had much easier brackets than you. I know it seems hard to believe, but you're still WELL within a reasonable margin of random chance.

For what it's worth: but if that is, in fact, what's happening, the other person will likely get booted out of the "kiddie pool" before long as well. And you probably benefited from the kiddie pool yourself. So it's all just a matter of perspective.

Unrelated:

Lystrata wrote:

It's because you have a terrible roster, 50k points is a terrible score, your constant whining about an alliance is probably putting people off, and using the "I'm a female" card may have worked in the early 90s, but your gender has absolutely no relevance to this game. Score is key. And your score is awful.

Wow, this is way over the top. I mean, people vent on here all the time - this thread is full of it - but this response was far harsher than any other. No reason to call this person out over all the others complaining.

Unknown

PvE is more about just joining a bracket that didn't have too many other guys with way too much time. In my example we got the #1 who played somewhat close to the 'didn't go to sleep' schedule and he was never going to get caught. If there were two of those guys you can forget about getting top 2, and if there was somehow 10 of them you can't touch top 10 either. Of course after that it's still totally random on how hardcore the rest of your bracket is.

Time is the overwhelming dominant factor when scaling does not prevent from people from playing at all, as it did during Unstable Isotope. In my bracket I pretty much traded place with #2 the last 3 days and lost by about 2K at the end (he probably did more on the last refresh while I didn't bother because I wasn't going to catch him). Now if I hired a gold farmer to play the easy nodes for me while I'm asleep, it'd easily make up that 2K difference. People seem to have this misconception about rubberbanding. It is irrelevent versus grinding unless the guy ahead misses something later (and that might be why he's grinding in the first place). Since people do have IRL obligations sometimes you are able to make up a deficit at the end, but that's because that guy can't play during that time for whatever reason. People in this forum tend to overestimate their know-hows and underestimate how hardcore they are. I held #3 comfortably doing only essential + easy track, and since it's practically impossible for anyone in top 10 to not have Captain Marvel, this must mean hitting those nodes in the number of refreshes is still more than what the others can do. So yes you can do top 10 while 'missing' a lot of refreshes because you still played more than 99% of the players even when you think you didn't play too much.

But PvE shouldn't be just a near 100% measurement of time spent, and the only exception to this is when scaling prevents playing at all (see Unstable Isotope, no amount of playing would've helped you much against the 395s). Playing more should be rewarded, but it shouldn't be as absolute as it currently is. If you can join a bracket and the game tells you exactly how many hours all the guys in your bracket can play, you can pretty much predict with very high accuracy where you'll finish, and that's a bit too decisive for a single factor.

GrimSkald

Phantron wrote:

But PvE shouldn't be just a near 100% measurement of time spent, and the only exception to this is when scaling prevents playing at all (see Unstable Isotope, no amount of playing would've helped you much against the 395s). Playing more should be rewarded, but it shouldn't be as absolute as it currently is. If you can join a bracket and the game tells you exactly how many hours all the guys in your bracket can play, you can pretty much predict with very high accuracy where you'll finish, and that's a bit too decisive for a single factor.

I am so right there with you it isn't funny. I came to the conclusion two months ago that I wasn't going to bust my butt going for the 3* in PVE - it just isn't any fun. Fortunately unless you are in a serious grinding bracket, you can usually come away with one cover, but as you say, this is completely a factor of the other people (i.e. luck and timing) not any testament to your skill.

I imagine that's what people found so appealing about the Gauntlet. It was strictly skill. Well, skill and luck, because there's a pretty big luck factor in this game already.

Unknown

GrimSkald wrote:

I imagine that's what people found so appealing about the Gauntlet. It was strictly skill. Well, skill and luck, because there's a pretty big luck factor in this game already.

It was something NEW. The player-base...well, at least the forum-goers, are dying for ANYTHING new.

That's why the anniversary stuff went over pretty well despite some hiccups, and the Gauntlet has been heralded as the second coming.

The devs need to realize that new characters aren't cutting it because, ultimately, those just aren't new enough. MPQ needs new modes, new PVE events, new ANYTHING to keep people's attention. Because if they just keep pushing out new 3* characters, eventually everyone's going to lose interest.

Pwuz_

RefinedBean wrote:

GrimSkald wrote:

I imagine that's what people found so appealing about the Gauntlet. It was strictly skill. Well, skill and luck, because there's a pretty big luck factor in this game already.

It was something NEW. The player-base...well, at least the forum-goers, are dying for ANYTHING new.

That's why the anniversary stuff went over pretty well despite some hiccups, and the Gauntlet has been heralded as the second coming.

The devs need to realize that new characters aren't cutting it because, ultimately, those just aren't new enough. MPQ needs new modes, new PVE events, new ANYTHING to keep people's attention. Because if they just keep pushing out new 3* characters, eventually everyone's going to lose interest.

The gameplay at the end of the day is why I keep playing. I enjoy these types of Match 3 games. I think more events that are NOT ranked would more fun. After grinding all night (cause that's fun...NOT), I feel burnt out and am reluctant to play again. The Gauntlet on the other hand was great because I had the time to finish it, didn't have to repeat anything I didn't want to, and got some sweet rewards for my effort.

I'd even go as far as to say I'd love to have a Gauntlet like PvE every month. Make it last long enough people don't have to play insanely to get all the rewards, and run along side a few PvE & PvP events.

Amazeballs

DuffManOhYeah wrote:

russreid91 wrote:

My bracket

1) Red Panda 135943
2) marsupilamy31 135812
3) Russ91 132531 (me)
10) wildekarde18 122135

Amazeballs and DuffManOhYeah are in the top ten of mine as well.

Can't see 11 at the moment

My ears are burning.

I knew there was a reason why I felt the need to check this thread the other day...

Had 1st for a little bit, but got so busy during the last sub that I missed 2-3 refreshes. I was aiming for top 10, so it gave me leeway for the stretch run.

Spoit

Sumilea wrote:

I know my top 10 finished with 3 Alliance members in it. The last 12 hours was nice and easy and if I was only interested in top 10 I could have skipped it totally - not that I needed IW but the chasers did not seem to want it either.

SunCrusher wrote:

It's not the first time it's happened; this has happened - us joining at the same time, but getting bracketed separately with their bracket always being more relaxed with lower point requirements to place high - consistently for several months now which is why I'm getting frustrated.

It's like the game is expecting me to be able to duke it out with people like you... but if you're a newbie, you get to play in a special kiddie pool bracket where less effort (compared to what I consistently put into my events) and being able to soundly sleep can still snag you 3 3* covers when your 2*s aren't even fully covered yet and you're still relying on 1*s.

My rubber band calculator account gets thrown in the kiddie pool brackets also and its bloodly painful to see the difference in scores between them. But the obvious fix of making the brackets bigger to reduce the variation between them is not going to happen since it would screw over all the people that cannot join close to the start and probably kill the D3 servers. The old guard will remember what happened when everyone was in one bracket talk about server lag...

Yeah too bad about the whole servers dieing thing, I actually kind of liked the structure of the original hulk PvE run. It was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier to be in the 1% of players globally, than to roll the dice that you don't have 2 other people out of a thousand that apparently don't sleep and are either not scaled, or willing to deal with the scaling that boosts cause.

Then again, only what, 300? people were able to get that final progression reward (which honestly IMO means that it was the closest that D3 ever got to actually predicting a realistic reward curve for PvE progression)

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

Yeah too bad about the whole servers dieing thing, I actually kind of liked the structure of the original hulk PvE run. It was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier to be in the 1% of players globally, than to roll the dice that you don't have 2 other people out of a thousand that apparently don't sleep and are either not scaled, or willing to deal with the scaling that boosts cause.

Then again, only what, 300? people were able to get that final progression reward (which honestly IMO means that it was the closest that D3 ever got to actually predicting a realistic reward curve for PvE progression)

That was probably because people didn't know the nodes weren't repeatable in the last set.

The original The Hulk had everything rubberband off the main bracket, but the problem with that is that anyone who is way behind would automatically win their sub and it feels pretty stupid to be #500 in a sub when you're doing well overall because 499 other guys were doing way worse than you overall so they got way more for their sub.

Every since the stack replenish mechanism is changed you ideally have to do a mission 5 times in a 12 hour period, versus about 3 in the past and that adds up to a very significant amount. Further, since the timer used to be at the time you do your mission it doesn't make sense to stagger the clears, like do node twice now and then two more times 3 hours later (because then it'd refresh 15 hours after the original start), and since you've to do everything in one setting this may even further limit what you can do because of health pack issues, and thus you end up doing less than expected, but that's okay because everyone is subject to the same limitation.