New feature: Shields

Unknown

abuelo wrote:

Are we talking about progression rewards being the only useful thing here? Or does it not matter, because when your shield breaks you'll have so many retaliations to do you'll shoot all the way back up.

I don´t think you get retaliations. I just threw up a shield, got attacked a couple of time, and didn´t have any retaliation rights.

MarvelMan

Bugpop wrote:

I bet my bracket will get up to 1400 to 1600 points by this evening. It sounds like the pool of worthwhile targets will increase substantially. Its goint to be tricky to avoid losing points to latecomers. Hpoefully people will remain shielded long enough.

Not sure my bracket will get any where close. I pushed to 750 last night before getting hit for more than I was gaining. This morning I checked and we have one guy over 700 plus a couple in the 600s, and most of the top 10 is 500ish with #10 at 511. Definitely have fingers crossed that the greater pool gets higher and shields so I can push for 1300.

Unknown

MarvelMan wrote:

Bugpop wrote:

I bet my bracket will get up to 1400 to 1600 points by this evening. It sounds like the pool of worthwhile targets will increase substantially. Its goint to be tricky to avoid losing points to latecomers. Hpoefully people will remain shielded long enough.

Not sure my bracket will get any where close. I pushed to 750 last night before getting hit for more than I was gaining. This morning I checked and we have one guy over 700 plus a couple in the 600s, and most of the top 10 is 500ish with #10 at 511. Definitely have fingers crossed that the greater pool gets higher and shields so I can push for 1300.

I think that's more about MMR. From my (limited) experience I don't think you fight only people in your bracket? Or am I wrong?
Anyway I can't wait to get home and check the situation. If I manage to get a good rating I might try this whole shield thing. But during the week I can only play at times where both the US and the EU are awake, so it's gonna be veeeeeeeeeery though
Probably the safe choice is still tanking and saving 200HP

Unknown

huh, i'm gonna push too, just to see how high i can get.

this is...interesting...

MarvelMan

Psychosocial wrote:

I think that's more about MMR. From my (limited) experience I don't think you fight only people in your bracket?

Its about both. Plus about how the dedicated players are spread across the brackets.

If the top of most brackets stay in the 800 range making a push for 1300 will be tough without even worrying about MMR. Shielding could add an interesting twist in that a high MMR might be desirable so you can cycle through people who have attained higher progression rewards then shielded (if that is in fact what high MMR people do rather than straight tank). As long as you dont end up in MMR hell where you get a limited pool of targets who are tanking without shields (high effort, low points).

Unknown

Ahh, I'm still deciding on whether or not to join now (between the 1 day shield and the 8 hour shield), or at midnight (between the 8 hour shield and the three hour shield. All of those high scores are bringing our my inner Vulture...

Unknown

If someone is unshielded and in top 10, they are probably attacking. Otherwise they are just pushing to see how high they can get and stop

While shielded you can see who attacks just like before. There is no option to retaliate and those people dont get queued. The only thing is that can see who attacks you. Kinda nice to see that people are getting fat off me.

In my bracket lowest is just a sliver below 700, highest is just a sliver above 1400.

Unknown

I just finished pushing a bit and put up shields. My bracket isnt that strong atm.

Unknown

Eh, I'm tired of sitting out all this time. I'm going to conduct an experiment to see whether waiting to jump in is still an effective strategy. Kinda scared since I'm risking Spiderman as a reward, but it's not that hard at all to stay top 45. I'll try to remember to post bracket results.

Unknown

Oversoul wrote:

Eh, I'm tired of sitting out all this time. I'm going to conduct an experiment to see whether waiting to jump in is still an effective strategy. Kinda scared since I'm risking Spiderman as a reward, but it's not that hard at all to stay top 45. I'll try to remember to post bracket results.

I'm totally in the same boat with you, if Spider-man wasn't the reward I wouldn't have used the shield. But with Spidey in mind i was totally willing to spend the HP, now i'm just praying that my score holds. But by the sounds of it, it might not with so many people spring boarding :-/

hell im scared to even test out Shield training in fear that a glitch in the system will break my shield in doubleshot

Unknown

Just started the event. Top score is 310, no shields up obviously. Let's see how things go...

Unknown

Right now I'm at 837. I earned 13 points to attackers losing first round. I'm now at #7. Top 3 have more than 1000 points. Kelbris being #3 at 1018 as of this writing.

#10 at 753. I'm in competitive bracket.

mischiefmaker

Bugpop, thanks for providing so much information. Really helpful stuff. Do you remember what time you started your bracket?

Unknown

Whether how high your brackets is a matter of how dedicated/coordinated your bracket is, not its strength. If there's a bracket of level 1 characters where everyone can coordinate and agree on who to shield ahead of time they'd have no problem hitting 1400.

The shield is a 'help me, help you' mechanism. The more people shield (assuming the total number of shields isn't a ridiculous number, like over half of the bracket), each shield adds free points to the system. This, in turn, is returned to the shielded guy when he breaks his shield. In fact, if your goal is to hit progression reward, you should put up a tank team before you shield to ensure everyone can fatten up on your points, because those are the guys you need to feast on later to make your own push (just make sure you're back before the shield runs out!) In particular, the best players needs to be the one doing the shielding simply because a guy with 300 rating shielded is not nearly as useful to the bracket as a guy with 600 points shielded.

Even under the old point loss system you still end up losing the full value in the 600+ range. Instead of just arbitarily let everyone grind to about 600 for free, now whether you can grind to a high number depends on how much HP your bracket spent. If your bracket spent a relatively large amount of HP, then everyone can grind to a high number. Given that there's always a 100 HP reward at 1000 rating, your whole bracket stands to gain HP for sure if you're able to hit that 1000 mark. So who hits the best reward is a matter of how well coordinated your bracket is, and how many people are willing to take the initiative to shield themselves. Remember, if nobody shields, nobody would come anywhere close to the high progression rewards.

Also, I'm sure people are catching this on, but you should always attack a shielded opponent unless his team is outrageously powerful. This is the only attack who is guaranteed to not be able to retaliate. You cannot control who can see you on the matchups, but having one less retaliation is still one less way to lose your points.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Also, I'm sure people are catching this on, but you should always attack a shielded opponent unless his team is outrageously powerful. This is the only attack who is guaranteed to not be able to retaliate.

Can you tell if someone is shielded when you go to attack? Still not clear on that.

Unknown

So, far, from what people are reporting, there is now a reason not to tank your MMR. Getting to those really high spots will be increasingly tough without getting those higher folks in your MMR to keep giving you adequate points per match.

Phantron wrote:

Whether how high your brackets is a matter of how dedicated/coordinated your bracket is, not its strength. If there's a bracket of level 1 characters where everyone can coordinate and agree on who to shield ahead of time they'd have no problem hitting 1400.

I feel like it's less your bracket, and more your MMR. your bracket can co-ordinate all you like, if all of you keep getting attacked by players in other brackets, you won't advance that high.

Unknown

Is there a way to see if the opponent you are attacking is shielded?
I'm wondering what score will be necessary for a top 45 finish. I'll be at work when the tournament ends, so I 'd have to use the 24h shield, but I don't want to end up wasting 200hp
Even a single Spidey cover would be worth it for me though.

Unknown

That entirely depends on your bracket, as usual. My bracket has a top 10 ranging from 1008 to 538 (I'm rocking out at #405).

A few hours ago it was much tamer, with the top two at around 700 and shielded.

Unknown

I think there should be a con to breaking your own shield, like a retroactive loss of points. Maybe not a 100% loss of points, but perhaps you receive 50% of total points that you could have lost through battles while under the effects of the shield.

At least this way it would be more tactical to use the shield instead of a spam and win type deal. As it stands, it's too easy to utilize them without any sort of repercussion of breaking early to say, increase your lead even more.

I see this as being way too exploitable, and a rich get richer system already.

Unknown

By bracket I mean the list of players you usually draw up as your opponents, not your actual bracket. Probably a bad term to use there.

Having a high or low MMR does not impact the outcome, though people with high MMR are probably more likely to have spare HP to spend. Still, you can easily have 100 guys with level 1 characters that and 0 HP simply all agree ahead of time that the first 10 guys to get above 500 will shield for 3 hours, and people will beat on those guys as much as possible, and then the first 10 guys to get above 700 will shield for 3 hours, and so on. You will have enough HP to do this from just hitting the 400 progression reward (by the time the guy who shielded earliest is done there should be enough points to hit 1000, and if not someone else can always pick up the slack). If you can achieve that kind of coordination, you can easily hit the max reward with level 1 characters. Even if there are some newcomers or a few guys who aren't with the main plan, as long as those guys are still attacking the shielded guys whenever possible, they're still generating net points in the system. Obviously, it'd be pretty tough to even contact all the guys in your MMR range to pull off a plan like that, but the limitation is really coordination, not character power.