Spoit wrote: Spoit wrote: gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table... You want a gentle nudge? I joined this bracket at 78th place at 1. It's now 8:20 and it's only at 307 people. I joined at that time every other week and it was full in well under an how. Gently nudge this sharding. (there are already 5 RO/x-men/AoS people in the top 10, and that's well before most people even start to climb) 3 hours later, and it's added all of...3 people. I don't think think this nudging could be any more gentle
Spoit wrote: gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table... You want a gentle nudge? I joined this bracket at 78th place at 1. It's now 8:20 and it's only at 307 people. I joined at that time every other week and it was full in well under an how. Gently nudge this sharding. (there are already 5 RO/x-men/AoS people in the top 10, and that's well before most people even start to climb)
gamar wrote: It's kind of a moot point since even before the end time thing d3p was "gently nudging" players so "don't give developing players a handicap" was never an option on the table...
reckless442 wrote: Perhaps some of the transitioning players here should consider how stacked against top players the game has been progressively getting. How many of you are facing level 395 Hood/Mags in the final node of Thick as Thieves? When I was a transitioning player, I routinely hit top-5 in PVE. Now, I'm lucky to get top-50 because scaling is so heavily stacked against high-level rosters.
reckless442 wrote: That means the way I can get the remaining covers unavailable in PVE is through PVP. Yet the changes the Devs have implemented are now making it harder to get those covers. Right now, I'm seeing max-level teams in PVP at 350 and am in a super-death bracket in shard 4.
reckless442 wrote: I don't disagree that there are issues that transitioning players face today that we didn't face. But basically making it so transitioning players get an easy route to top-10 rewards while vets have to slog through ever harder brackets for increasingly lesser rewards is not the solution.
tobi69 wrote: I enjoy reading this, but i have unanswered questions: 1. Can someone from OPH/X-Men crew, humbly share us how much $$$ spent for HP (in average) to get 2200 for instance? 2. And how many shieldhop needed (in average) to get there?
Brothanoomsy wrote: Phaserhawk wrote: one simple fix is to not allow changes to alliances at certain times. Once a PvP starts I would suggest a 24 hour window to adjust alliance lineups and then you are locked in. Being able to jump back and forth here and there, this has to stop, it's why they don't allow it in any major sport, it's called the trade deadline, you implement this and it instantly stops the manipulation. Then you can start working on sharding and MMR. Thank you for proposing a sensible solution rather than simply bashing others. I don't disagree with the time slot idea, simply the way it was implemented. I think your idea would be acceptable to a larger group of people than many of the others that have been submitted.
Phaserhawk wrote: one simple fix is to not allow changes to alliances at certain times. Once a PvP starts I would suggest a 24 hour window to adjust alliance lineups and then you are locked in. Being able to jump back and forth here and there, this has to stop, it's why they don't allow it in any major sport, it's called the trade deadline, you implement this and it instantly stops the manipulation. Then you can start working on sharding and MMR.
_RiO_ wrote: Statistics published by Demiurge in a thread labeled "'Marvel Puzzle Quest' User Statistics (Platforms & Locales)" indicated that the largest EU countries combined could already be representing a playerbase within 75% of size to the US one. That's without the smaller countries added in and all while EU players are being treated as second rate citizens, which would logically lower both word-of-mouth adoption and player retention. If anything, the EU represents a market with future growth and more potential profit whereas the US market is reaching a point of stagnation and start of decay; saturated with many end-game veterans that would quit the game when the influx of new characters to collect would cease to be. The EU market would actually represent as much, if not greater, business value at this point in time than the US market, I would think.
GothicKratos wrote: I'm actually a little bit confused as to how this is a bad thing, so to speak. Here's why; As far as I can see it, the way things are now, all the big Alliances are going to start picking the same one or two shards, and those shards are going to be the high points ones (also known as "death brackets"). They're going to join these because the Season Rewards are important to Alliances. This leaves the other two or three shards as pretty low ball play, honestly, with most brackets probably topping out at 500 or 600. The argument that these brackets let people get things the other brackets have to "fight hard for" at a much lower investment of effort are slightly incorrect. Let me use a little personal experience/bias here, as anecdotal evidence. I personally, generally, only join into events at the end of them in hopes of falling into a low tier bracket. Where I am, I cannot get past that wonderful wall of 166s, so it's this or net nothing. For me, if I join an event at a normal time, I can hit 400-500 range relatively easily, even though it's a massive time sink, but then I just get knocked down to 200 before the day is out. To further exacerbate the issue, doing this sticks me in brackets with most of the people climbing to 700 to shield, a mark I could only dream of hitting myself, let alone whatever they hop to later down the road. So I'm getting double screwed here, because I lose all my progression and the gap between me and the top practically doubled. I almost always end up with ISO. On the other hand, I can join a bracket late, grind to 300-400 points and snag a single cover if I'm lucky (disclosure: I have gotten two covers twice). You know what really sucks about having to do this though? I don't get barely any ISO income. I work most of the week, so I can't grind Lightning Rounds. PvE is usually a scaling nightmare, so I have to join those late too. Whenever I get a cover, I practically have to pull teeth to actually level it. Now, maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to play an entire event without having to work about being scaled out or there being a huge gap between me and #75. I'm sorry it's apparently harder for you guys at the top, but I have a hard time feeling bad for the guys that have enough spare HP to though thousands of it away to try and prove a point over an in beta game improvement. They cannot stop seasons. They cannot. I would bet my house that's where 99% of their income stems from. Stopping seasons would stop the game.
Spoit wrote: GothicKratos wrote: I'm actually a little bit confused as to how this is a bad thing, so to speak. Here's why; As far as I can see it, the way things are now, all the big Alliances are going to start picking the same one or two shards, and those shards are going to be the high points ones (also known as "death brackets"). They're going to join these because the Season Rewards are important to Alliances. No, that's wrong. And exactly why I really wish people would stop using shard to refer to two different things! There's sharding, which is the gentle nudges that result in death brackets that take 12 hours to fill. And then there are time slices, which people have also been calling shards, which break the MMR into 5, not-equal parts. They interact, since the gentle nudging that was bad before is now exacerbated by the MMR pool of the 1%ers being smaller per slice, but they're completely different things. So I really wish people would stop conflating them. It's entirely possible to have death brackets in the 'off slice', it's just that the point values would be lower
GothicKratos wrote: I'm actually a little bit confused as to how this is a bad thing, so to speak. Here's why; As far as I can see it, the way things are now, all the big Alliances are going to start picking the same one or two shards, and those shards are going to be the high points ones (also known as "death brackets"). They're going to join these because the Season Rewards are important to Alliances.
Brothanoomsy wrote: http://imgur.com/Tjp8cCV Event scorehttp://imgur.com/ed84oAT Death bracket
djsquillz wrote: tobi69 wrote: I enjoy reading this, but i have unanswered questions: 1. Can someone from OPH/X-Men crew, humbly share us how much $$$ spent for HP (in average) to get 2200 for instance? 2. And how many shieldhop needed (in average) to get there? Tobi. I didnt track exactly what i spent, but 1750-2000HP is a fair estimate. That figure includes boosts, health packs, and shields. i scored 2200 points exactly. in terms of how m any hops, its difficult to say. i can tell u that i started my climb from 500 points @ around 4 PM on sunday and i dropped my first shield @ a shade under 1400 points. from there, i did 3 fight shield hops until about 1800 points. i did 2 fight hops maybe until 2000 and from there out, it was 1 fight hops until 2200 points. Once again these are estimates, but its pretty accurate. hope this info helps. marc
GothicKratos wrote: Spoit wrote: GothicKratos wrote: I'm actually a little bit confused as to how this is a bad thing, so to speak. Here's why; As far as I can see it, the way things are now, all the big Alliances are going to start picking the same one or two shards, and those shards are going to be the high points ones (also known as "death brackets"). They're going to join these because the Season Rewards are important to Alliances. No, that's wrong. And exactly why I really wish people would stop using shard to refer to two different things! There's sharding, which is the gentle nudges that result in death brackets that take 12 hours to fill. And then there are time slices, which people have also been calling shards, which break the MMR into 5, not-equal parts. They interact, since the gentle nudging that was bad before is now exacerbated by the MMR pool of the 1%ers being smaller per slice, but they're completely different things. So I really wish people would stop conflating them. It's entirely possible to have death brackets in the 'off slice', it's just that the point values would be lower I am very aware that "sharding" is different than a time 'shard'. "Death Brackets", as far as I was aware, was a phenomenon where a lot of high scoring players were "sharded" into the same brackets, creating a difficult to manage scoring bracket. This is based on the scoring bracket you're placed in which is now based on when and what time slice you choose. Am I wrong with something here? Also, I never said a death bracket couldn't exist in one of the less populated slices, just that the time splicing would create them most often in the ones with the big boys playing in them, and it's extremely unlikely to see a 'real' death bracket in the off-scoring ones, because, as you said, their score thresh hold is going to be far lower.Also, also, should I point out you're using MMR wrong? Because "MMR" stands for "Match Making Rating" and time shards don't split your individual ranking in any ways, shape, or form. That would be mighty fickle of me to fish through an entire post and pick out a single construed error though, huh?
Jamie Madrox wrote: tobi69 wrote: I enjoy reading this, but i have unanswered questions: 1. Can someone from OPH/X-Men crew, humbly share us how much $$$ spent for HP (in average) to get 2200 for instance? 2. And how many shieldhop needed (in average) to get there? I scored 2151 and spent 2725HP doing so. To be fair though, I was also hitting PVE every refresh as well as hopping in PVP so My HP expenditure was a bit higher for health packs. Also, I waited until late to climb so while I had some nice high point targets, I also got hit A LOT on my way up so I had to do more matches to get there.
kidicarus wrote: Although not part of OPH, I knew what was happening and managed to get to 1750 without shielding (I got sniped because I wanted to see how far I could go and eventually shielded at 1650) and this was with joining with 5.5 hours left on shard 4. I eventually got to 1750 and finished 3rd in my bracket but I lost about 125HP on that event because I bought healthpacks. Definitely would not have been able to do it if I chose any other time slice. The point is the whales are willing to spend, but there's also scope for a skilled F2P player to get good scores just because you were lucky enough to choose the right time slice.