PVP with XForce

MarvelMan

esoxnepa wrote:

Raekwen wrote:

Sure, we'll go battle it out for the good rewards, and you can be in a shard with other transitioners for much lesser rewards. Sound fair?

Actually, yes. I think there should be an "Advanced" bracket. It should offer better prizes than 3* covers, so that those with completed 3* rosters are tempted enough to leave the lower brackets to those who need the 3* covers. So the the "Advanced" bracket should offer more chances at 4*s and and some wildcard 3* tokens, or something else tempting.

Then those that need the 3* cover can slug it out for that, and those of you who do not, have something more rewarding to you to battle over.

Personally, I would love to see the brackets split into transition and advanced (not sure it will work, as the match making has already gone to trash with the 5 time zones). Make the rewards for the Transition have 3x 3* for the top 2, 2x 3* for the rest of the T10 and 1x3* down to T50. For Advanced, do T2 as a 2x 4*, then T10 as 1x 4* followed by just HP/ISO. Remove the cover from alliance rewards (at least til it becomes more evident how the split bracket will change things) and boost the ISO reward to compensate. Then D3 can set the progression rewards (tokens, HP, ISO) as they want based on targeted goals.

Splitting it that way means that those who have the Featured covered will move to the Advanced, as there is nothing of interest in the Transition and the ISO/HP are more sought after plus they can get a 4* (or two). That leaves those trying to finish off their Featured to choose, and gives opportunity for those transitioning to actually make headway.

GrumpySmurf1002

Afrocigar wrote:

Not true. Again, I just don't see why I'm thrown in with guys that have fully covered 4*'s

Reality is that max 4*s aren't all that much better than your maxed 3* guys, and definitely not out of the range of beatability. I sense you're being intimidated by the number 270 and thinking there's no hope, when that's not true. This isn't nearly the same wall that 2*s running into 3*s is.

I have zero maxed characters (Thor/Sentry at 144 are my biggest, but do have 173 full covered XForce). I climbed to 800 this afternoon, I saw exactly zero 270-270 teams, and only a couple of 270 XForces, which I'm sure I could beat with my underleveled Panther/Daken if for some reason I wanted to.

It's possible (probable?) my MMR is just better, so if you're literally running into a wall of 270-270 teams and can't skip around them, then you probably just need to fight them, take a beating (do this early in an event so you can recoup later), and lower your MMR where you don't have to worry about it. Although if you do fight them, you might be surprised at how easy it actually is to get through them.

OnesOwnGrief

Afrocigar wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'm more baffled at the fact a person can be at day 405 and not be able to hit higher than 600-700.

I'm now at 406. Well that's the truth, maybe I'm just not as good as you, but that's where I am. I believe I'm around 754 on the current PVP and shielded. Most likely that's where I'm going to stay because the teams I will face are all 270's.

Again, how is that a valid competition. Really what I want to know is if that's the way the game is intended to be played. Is it designed for me to hit a plateau until I develop a covered 4*?

Believe me, it has nothing to do with actually being good, just playing smart and having the money to invest if you go that route. Any team mostly can beat any team when you add boost. If I were to compare you to myself, that wouldn't even be fair. I can join a PvP with 6 hours from the end and easily reach 1100 with no shields and whatever health packs I get from the timers with no All AP boost. Still reach top 10, and call it a win since that's all the investment I need for a PvP.

I don't know about most of the people in this particular thread but I can assure you that while I'm climbing, most of the attacks I receive are from people lower than me attacking. Precisely the same thing I'm doing to those above me. Nobody is gonna going want to squabble over 25 or lower points for a hit unless they have to. They are trying to hit that next guy for 30-50 trying to hit that next progression reward or jump into that next placement range. Levels matter little in the grand scheme of things either. Once your 3* hits around 130, you SHOULD be attacking 166 teams because 6800 on Daken,Patch,Punisher, etc, is nothing to even worry about. Deadpool may cause you a problem but the guy can't even kill unless he matches you to death or hit you with whales. Higher health characters are slower as well. The only thing that got me out the 600-700 range was confidence to hit higher teams and realizing that they aren't even that scary. Even an X-Force that hasn't even hit 200 yet should be hit without impunity. Hell, my personal best of 1700+ was done without a 166 back in October during a Captain Marvel PvP.

GrumpySmurf1002

MarvelMan wrote:

Personally, I would love to see the brackets split into transition and advanced (not sure it will work, as the match making has already gone to trash with the 5 time zones). Make the rewards for the Transition have 3x 3* for the top 2, 2x 3* for the rest of the T10 and 1x3* down to T50. For Advanced, do T2 as a 2x 4*, then T10 as 1x 4* followed by just HP/ISO. Remove the cover from alliance rewards (at least til it becomes more evident how the split bracket will change things) and boost the ISO reward to compensate. Then D3 can set the progression rewards (tokens, HP, ISO) as they want based on targeted goals.

Splitting it that way means that those who have the Featured covered will move to the Advanced, as there is nothing of interest in the Transition and the ISO/HP are more sought after plus they can get a 4* (or two). That leaves those trying to finish off their Featured to choose, and gives opportunity for those transitioning to actually make headway.

For a tier system to work, you'd have to have a reward system like the Grocket event (Thorina for the top X, 3* for the rest of the top 100), else you run into problems.

If you have a CMags event running concurrent with a 4Thor, I'm going to want to enter the CMags event, despite being cover maxed on a bunch of 3*s, as I only have 8 of his covers. I'm pretty darn sure the Ares-OBW teams that want those covers don't want to compete with my roster, or anyone else comparable. On the flipside, I'd pretty darn upset if I was now denied competing for any future 3* covers because I have a cover maxed Thor/Hood team I can use.

MarvelMan

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

For a tier system to work, you'd have to have a reward system like the Grocket event (Thorina for the top X, 3* for the rest of the top 100), else you run into problems.

If you have a CMags event running concurrent with a 4Thor, I'm going to want to enter the CMags event, despite being cover maxed on a bunch of 3*s, as I only have 8 of his covers. I'm pretty darn sure the Ares-OBW teams that want those covers don't want to compete with my roster, or anyone else comparable. On the flipside, I'd pretty darn upset if I was now denied competing for any future 3* covers because I have a cover maxed Thor/Hood team I can use.

Due to the holidays (ongoing) I couldnt play PVE like I wanted to and missed out on Thoress, but I really liked the way the rewards were. It just makes sense: put things at tiers where the people scoring there will find them useful.

I would run two versions of the same event, so there wouldnt be a Cmags during Thoress. If they have the same featured, choosing which to play would be based on risk/reward. So if the reward is enough better (even just a could hundred ISO would be enough) for a player they will pick the way you want. The difficulty would be setting rewards so that someone who could win the Transition event would place well enough to get the extra 200 or so ISO, while having a shot at the bigger rewards. It would take some analysis, but based on the stats they put out towards the end of October I know they have it.

Rusalka

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'm more baffled at the fact a person can be at day 405 and not be able to hit higher than 600-700.

Same here. I'm on day 311, and I think I'm about as far as you can get from being a competetive player. I've never hit 1100 in PVP, let alone 1300, because, well, I'm too lazy. I also didn't get a fully-covered Sentry until after the nerf, so Sentry-bombing was never a big part of my gameplay. And yet, I have a fairly solid roster of 166 characters, and can score around 900 regularly, which is enough for top 50 or even top 25 in most PVPs. Right now I'm at #3 in my bracket with 1045, which I got with Psylocke, Hulk and Hood. Barring cascades of doom, you can beat most X-force teams with that combo whe Psylocke is powered up. With other featured characters, I can usually find other combos that work.

I think a lot of mid-tier players become too fixated on having That One Shiny Team That Can Beat everything instead of learning to work with what they have. I also think a lot of players say "I can't advance" when what they really mean is "I can't satisfy my competetive streak." You can advance without putting up the super-high scores.

Unknown

Afrocigar wrote:

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I'm more baffled at the fact a person can be at day 405 and not be able to hit higher than 600-700.

I'm now at 406. Well that's the truth, maybe I'm just not as good as you, but that's where I am. I believe I'm around 754 on the current PVP and shielded. Most likely that's where I'm going to stay because the teams I will face are all 270's.

Again, how is that a valid competition. Really what I want to know is if that's the way the game is intended to be played. Is it designed for me to hit a plateau until I develop a covered 4*?

My highest characters are 126 and I routinely take down 270 XForce. I would not advise taking on a 270 XForce/ 270 Fury combo, but with any other pairing I have had a high (75% at least) success rate. Biggest issue that I see is that you are already shielded for the duration when there 6 to 24 hours to go. You have time to hop a bit and climb another 100 points or more.

rednailz

rooter wrote:

Eddiemon wrote:

Wow fair went out the window didn't it. What you actually want is it to be rigged so the people who have progressed and developed their rosters need to fight over a very small pool of rewards while the 'casuals' who probably aren't paying much, if anything, get the same pool of rewards.

The issue is, that at this point, you pretty much need X-Force to score 1300 points to get X-Force covers. Do you see the problem with that?

The reward system needs major work. The people at the top are getting the best rewards and just deleting them. The people just below them get nothing of value.

Um...no problem with that at all. If getting 1300 pts was a breeze that transition 2* players could get then we'd all be running maxed xforces.

Do you get mad in an RPG or MMO when you can't get dungeon loot gear from a lvl 50 dungeon when you are level 20?

AxeVirtuoso

I fully agree with OP. I'm a transitioning player with only one maxed 3 , LCaptain. In PVP I get two star teams until around 700 and then, from one match to the other, whoosshh, almost only 270 XForces and maxed 166s.

Where's the logic in that? Shouldn't I be able to get a fair fight with other transitioners until 900 or so? I'm ok with the top players fighting for top spots, but there needs to be a larger part of the cake for transitioners, which now surely represent a HUGE part of the player base, given how scare covers are and given the flood of new characters.

D3 needs to rework on the bracketing/matchmaking. The "wall" is just frustrating. Never seen that in any other game. At that point it feels like throwing stones at machine guns...

Lidolas

AxeVirtuoso wrote:

Where's the logic in that? Shouldn't I be able to get a fair fight with other transitioners until 900 or so?

Why. What makes 900 special? What's wrong with getting to 700? Do you have any idea the % of players who have maxed teams they run? I don't. At a certain point, 500,700,900, you will run out of transition players. Where that number lies depends more on the number of players with similar rosters than on your desire to score higher.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

If his PVP MMR is not good, he fixes it. Mid-transition teams have little chance to score higher. The OP has maxed BP, Patch, and UDaken.

How ? Tanking ? Don't tell me that's the solution to fix MMR...

Tanking is the worst thing in the game.

HailMary

arktos1971 wrote:

HailMary wrote:

If his PVP MMR is not good, he fixes it. Mid-transition teams have little chance to score higher. The OP has maxed BP, Patch, and UDaken.

How ? Tanking ? Don't tell me that's the solution to fix MMR...

Tanking is the worst thing in the game.

It's a way to make his own MMR better. I don't pretend to propose improvements to the MMR system. But, I also don't pretend that arbitrary philosophical niggles with various optimization techniques somehow invalidates those techniques.

Tanking is the worst thing in the game? My bad, I thought it was the PVE grind. Wait, no, it's crazy PVE scaling. Wait, no, it's the high monetary cost of Iso. Wait, no, it's evil devs and their sock puppets. Wait, no, it's the addictions of some. Wait, no, it's the lack of high-end roster diversity. Wait, no, it's that other thing.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

arktos1971 wrote:

HailMary wrote:

If his PVP MMR is not good, he fixes it. Mid-transition teams have little chance to score higher. The OP has maxed BP, Patch, and UDaken.

How ? Tanking ? Don't tell me that's the solution to fix MMR...

Tanking is the worst thing in the game.

It's a way to make his own MMR better. I don't pretend to propose improvements to the MMR system. But, I also don't pretend that arbitrary philosophical niggles with various optimization techniques somehow invalidates those techniques.

Tanking is the worst thing in the game? My bad, I thought it was the PVE grind. Wait, no, it's crazy PVE scaling. Wait, no, it's the high monetary cost of Iso. Wait, no, it's evil devs and their sock puppets. Wait, no, it's the addictions of some. Wait, no, it's the lack of high-end roster diversity. Wait, no, it's that other thing.

I'm addicted to you HM. I'm waiting for your response to my trolling posts.

OnesOwnGrief

I am still in the camp of not believing that tanking actually works. I just don't bother with it.

Unknown

After whatever the last round of MMR change was I don't think tanking matters as much. I'm pretty sure I spend way less on shields/HP boosts (sometimes not at all) compared to all the guys who are ahead of me and I don't think I've a right to expect to finish better than those who outspent me by a considerable amount. Now I'd like the game to not be decided largely on how much you spent but that's probably not happening anytime soon.

Unknown

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

I am still in the camp of not believing that tanking actually works. I just don't bother with it.

Agreed. I found that when I tanked, the 166 wall remained the same, but instead of being able to climb to it with reasonable point values, everybody was lvl40s worth 15 points or less. I would rather fight for 30+ points even if it is against 94s and 100s.

Unknown

To be fair.. I now have all covers for xforce, but I've been playing since the beginning. It took a long time to earn as even though I do support the game from time to time, I would never spend 22 dollars for 1 cover lol.

Even when Xforce wasn't maxed, I was still able to reach top 25 every tournament with grey suit widow and purple boosters. It wasnt the most effective way, but it worked. I had to sacrifice earning iso for covers, but whats the point of iso if you dont have the covers you want?

My xforce is still only level 208. I prefer mine to be a little weaker.

Lloyd Christmas

My interpretation of the OP is that he/she thinks the players should be put in "weight classes" for lack of a better term not unlike boxing matches. Where I can see the appeal from a transitioning players perspective I believe we have already seen negative effects from sharding into time slots and those would increase exponentially if we are then whittled down into even smaller groups.

In regards to the PvP "wall" it is not an insurmountable thing, you just need to prioritize your resources. The problem isn't so much beating the teams that outclass yours, the real issue is keeping those points because you can be sure the retaliations are headed your way because you are a much easier target. Therefore it takes a lot of resources for a transitioning roster to swim with the whales.

GrumpySmurf1002

It's anecdotal evidence, but among my nodes at the end of Fresh Cut was a 1250score opponent with a 140 Psylocke (boosted to 140 that is), 140ish Patch and 153 Hulk.

I've also seen GSBW/Spidey, Colossus/OBW (?#%!) and other random combos above 1000. It really doesn't take that much, even with XForce-XForce everywhere.

Also, special thanks to all of you running 3/3/1 and 4/2/2 lvl 140ish-XForces out there. Keep up the good work!