changes in pvp brackets?

Unknown

I am not sure if many others have realized but it seems that there was a change in the way people are allocated to a bracket.

Until last pvp, one would go to a given bracket till it's full, then a new bracked would be opened and people starting after would join that bracket.

For this pvp we have people joining with over 12 hours difference, but were in the same bracket. How is that possible? Is there any change here too?

Unknown

When you pick your time slice, you're put into a bracket at that time, even if the event won't start for another day. The scenario you talked about probably has two guy picking their time slice at roughly the same time but one guy didn't play until much later, but that doesn't matter because the bracket is picked as soon as you choose your time slice.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

When you pick your time slice, you're put into a bracket at that time, even if the event won't start for another day. The scenario you talked about probably has two guy picking their time slice at roughly the same time but one guy didn't play until much later, but that doesn't matter because the bracket is picked as soon as you choose your time slice.

We actually had ppl with almost a 24 hour gap in picking time slot get put in the same bracket. It filled very slowly so presumably sharding in full force.....

Raekwen

Phantron wrote:

When you pick your time slice, you're put into a bracket at that time, even if the event won't start for another day. The scenario you talked about probably has two guy picking their time slice at roughly the same time but one guy didn't play until much later, but that doesn't matter because the bracket is picked as soon as you choose your time slice.

Nope, quite a bit worse than that. I didn't choose my time slice until around 5pm yesterday, and got placed into the death bracket with WR, T1WK, etc who all already had over 2k. That bracket had been opened, what, 36 hours prior?

MarvelMan

This is sharting (with a T!) in full force. Its the "gentle" nudge to put people who D3 determines are similar into similar brackets....often resulting in death brackets where the most competitive people are fighting each other tooth and nail for top spots...all for the same rewards as the bracket of day 2 players who cant score over 300 points.

Unknown

If you're talking about sharding, right now I'm trying to pick as early as possible and see if that works. I doubt it, but picking late doesn't seem to help either, so why not try something new?

FaustianDeal

MarvelMan wrote:

This is sharting (with a T!) in full force.

Phantron wrote:

If you're talking about sharding..

Pretty sure he meant 'sharting' (from urban dictionary: a small, unintended defecation that occurs when one relaxes the anal sphincter to fart)

They innocently made a small change to allow one thing to happen, and inadvertently made a big mess in their (our?) pants.

I didn't join a bracket right away, I waited until ~4 hours to go. I clicked 'join', and, before starting my first fight I checked the leaderboard. I was ranked 377, and there were already 3 players with 1200 at the top of my bracket.

To some degree I don't mind running a race against evenly matched opponents... but I don't like giving an evenly matched opponent a 1200 point head start.

Unknown

I just noticed that in Prove Your Worth there is no "Players: XXX" on the screen. Was this always the case? Or are they no longer showing this information so that they can always reserve some room for last minute surprises? Right now I figure I might as well join as early as possible and we'll see if this actually works.

FaustianDeal

Phantron wrote:

I just noticed that in Prove Your Worth there is no "Players: XXX" on the screen. Was this always the case? Or are they no longer showing this information so that they can always reserve some room for last minute surprises? Right now I figure I might as well join as early as possible and we'll see if this actually works.

I think they wait till 'full' or 'close' to post the number. Obscuring the number makes it harder for us to know/guess how many shards they are concurrently loading. And also ruins our attempts to 'table-talk' on the forum and warn each other when to wait 20 more minutes to get a fresh bracket.

Professa D

FaustianDeal wrote:

I didn't join a bracket right away, I waited until ~4 hours to go. I clicked 'join', and, before starting my first fight I checked the leaderboard. I was ranked 377, and there were already 3 players with 1200 at the top of my bracket.

To some degree I don't mind running a race against evenly matched opponents... but I don't like giving an evenly matched opponent a 1200 point head start.

Same exact experience here. I had always waited until the final 8 hours or less to join PvPs and played in a steady spurt with sustainable climbers like Daken and XF attempting to avoid death brackets and in order to make it easier to place t10 or t5. There were a small handful of other vets who seemed to employ the same strategy but never so many that it made it hard to place t10 and sometimes t5 with only one 3hr shield. This new system seems to place even less emphasis on when you join a bracket as it no longer seems like there is any way to get a "fresh" bracket no matter when you join.

Some have hypothesized that this is because there are more "buckets" so they take longer to fill up which would make sense in theory but after reading multiple posts about 36+ hour gaps between joining being placed into the same bracket (and from my personal experience), I am more convinced now that they used the new event end time selection "feature" as a distraction so they could ninja update the bracketing system from "gentle nudge" to "forceful shove".

It's almost like they exponentially multiplied the total number of brackets making them virtually impossible to fill up (I guess the nice way to put it is that sharding is "reserving" them for us ). When I join as player #347 late in the time slice, there are already multiple players with 1,200+. At first you might think, "more brackets = more rewards - yay!" but in reality more brackets just means they have more shards readily available to make sure you are grouped with multiple high scorers (and it really only takes 15-20 vets to make a death bracket) so it really becomes "more brackets = more death brackets"

Almost feels like they are purposefully trying to eliminate metagame strategies (like my old one - R.I.P.) that were winning multiple covers while simultaneously being HP positive or neutral. Oh well, just like Spidey pre-nerf it was fun while it lasted and I'm thankful for the HP and covers I was able to accumulate before the change. Time to find the next meta strat i suppose...

Gonna try joining earlier like Phantron cause joining late no longer has strategic advantages and I don't need Doc Oc covers.

WHY CAN'T THEY JUST SIMPLY STATE THE BRACKETING RULES SO WE CAN EXPLOIT THEM FOR TINY KITTIE'S SAKE?!"

Spoit

Oh so now other people finally acknowledge it happening? I literally posted back during the 2nd time sliced PvP about brackets taking 12+ hours to fill (I heard up to 18)

This was half the discussion at end of the OPH thread, but it kept getting shouted down about how to do otherwise would be unfair to the transitioners and other abloobaloo

Unknown

I think the most telling part about this whole thing is that we have not heard ANYTHING from the Dev team since these changes. People are asking questions...they deserve answers.

D3, why so quiet?

You do know that ignoring something doesn't make it go away right? In many cases, it makes things worse.

But any intelligent...Oh Wait...let me just stop there.

Marc

Unknown

To me this sharding/sharting/tinykittying bracketing is a pretty major issue for transitional & Vet players.

I understand some might say if you have the full roster and score 1300+, you should be bracketed into the same slot with other similar players. I agree but how is it fair the 'A League' players only get the same prize as the 'B league' players? In the real world the more competitive a competition, the better the prize we receive.

I hope a dev or someone from D3 can comment on this issue. I have created a reply on the Q&A thread as below
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=19406&p=259943#p259943

pls give it a thumbs up hopefully the dev team will notice and give a reply to the question.

ProfessorGumby

Not sure if all players selecting a time slice are filling one bracket or multiple, but when I joined Fresh Cut (about 27 hours from the time slice ending), I was the 6th player in that bracket.

An alliance mate joined shortly thereafter as the 8th player in the bracket.

When the event ended, the award tile lists "Player Rank ## of 485", so our bracket did not even fill in 27 hours... or they sand-boxed 15 people from one bracket... I'm joking.

So, just curious. Did anybody else end the second time slice of Fresh Cut in a less than full bracket? Specifically, not the bracket won by davomite with 1378 points?

Cheers!

cg2912

MarvelMan wrote:

This is sharting (with a T!) in full force. Its the "gentle" nudge to put people who D3 determines are similar into similar brackets....often resulting in death brackets where the most competitive people are fighting each other tooth and nail for top spots...all for the same rewards as the bracket of day 2 players who cant score over 300 points.

I wish I knew what I did to get into the bracket that went over 3000. My highest score has been 813...

wymtime

cg2912 wrote:

MarvelMan wrote:

This is sharting (with a T!) in full force. Its the "gentle" nudge to put people who D3 determines are similar into similar brackets....often resulting in death brackets where the most competitive people are fighting each other tooth and nail for top spots...all for the same rewards as the bracket of day 2 players who cant score over 300 points.

I wish I knew what I did to get into the bracket that went over 3000. My highest score has been 813...

Its a conspiracy to keep you from getting Blade covers. It's just another case of the man keeping you down

Xeonic-Ice

Raekwen wrote:

Nope, quite a bit worse than that. I didn't choose my time slice until around 5pm yesterday, and got placed into the death bracket with WR, T1WK, etc who all already had over 2k. That bracket had been opened, what, 36 hours prior?

I managed to get "lucky" enough for that very bracket. I joined with about 15 hours left, looked at the top 10 having 2000+, and then immediately decided top 100 was as high as I'd try for.

I'm glad it's not just me though. I almost threw my phone when I saw that and originally thought I was just speculating about being selected for that particular bracket.

I'm all for competition and getting crazy scores is fine, I just don't like losing before I start. As soon as I joined that bracket, I knew I had no chance.

Unknown

I almost think there's this 'and you think you're clever by joining late!' mechanism going on here.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

I almost think there's this 'and you think you're clever by joining late!' mechanism going on here.

Nope like I said in the 2nd ever time sliced PvP, it reportedly took 18 hours (I can only confirm 12 myself) for the bracket to fill, and this was still comfotably the first day. I forget if it was a pvp that opened in the morning or the evening, but I joined at the first 1 PM PST, and it was still open when I went to sleep at 2AM that night

FaustianDeal

ProfessorGumby wrote:

Not sure if all players selecting a time slice are filling one bracket or multiple, but when I joined Fresh Cut (about 27 hours from the time slice ending), I was the 6th player in that bracket.

An alliance mate joined shortly thereafter as the 8th player in the bracket.

When the event ended, the award tile lists "Player Rank ## of 485", so our bracket did not even fill in 27 hours... or they sand-boxed 15 people from one bracket... I'm joking.

So, just curious. Did anybody else end the second time slice of Fresh Cut in a less than full bracket? Specifically, not the bracket won by davomite with 1378 points?

Cheers!

This is the same bracket I joined. As I mentioned, I joined that bracket with ~4 hours to go in the event and I think I came in as #377. So our bracket/shard never filled. Explains why there were 3 people over 1200 when I joined, they had a full day's head start.

Raekwen

Xeonic-Ice wrote:

Raekwen wrote:

Nope, quite a bit worse than that. I didn't choose my time slice until around 5pm yesterday, and got placed into the death bracket with WR, T1WK, etc who all already had over 2k. That bracket had been opened, what, 36 hours prior?

I managed to get "lucky" enough for that very bracket. I joined with about 15 hours left, looked at the top 10 having 2000+, and then immediately decided top 100 was as high as I'd try for.

I'm glad it's not just me though. I almost threw my phone when I saw that and originally thought I was just speculating about being selected for that particular bracket.

I'm all for competition and getting crazy scores is fine, I just don't like losing before I start. As soon as I joined that bracket, I knew I had no chance.

I tried anyways. Started climbing at 10pm and made it to 12th with a score that would've won 99% of other brackets, but ran out of time. Oh well.