Time slot change observations

Unknown

I'm a relatively new player, still working on 2*-3* transition. However I have spent enough to have every 3 and 4* character just not fully covered.

Before the time slot change I would occasionally get an easy bracket PvP and PvE which would enable me with just 2*s and a few cover 3*s to be competitive. I was consistently in top 10 and was top 1 a handful of times. This meant the game was enjoyable and covers came at a decent pace even though I was a new player.

Since the time slot change that world is gone. No matter when I enter a time slot or what time slot I enter, every bracket has a handful of players with 4*s and 3*s fully covered and leveled. In PvE that means I can't compete in the bracket and just hope to get enough points to get into the 1 cover range, 2 if I'm lucky. With PvE in theory it scales to the player, but I have found so far a similar experience with a handful of super active players dominating the brackets.

I imagine the time slots were meant to make it easier for players to have ending times convenient to them. The side effect I'm seeing is it's spreading top tier players around the brackets and making things much harder for new and transitioning players.

My suggestion to fix this is to reduce bracket size, this would increase the chances that a new player gets lucky with an easy bracket.

What are other people seeing??

MojoWild

This is what I usually see. Sometimes I get an "easier" bracket, sometimes it depends when I enter, sometimes it doesn't seem to matter.

FaustianDeal

I think the consensus is that by running 5 different ending times you are basically seeing 5x the number of different brackets being loaded in parallel. With that many more brackets loading at the same time it may be harder to slot into a bracket that doesn't have big names in it.

I know I joined a PVP with a 'non-traditional' end-time with 8 hours left to go in the event. I came to learn that this bracket had been loading for ~20 hours before I got to it, and it was still not full when the event closed for us. As hard as it is to compete with the big players - the incredibly long load times that are possible for a bracket also create imbalances that will be hard for you to overcome.

I don't know how much longer this wisdom will hold, but for the first few weeks I generally found brackets in the 'non-traditional' times to have slightly softer competition for placement, but overall scoring was lower. So if I wanted a better shot at placements I would go for the non-traditional (not time slice 4) events. If the progression award was the one I was gunning for I would slot into the traditional close times (slice 4) - the scores (at least in my experience) tend to be higher, making progressions easier to hit (but be prepared to place poorly in exchange for getting higher in the progression ladder).

I think the 3* prize has something to do with it as well. When they are offering a cover that is not very new then the big players will still congregate in the 4th slice to run up the scores; but if the prize is a newer character they scatter into the other brackets to chase placement prizes as well.

This is anecdotal - but there are a lot of other posters that have had corroborating experiences...

Unknown

firestrand wrote:

I'm a relatively new player, still working on 2*-3* transition. However I have spent enough to have every 3 and 4* character just not fully covered.

Before the time slot change I would occasionally get an easy bracket PvP and PvE which would enable me with just 2*s and a few cover 3*s to be competitive. I was consistently in top 10 and was top 1 a handful of times. This meant the game was enjoyable and covers came at a decent pace even though I was a new player.

Since the time slot change that world is gone. No matter when I enter a time slot or what time slot I enter, every bracket has a handful of players with 4*s and 3*s fully covered and leveled. In PvE that means I can't compete in the bracket and just hope to get enough points to get into the 1 cover range, 2 if I'm lucky. With PvE in theory it scales to the player, but I have found so far a similar experience with a handful of super active players dominating the brackets.

I imagine the time slots were meant to make it easier for players to have ending times convenient to them. The side effect I'm seeing is it's spreading top tier players around the brackets and making things much harder for new and transitioning players.

My suggestion to fix this is to reduce bracket size, this would increase the chances that a new player gets lucky with an easy bracket.

What are other people seeing??

1 if you are new the server will put you to easy bracket.
2 Once you get enough ( the server think) you will be put back to normal bracket and face 166 wall
3 its time to think if you want to keep playing or not. If yes use your best weapon " credit card" . If no please quit

wymtime

With the new time slices you will see higher teams sooner than in the old system since you are only matched up against people in the same time slice. The benifit has been non traditional time slices have had lower scores to win the PVP. This does not mean you are going to earn more, but if you can streach past where you were in the past you might be able to score higher with a lower score. For example I finished top 25 in the Last PVP with a score under 900 points becasue I was in Slice 3. If I was in Slice 4 with the X-men I would have needed to be around 1100 points for a top 25. The slices have not made it easier to win the PVP, but some have had lower scores than before.