How do groupings for PvP Tournaments work?

Unknown

Currently I'm participating in the Divine Champions tournament. And i'm wondering how groupings work. I understand that there are several different groupings of people all participating in the tournament. This is the first tournament i've ever been really serious about being a part of. My heroes are a lvl 85 Thor, a lvl 40 C.Storm and lvl 43 Ares. This is the first tourney i've ever done really well in. I've worked hard and for a while i was in first place. And right now i'm in 2nd. i am 500 points above the next person. The person in first place is named "Common". He has a lvl 85 Ares, 100 ragnarok and 100 C.magneto. And i'm wondering how the tournament groupings work. i don't think this guy should be in our grouping. every time i get anywhere past him he 1-ups me and gets 200 more points than me. and i definitely cannot beat him nor do i think anyone else in my grouping can. This was the first real shot i had at an X-Force wolvy, and i was really excited about it. then this guy just wipes the floor with me and everyone else. It's super frustrating when i'm dumping iso and hero points and sometimes money into this game to have some guy i cannot even kind of touch steal first like that. I just needed to share my frustration. So i'd like to know how groupings work. because i've run across people that have almost double the amount of points in the tournament but they aren't on the leaderboard. Thank you in advance.

ZekimusPrime

Unknown

Time of entry.

Also, you are using a team of 2-stars while he has 3-stars. I think he needs the 4-star more than you. 3-star cards should be good enough of a prize for you.

Nemek

ZekimusPrime wrote:

Currently I'm participating in the Divine Champions tournament. And i'm wondering how groupings work. I understand that there are several different groupings of people all participating in the tournament. This is the first tournament i've ever been really serious about being a part of. My heroes are a lvl 85 Thor, a lvl 40 C.Storm and lvl 43 Ares. This is the first tourney i've ever done really well in. I've worked hard and for a while i was in first place. And right now i'm in 2nd. i am 500 points above the next person. The person in first place is named "Common". He has a lvl 85 Ares, 100 ragnarok and 100 C.magneto. And i'm wondering how the tournament groupings work. i don't think this guy should be in our grouping. every time i get anywhere past him he 1-ups me and gets 200 more points than me. and i definitely cannot beat him nor do i think anyone else in my grouping can. This was the first real shot i had at an X-Force wolvy, and i was really excited about it. then this guy just wipes the floor with me and everyone else. It's super frustrating when i'm dumping iso and hero points and sometimes money into this game to have some guy i cannot even kind of touch steal first like that. I just needed to share my frustration. So i'd like to know how groupings work. because i've run across people that have almost double the amount of points in the tournament but they aren't on the leaderboard. Thank you in advance.

ZekimusPrime

If Common is in your bracket, I wouldn't waste too many resources trying to out-do him. He's pretty good and generally determined to break 2400.

The brackets are just based on when you joined the tournament.

It also wouldn't really be fair if all of the high-level players were to be grouped together, either.

Unknown

The overall bracket is simply determined on a first come first serve basis. The first 500 guys that play will be placed in the same bracket.

In general the matchmaking system means there is not an imsurmountable advantage given to the guy with the more powerful characters (see all the threads by people with powerful characters that have problem hitting 500). However, right now it is possible for people to totally break away from the pack with a combination of high playing time + shields. It seems like toward the end of R&R round 2 they put in extremely harsh checks to prevent this behavior, and then relaxed it again by the time Divine Champions come around. I suspect this is because the guys who broke away probably spent a lot of HP too. In practice this means if you're spending a lot of HP or you're grouped with someone who spends a lot of HP, you've a relatively smooth ride too. Otherwise, it's almost impossible to break away from teh pack.

Unknown

How is it fair that Common, apparently a well known player, can just come in and take away the opportunity some of us have. It isn't. There should be brackets where people of equal team rating are put together. How is it fair that he can steam roll every single person and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Not even in the slightest. It's not right that i worked as hard as i could in the very first PvP tournament only to have some guy 10x better than me shove me to the ground and take what i worked hard for. Only because he has heroes that are basically 4x stronger than mine.

Unknown

ZekimusPrime wrote:

How is it fair that Common, apparently a well known player, can just come in and take away the opportunity some of us have. It isn't. There should be brackets where people of equal team rating are put together. How is it fair that he can steam roll every single person and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Not even in the slightest. It's not right that i worked as hard as i could in the very first PvP tournament only to have some guy 10x better than me shove me to the ground and take what i worked hard for. Only because he has heroes that are basically 4x stronger than mine.

You're acting really whiny here. That's the system. Take it or leave it. Just be glad that he's probably not in your MMR and able to steal points directly from you.

Unknown

ZekimusPrime wrote:

How is it fair that Common, apparently a well known player, can just come in and take away the opportunity some of us have. It isn't. There should be brackets where people of equal team rating are put together. How is it fair that he can steam roll every single person and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Not even in the slightest. It's not right that i worked as hard as i could in the very first PvP tournament only to have some guy 10x better than me shove me to the ground and take what i worked hard for. Only because he has heroes that are basically 4x stronger than mine.

The strength of the heroes is fairly irrelevent. What matters is who you're currently matched up against. It is basically impossible to break away if all the guys you're matched up aren't paying for shields. Either Common is paying for shields or he's got someone paying for shields in his matchup list, possibly both.

Right now not only does shielding offer a huge advantage, it also confers a similar advantage to anyone lucky enough to be matched with those guys. I suspect this will be changed, but it'd take time to figure out how to tweak this correctly.

Unknown

Of course people can do something about it, but it requires time and resources. You talk about hard work, yet you didn't even consider the amount Common has invested in this game. Go take a look at the ISO thread to get an idea of how much people invested.

Truth is, investing in 4-stars is prolly not the optimal path of progress for you at this point. You should be content with winning 3-stars.

MarvelMan

ZekimusPrime wrote:

How is it fair that Common, apparently a well known player, can just come in and take away the opportunity some of us have. It isn't. There should be brackets where people of equal team rating are put together. How is it fair that he can steam roll every single person and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Not even in the slightest. It's not right that i worked as hard as i could in the very first PvP tournament only to have some guy 10x better than me shove me to the ground and take what i worked hard for. Only because he has heroes that are basically 4x stronger than mine.

Would you consider it fair if his team is 4x better but he is fighting people 10x better and is only getting ahead because he is putting in more time/effort?

Nemek

ZekimusPrime wrote:

How is it fair that Common, apparently a well known player, can just come in and take away the opportunity some of us have. It isn't. There should be brackets where people of equal team rating are put together. How is it fair that he can steam roll every single person and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Not even in the slightest. It's not right that i worked as hard as i could in the very first PvP tournament only to have some guy 10x better than me shove me to the ground and take what i worked hard for. Only because he has heroes that are basically 4x stronger than mine.

Because Common has worked 100x harder/longer than you have over the course of the game. At most, he'll take one spot. Shoot for top 5 and get some great covers and start building your own 3* team.

If the top 500 players were really all put in the same bracket, that means the 500th best player in the game will be getting a 250 ISO reward for the tournament. That's certainly more unfair than whatever you're going through.

Unknown

The range of the shielded bracket is ultra non-competitive, but first you got to go through an ultra competitive bracket to get there, unless you started out with a very lucky matchup draw (most of your opponents are shielded or not playing).

Even if you could play 10 times as much/as fast as other people, if you're regularly matched with say 9 opponents, all it'd take is about 3 of those guys seeing you to completely undo your ludricious playing time, since you'd likely be worth 30-40 range to them while you'd be getting considerably less than that on most of your games.

Right now there's a pretty serious problem in that it is almost impossible to escape from this matchup of doom and anyone who is lucky enough to escape it has a smooth ride to the top, and there's almost no skill involved. As long as your opponents aren't shielded but active, you're not escaping them.

Unknown

I dunno, I think a sort of platinum tourney would be cool. Like some sort of high rollers table. Maxed 3-stars allowed only with crazy good prizes. Not as a regular thing though, just a rare special event.

Unknown

85 Thor, 85 Ares, 85 C.Storm is one of the most frequent teams in this tournament, and it'd roll his as well as yours in a couple of minutes without boosts. You could grind some ISO out of LRs (join early, beat on seed teams) and do something about your Ares' level if you want a better shot in round 2. This is one of the more generous sets of buffs to 2* players I've seen, though inevitably anyone who doesn't have <whatever> maxed is still complaining.

You're talking about bracket, which you may or may not understand is separate from match-making rank (usually referred to hereabouts as MMR). If you can fight common's team and you're using a half-leveled Ares, your MMR is probably higher than it should be, but if you're doing well in this tournament that's probably why - the devs have said per-tournament rank is being given much greater weight than it used to be when selecting opponent pools. Constant boosting (you said you've been spending money on this) is a good way to get yourself matched constantly against more expensive teams than yours. You can try tanking some other events (like LRs) to rectify it if you want. MMR is basically a hidden number determined by undisclosed means that represents the score the game thinks you should have, and it'll do anything it can to prevent you getting higher unless you're throwing large amounts of cash its way [/tinfoil hat].

As for how brackets are "fair", they aren't, particularly, nor meant to be. High-end players are expected to be fighting for and taking first in their bracket, because 4*s and LR villains are the rare awards put out there to keep them interested when they're running out of other things to fight for. Your best chance at placing better is to get a slacker bracket where 1k or so will ensure top 5, which basically means doing your first fight a while after registration opens either while everyone's asleep or while something important to the high-end competitors is running in parallel (like a Magneto Lightning Round). Doesn't work reliably, though, since it takes only one other player in 1,000 with more aggression/free time/HP to blow than you having the same idea and you're not getting within sniffing distance of first. It isn't exactly supposed to be fair - the developers want your rating to be more a reflection of your roster than it's tended to be up to the last days of Thorverine spam before the Great Nerfing of 2014 is complete.

Sorry, rambly. Hope some of that makes sense. Personally, I can come to an accommodation with the game's quirks and instability to date and its borderline hilarious pay to win trappings and enjoy it, anyway, but if you can't, you'd probably be best finding something else to play. Puzzle Quest is pretty good. So's Gyromancer, but only if you like the slower pace of Bejeweled Twist.

ihearthawthats wrote:

I dunno, I think a sort of platinum tourney would be cool. Like some sort of high rollers table. Maxed 3-stars allowed only with crazy good prizes. Not as a regular thing though, just a rare special event.

They've done 3* only a couple of times, I think. It's a good idea. Wish they'd run 1* again, although realistically that's little more than the "buy more cover slots!" tournament theme. All 1*s besides Storm and maaaaybe Widow for a little while are garbage, because their level cap **** them. Juggernaut's one of the stronger characters in the game, and his playable version is still worthless.

Unknown

Right now you can basically think of the guy in front being chased by zombies that are just as fast as you, and the zombies speed up when they can see you. Invariably we see that the people who can be seen by the zombies eventually gets shredded to pieces simply by looking at the recounting of the horror stories of the board. Now, how do the guys at the top stay ahead? They're not faster than the zombies, but they sneaked ahead while the zombies are asleep so that the zombies can't see them anymore. I know since around the 2nd R&R I'm no longer able to see guys who are way ahead of me (and have yet to see anyone in the mid 1000s period, even though they're definitely out there). A rating of 2000 would literally evaporate in under an hour if those guys are still able to be seen by others significantly lower than they are, as was the case when the matchmaking change first went in.

Now I understand they did this because otherwise no one would ever spend money on shields only to see you lose 1000 rating in the 30 minutes you forgot to shield, but the current placements is contrary to the goal stated by D3.

Unknown

I've been at #2, at 1221 points since 7am. I put up the weakest team I could manage (level 6 OBW, Level 10 Magneto, Level 15 thor). I'm disappointed I'm not seeing more people getting points from me.

My progression to 935 was accomplished by attacking everyone without skipping. My progression to 1221 was accomplished by skipping. I didn't have time. I wanted people to be able to retailiate and get some easy points.

Unknown

Thank you Veracity. That does make a lot of sense. As does that common has also spent more time than me in the game. I just got pretty frustrated that the first tournament I really wanted to get serious about I couldn't keep up with someone better. But it just means there is room for improvement. I guess the next step is to build a 3* team.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

I've been at #2, at 1221 points since 7am. I put up the weakest team I could manage (level 6 OBW, Level 10 Magneto, Level 15 thor). I'm disappointed I'm not seeing more people getting points from me.

My progression to 935 was accomplished by attacking everyone without skipping. My progression to 1221 was accomplished by skipping. I didn't have time. I wanted people to be able to retailiate and get some easy points.

It's pretty clear people who are ahead are simply not able to be seen in general since there's obviously no way anyone would pass up a free kill like that.

I think they need to reduce the rating needed for the higher progression ratings, and reduce the rewards if it looks too easy. Right now, the only way you can even contemplate hitting the 2400 reward requires people not seeing you, but having people who just run away from main pack has been stated as definitely not intended. But if you can't run away from the main pack, nobody would ever hit these top rewards either.

Unknown

Bugpop wrote:

I've been at #2, at 1221 points since 7am. I put up the weakest team I could manage (level 6 OBW, Level 10 Magneto, Level 15 thor). I'm disappointed I'm not seeing more people getting points from me.

My progression to 935 was accomplished by attacking everyone without skipping. My progression to 1221 was accomplished by skipping. I didn't have time. I wanted people to be able to retailiate and get some easy points.

I hit you a few times on my way up this round...thanks a million! Love running into generous tankers on my way up the ranks. If devs are going to discourage tanking they should make an effort to match people up within their own brackets. People might be less likely to want to give up all those points to people they're directly in competition with. I guess that would limit the players you see in matchmaking even more though, so maybe that would be more damaging than its worth.

Unknown

Crazyeyeskiller wrote:

Bugpop wrote:

I've been at #2, at 1221 points since 7am. I put up the weakest team I could manage (level 6 OBW, Level 10 Magneto, Level 15 thor). I'm disappointed I'm not seeing more people getting points from me.

My progression to 935 was accomplished by attacking everyone without skipping. My progression to 1221 was accomplished by skipping. I didn't have time. I wanted people to be able to retailiate and get some easy points.

I hit you a few times on my way up this round...thanks a million! Love running into generous tankers on my way up the ranks. If devs are going to discourage tanking they should make an effort to match people up within their own brackets. People might be less likely to want to give up all those points to people they're directly in competition with. I guess that would limit the players you see in matchmaking even more though, so maybe that would be more damaging than its worth.

I think they already do that. At least, the last R&R I was in, 4 of the guys I regularly matched up with was in top 10 of my bracket. Could be a freak coincidence, but I've never seen anything like this before.

Unknown

Just keep grinding. Eventually you'll get placed in a squishy bracket without an alpha dog waiting to piss in your cheerios.

If you see Brady28, just focus on progression rewards and top 5 finish... you aint gettin first.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I think they already do that. At least, the last R&R I was in, 4 of the guys I regularly matched up with was in top 10 of my bracket. Could be a freak coincidence, but I've never seen anything like this before.

Probably just coincidence. I've only seen once a guy from my bracket showing up as target.