Thick as Thieves, bracketing and rubberbanding rules?

Unknown

Okay, I have a few questions I need to ask.

Is there bracketing in the main missions and submissions?

Is rubberbanding the same effect as the previous The Hunt?

Are there repeatable missions with stacks that recover every 8 hr?

Is The Meeting bracketed? If not, should we do it as soon as we can?

Unknown

Looks like the main bracket is 2000 people.

Unknown

It's too hard to tell this early, but for the first set of sub missions, the optimal strategy is play as often as you possibly could and save your last playing before the sub bracket ends. This is because nobody has enough points for rubberband to become a signficant factor on the main bracket, so no matter what scoring rules are used, the guy who plays the most overall (factoring in defeating hard encounters as playing significantly more) wins. There's no way to know whether the main bracket rubberbands the sub brackets until the first set is over because we don't have enough points on the main bracket to draw any conclusion yet, but right now it also doesn't matter which rubberbanding rules are in effect.

KidInsomnia

Phantron wrote:

It's too hard to tell this early, but for the first set of sub missions, the optimal strategy is play as often as you possibly could and save your last playing before the sub bracket ends. This is because nobody has enough points for rubberband to become a signficant factor on the main bracket, so no matter what scoring rules are used, the guy who plays the most overall (factoring in defeating hard encounters as playing significantly more) wins. There's no way to know whether the main bracket rubberbands the sub brackets until the first set is over because we don't have enough points on the main bracket to draw any conclusion yet, but right now it also doesn't matter which rubberbanding rules are in effect.

That said, doesn't starting right away put you at a bit of a disadvantage overall because you might be in a more challenging main bracket? Going for a better result in the first Sub at the expense of possibly an easier overall Event experience seems like bad trade off.

I could be wrong though, I'm pretty sturdily a middle tier player.

Unknown

KidInsomnia wrote:

Phantron wrote:

It's too hard to tell this early, but for the first set of sub missions, the optimal strategy is play as often as you possibly could and save your last playing before the sub bracket ends. This is because nobody has enough points for rubberband to become a signficant factor on the main bracket, so no matter what scoring rules are used, the guy who plays the most overall (factoring in defeating hard encounters as playing significantly more) wins. There's no way to know whether the main bracket rubberbands the sub brackets until the first set is over because we don't have enough points on the main bracket to draw any conclusion yet, but right now it also doesn't matter which rubberbanding rules are in effect.

That said, doesn't starting right away put you at a bit of a disadvantage overall because you might be in a more challenging main bracket? Going for a better result in the first Sub at the expense of possibly an easier overall Event experience seems like bad trade off.

I could be wrong though, I'm pretty sturdily a middle tier player.

Getting to the top rank of the main bracket involved grinding 24/7 for the last The Hunt. If you feel like doing then, go ahead.

Unknown

KidInsomnia wrote:

Phantron wrote:

It's too hard to tell this early, but for the first set of sub missions, the optimal strategy is play as often as you possibly could and save your last playing before the sub bracket ends. This is because nobody has enough points for rubberband to become a signficant factor on the main bracket, so no matter what scoring rules are used, the guy who plays the most overall (factoring in defeating hard encounters as playing significantly more) wins. There's no way to know whether the main bracket rubberbands the sub brackets until the first set is over because we don't have enough points on the main bracket to draw any conclusion yet, but right now it also doesn't matter which rubberbanding rules are in effect.

That said, doesn't starting right away put you at a bit of a disadvantage overall because you might be in a more challenging main bracket? Going for a better result in the first Sub at the expense of possibly an easier overall Event experience seems like bad trade off.

I could be wrong though, I'm pretty sturdily a middle tier player.

Well I'm already in the bracket with TheReck like a lot of other victims, but yeah, that'd be a smart thing to do.

Unknown

I'm so so so tempted to start this during my lunch break. But then I realized if I wait until I get home from work, I can get placed into a far easier bracket, and likely score some top rewards. Or even better yet - wait until rewards reset, then start, so I'll be starting off missing the first round of point rewards along with everyone else I get bracketed with.

Unknown

Can someone please explain what rubberbanding is?

Unknown

Thereck just hit me 3x in devine champs so he must have already chewed thru the thick as thieves subbracket

Starfury

Stillhart wrote:

Can someone please explain what rubberbanding is?

One of the few stupid hidden mechanics in this game that make people deliberately refrain from playing before the right time or deliberately lose pvp matches (-> tanking, if you've met that term)

Rubberbanding means that you get more points for doing PVE missions if you're behind in the rankings - which is absolutely idiotic if a PVE event has non-repeatable missions.

Unknown

Starfury wrote:

Stillhart wrote:

Can someone please explain what rubberbanding is?

One of the few stupid hidden mechanics in this game that make people deliberately refrain from playing before the right time or deliberately lose pvp matches (-> tanking, if you've met that term)

Rubberbanding means that you get more points for doing PVE missions if you're behind in the rankings - which is absolutely idiotic if a PVE event has non-repeatable missions.

Thanks! I've noticed that mechanic, but never heard the term applied like that. I took advantage of it in the Ares and Hulk events to get solid top 50 every sub event. (If I actually had more time in my life, I'd be able to be competitive!)

What's the "stacks that reset every 8 hours"?

Unknown

Stillhart wrote:

What's the "stacks that reset every 8 hours"?

You can usually play a mission multiple times until it is only worth 1 point. The stacks start to reset means that the missions in these tournaments point value start resetting and increasing again...usually after 8 hours it has been seen.

Unknown

Roya PQ wrote:

Stillhart wrote:

What's the "stacks that reset every 8 hours"?

You can usually play a mission multiple times until it is only worth 1 point. The stacks start to reset means that the missions in these tournaments point value start resetting and increasing again...usually after 8 hours it has been seen.

Oh wow, that's something I never noticed.

I'm guessing taking advantage of rubberbanding is more profitable than taking advantage of the resetting stacks unless you can reliably beat the lvl 240 missions, correct?

Unknown

Right now it looks like all missions in sub bracket can be done twice before they go down to 1.

Thus far the optimal strategy is simply do every mission twice, starting with the most point mission to the least point mission since you want to delay the overall level increasing mechanism as much as you can, and then wait for reset. If they don't reset for whatever reason, just keep grinding the easiest 1 point mission until you collapse. That said I have the final mission at level 203 now after doing everything twice (and I did the final mission 3 times, because it didn't update the points so I thought it was still worth 25).

Unknown

That's an interesting observation Phantron. I'll have to try that after they hopefully reset.

Unknown

My guess is that they set it up this way so that there will still be rubberbanding, but since you can only do missions twice before they go down to 1, you really can't expect to catch up to someone who has been consistently grinding them every reset, and you'd at least have to attempt to do all the missions (which will increase in difficulty pretty quickly). Before, you can sometimes get away with say grinding the 'easy' mission 5 times and let rubberbanding take care of the rest. I don't see how that'd be possible when every mission so far goes down to 1 after 2 completion. The easy missions are only worth 5 points. Even with the maximum rubberband modifier, that means you can only get 50X2 = 100 points from them before they go down to 1, which ensures there's no possible way you can overcome someone who is ahead by simply doing the easy stuff.

Unknown

Okay so let me see if I'm getting this right:

1 - Rubberbanding makes point totals go up as you fall behind.
2 - Point totals go down as you repeat quests.
2a - Difficulty is going up as you repeat quests too, for this event.
3 - Every 8 hours, the max point totals reset so you can repeat again.
3a - We assume difficulty will reset as well?


Given these things, it seems like you'd want to play every 7.5th hour to max out your points? Is that 8 hours on an absolute timer or is it relative to when you play your first match?

How do we know when the rubberbanding multiplier is maxed out? I can usually tell when I'm ranked 998 out of 1000.

We don't know yet that the current event will reset at 8 hours since point #2 is working differently. We also don't know that difficulty will reset.

I'm guessing the best strategy right now is to wait 7 hours, play it out as Phantom suggested (highest difficulty first), then hope for a reset?

Nemek

It's too early to say much of anything yet. We don't even know for sure if there is rubber banding or what bracket it's based off. I'd go with pretty standard strategy of playing as soon as you can and then making sure you have missions available an hour before it ends.

Unknown

Is anyone able to tell me if the repeatable stacks recover every 8hrs?

Unknown

So far the multiplier maxes at 10x so if you see very nice round numbers on everything (like 500, 1000, 100) you're maxed out and should start doing them ASAP.

With the exception of The Hulk event, the rubberband player has never allowed anyone to pass someone up while playing one less (or more) total rounds of missions. The Hulk event's rubberbanding is on the overall bracket, not the sub-bracket, so it's actually possible to pass someone up in a sub-bracket if you're sufficiently behind in the overall bracket. Right now, it's impossible to tell which rules is used by this but there isn't enough points in the main bracket (which is basically your points in sub-bracket) for this scenario to pop up. Therefore so far the guy who played more overall, factoring in the quality of the missions, will win the first sub-bracket.

Copps

All my missions with villains recovered there points the pure mafia ones didn't. Although I was grinding some of the Maggie ones.