The Waiting

Unknown

I've only been playing for a month. I really enjoy the game. I like the choices with building characters, building teams. I like the tactical aspect of the battles and tile-matching.

It seems that the game has turned into an awful lot of waiting, though:
--waiting for the right time to join a bracket in a tourney;
--waiting to make a push in a tourney so I won't have to spend a fortune in shields;
--waiting for a shield to run out to play more in a tourney;
--waiting for the right time to join a bracket in a PvE sub-event;
--waiting for the missions to reset in a PvE sub-event;
--and so on, and so on, and so on.

I've got a slow afternoon here in the office. I had one short conference call since lunch. I would love to be sitting here playing this game that I enjoy, but I can't:
--I'm afraid to unshield too early in Divine Champions, lest I get whacked;
--I'm afraid to join Army of One too early, lest I get a tough bracket;
--I'm afraid to start grinding Army of One too early, lest it cost too much in shields to defend my position; and
--I'm afraid to grind one-point missions in Family Reunion, lest it drive the level of the enemies north of 200 for every single mission.

Doesn't strike me as good design. I mean, the devs want us to *play*, don't they?

Thoughts?

Unknown

Waiting is if you want to min/max and be competitive. Everyone else just plays and is happy with what they get.

Unknown

wathombe wrote:

I've only been playing for a month. I really enjoy the game. I like the choices with building characters, building teams. I like the tactical aspect of the battles and tile-matching.

It seems that the game has turned into an awful lot of waiting, though:
--waiting for the right time to join a bracket in a tourney;
--waiting to make a push in a tourney so I won't have to spend a fortune in shields;
--waiting for a shield to run out to play more in a tourney;
--waiting for the right time to join a bracket in a PvE sub-event;
--waiting for the missions to reset in a PvE sub-event;
--and so on, and so on, and so on.

I've got a slow afternoon here in the office. I had one short conference call since lunch. I would love to be sitting here playing this game that I enjoy, but I can't:
--I'm afraid to unshield too early in Divine Champions, lest I get whacked;
--I'm afraid to join Army of One too early, lest I get a tough bracket;
--I'm afraid to start grinding Army of One too early, lest it cost too much in shields to defend my position; and
--I'm afraid to grind one-point missions in Family Reunion, lest it drive the level of the enemies north of 200 for every single mission.

Doesn't strike me as good design. I mean, the devs want us to *play*, don't they?

Thoughts?

No, silly. They want us to "pay".

But seriously, this is an interesting little experiment they've got going. I think it can work with a little bit of fine tuning. This tournament seems really geared towards already having mid to high level characters that are buffed. It's a little disappointing. You wouldn't sub out a level 85 Ares for a level 15 Classic Spider-Man. Spider-Man's boost doesn't make him as strong or as durable as your maxed out Ares.

About the brackets thing though: Unless you have a strong enough team to make a push for top 5, it shouldn't really matter which particular bracket you're in. Statistically speaking, you should place where your roster ought to place.

Unknown

Stillhart wrote:

Waiting is if you want to min/max and be competitive. Everyone else just plays and is happy with what they get.

In many respects, I agree with that. Not in the case of the current PvE event, though. Each mission you complete drives up the level of all the missions (reportedly; I stopped when I got each down to one point). Whether you want to min/max or not, that's not enjoyable, when the more you play, the less you are able to participate. I suppose it's better than the mission starting out of reach in the first place, but at least in The Hunt and Hulk there were missions available at every difficulty level. I could grind away at the lvl 30 or 50 or 90 missions all I wanted there. With Thieves, once I've played for a little while, I can no longer beat the missions.

GundamRangerX wrote:

You wouldn't sub out a level 85 Ares for a level 15 Classic Spider-Man. Spider-Man's boost doesn't make him as strong or as durable as your maxed out Ares.

Yeah, this is the problem, for me at least. I could probably swing the 230 mission if I could use my full roster. I'm not locked out, because I do have *one* GSBW cover, but swapping my 85 OBW out for a 15 GSBW is fatal.

Unknown

wathombe wrote:

Stillhart wrote:

Waiting is if you want to min/max and be competitive. Everyone else just plays and is happy with what they get.

In many respects, I agree with that. Not in the case of the current PvE event, though. Each mission you complete drives up the level of all the missions (reportedly; I stopped when I got each down to one point). Whether you want to min/max or not, that's not enjoyable, when the more you play, the less you are able to participate. I suppose it's better than the mission starting out of reach in the first place, but at least in The Hunt and Hulk there were missions available at every difficulty level. I could grind away at the lvl 30 or 50 or 90 missions all I wanted there. With Thieves, once I've played for a little while, I can no longer beat the missions.

The trick to this one is to start with the hardest missions and work your way back. They're basically all the same difficulty if you do it that way.

Unknown

I don't wait and I routinely finish at the top of tournaments.

Unknown

Stillhart wrote:

The trick to this one is to start with the hardest missions and work your way back. They're basically all the same difficulty if you do it that way.

Yup, I got that part, but reportedly, if you keep grinding the 1-point missions, all nine missions rise to 200+. That's ridiculous, especially since we don't know if they will come back down on the reset, if there is one. That's what I'm saying. I'd love to keep *playing* this event, but I'm disincentivized from doing so.

Unknown

You sound like an incredibly fearful person.
Advice = man up!

Unknown

wathombe wrote:

Stillhart wrote:

The trick to this one is to start with the hardest missions and work your way back. They're basically all the same difficulty if you do it that way.

Yup, I got that part, but reportedly, if you keep grinding the 1-point missions, all nine missions rise to 200+. That's ridiculous, especially since we don't know if they will come back down on the reset, if there is one. That's what I'm saying. I'd love to keep *playing* this event, but I'm disincentivized from doing so.

Oh. Yeah, I like that they're disincentivizing grinding, but I think they're doing it wrong. They should just turn them off after two rounds and turn off rubberbanding.

This way seems like a good idea until you realize that people with uber teams can still grind out the points...

Unknown

Because you're not the only person who is trying to wait, there's usually no significant advantage to trying to time the system. For that matter, you don't really even know if the first 500 people in a bracket is necessarily all the strongest players. What if all the strongest players figured the same thing and just waited?

About the only thing you can say for timing is that the later you join, the more volatile your bracket will be. Early brackets tend to be pretty obvious who's going to win by the end, while a new bracket is not, but volatile also means you can finish nowhere close to the top as well.

Unknown

Stillhart wrote:

wathombe wrote:

Stillhart wrote:

The trick to this one is to start with the hardest missions and work your way back. They're basically all the same difficulty if you do it that way.

Yup, I got that part, but reportedly, if you keep grinding the 1-point missions, all nine missions rise to 200+. That's ridiculous, especially since we don't know if they will come back down on the reset, if there is one. That's what I'm saying. I'd love to keep *playing* this event, but I'm disincentivized from doing so.

Oh. Yeah, I like that they're disincentivizing grinding, but I think they're doing it wrong. They should just turn them off after two rounds and turn off rubberbanding.

This way seems like a good idea until you realize that people with uber teams can still grind out the points...

Frankly though, if someone is willing to sit there for hours grinding dozens of matches for one point then power to them, that ain't for me.

Also, whatever the system, you will always finish behind someone of that mentality anyway.

Unknown

Psykopathic28 wrote:

You sound like an incredibly fearful person.
Advice = man up!

Yeah, yeah, I knew that was coming. If I'd been playing since launch and had a bunch of 85 2**s and 141 3***s, I could man up.

Stillhart wrote:

This way seems like a good idea until you realize that people with uber teams can still grind out the points...

Exactly. I'm getting one-pointed to death in my main bracket, a steady freefall from #6 to #21 and counting.

Phantron wrote:

Because you're not the only person who is trying to wait, there's usually no significant advantage to trying to time the system. For that matter, you don't really even know if the first 500 people in a bracket is necessarily all the strongest players. What if all the strongest players figured the same thing and just waited?

Eh, since I saw the tip here on the forum maybe a week or more ago about waiting for an easier bracket, I've done much, much better in both PvP and PvE events. Maybe it's just that I finally got a few characters above 60 or got better at the game, but it seems like I've been chasing lower scores.

Unknown

What I did wrong in the sub event is I cleared the missions until I got all the rewards out of them... starting from the bottom up. I didn't notice until it was way too late that the missions were getting progressively harder and harder. Now none of them, apart from the first one, are manageable.

Unknown

About the only case where waiting applies is if you're trying to avoid a guy like TheReck who is indeed very likely to be in the very first PvE bracket (PvP is far less certain). But TheReck is in my PvE overall bracket and he's not #1 right now, or even top 10 right now (it's currently someone I've never heard of), so that goes to show just how effective such strategy turn out to be.

Unknown

Psykopathic28 wrote:

You sound like an incredibly fearful person.
Advice = man up!

You can't really say anything waiting to join the latest main bracket possible.

Unknown

Waiting only helps #11-50 placement from my experience. Top 10 is more or less the same regardless.

PvE, those numbers need to be adjusted due to bigger bracket, but you can certainly grind more with no stress about being attacked, so waiting should be less of an issue.

NorthernPolarity

Yeah, you're probably good as long as you don't jump in right away, so you can avoid the insanely hardcore such as thereck.

Unknown

wathombe wrote:

Stillhart wrote:

This way seems like a good idea until you realize that people with uber teams can still grind out the points...

Exactly. I'm getting one-pointed to death in my main bracket, a steady freefall from #6 to #21 and counting.

My question is this: What is wrong with those people willing to grind 1-pointers to death getting the lead? Even if the reason they can do it is because they have better teams. I see a lot of this sentiment, and I don't understand. Why shouldn't a strong team provide you with an advantage? If all the events in the game was winnable #1 with just mid-level 2*s, why would you bother getting higher? And in this case, it's a rather small advantage for a lot of effort, doing matches for 1 point at really high levels. Extra points that will easily be reduced in value by rubberbanding later. Will it cost you the top slots of the subbracket? Maybe. But honestly, they earned the top slots. They could do that 1 point grinding for 7 hours straight, and still get beaten by a player who just does his refreshes. So, those players are dilgently doing their refreshes, AND putting in that extra grinding effort. They are going the extra mile, and should get the small advantage they are working for. And as long as they are diligent, that extra small edge is enough.