3 Point fights in PVP

Yanos91

Has anyone else found it ridiculously difficult to find a fight worth over 3 points in pvp's after hitting 1000 points?

I understand that for players higher than you the fight is worth more points and less for lower, and that fights are worth less higher up so 1st place is a close battle, but it doesn't seem balanced at all.

I unshielded for one fight, which took me several hundred iso to find, skipping fights every 10mins or so over a few hours, then shielded again. I then watched attack after attack come up on my screen from people with equal or greater points than me, yet when I go in to queue these players they don't show. Clearly they aren't shielded otherwise they wouldn't be attacking me!

Am I missing something or is it really just that unfair?

I'm sitting at 1106 in Doctors Orders so I'm not expecting a fight worth 40+ points, but at least one fight around 20 points would be nice to find. Even if the lowest each fight was worth was put to 15 points it would be so much better. At least make it more than 3.

Unknown

I agree. Ironically, you were the only one that popped up for me and I had you queued for the past 10 hours so I gambled on fighting you but you were the only one that wasn't three points so better than the alternative. I don't see people either even though I see them climbing in the top 10, can't ever get them to pop up.

Arimis_Thorn

I don't think I've ever been above 600 points in PVP, sooo.....

SnowcaTT

A couple of ours are trying to fight up to 1K and can only find 8 point fights at the most.

LXSandman

You need to use out of game communication to sync your shielding and targeting with others.

At least that's what I hear when you are up that high... I don't participate at that level so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Yanos91

I think you may be right. No player should be expected to use out of game communication in order to score high enough for 1st place, if that is in fact the only way.

Even co-ordinating with your alliance members doesn't always work because you have to be on equal points and not everyone will be.

JamieMadrox

Yanos91 wrote:

Has anyone else found it ridiculously difficult to find a fight worth over 3 points in pvp's after hitting 1000 points?

It's usually about 900 points for me. Once I hit that point it become difficult to queue up anyone below 900 points even if they're in the high 800s and I'm in the low 900s. All I get is matches worth 5 points or less.

Yanos91 wrote:

I unshielded for one fight, which took me several hundred iso to find, skipping fights every 10mins or so over a few hours, then shielded again. I then watched attack after attack come up on my screen from people with equal or greater points than me, yet when I go in to queue these players they don't show. Clearly they aren't shielded otherwise they wouldn't be attacking me!

A few things here:

1. It is entirely possible that they were also shielded, found you when you unshielded, and unshielded themselves to hit you; shielding again when done.
2. Attack notifications can often be delayed for more than enough time for the attacker to do a second, or even third, match and shield again. This would prevent you from finding them.
3. I have a theory that above the 900 points level you can't queue anyone between 400 and 900 points, but anyone below you can find you. A lot of matchmaking is based on MMR, but at a certain point your MMR means little to nothing and your points are how matches are made. I'm pretty sure this point is the 900-1000 range.

Yanos91 wrote:

Am I missing something or is it really just that unfair?

Honestly I think we're all missing something. Information. We don't really know how matchmaking works. That said, if we did we'd game the tinykitty out of it to get an advantage so I'm not totally unhappy about being in the dark.

Yanos91 wrote:

I'm sitting at 1106 in Doctors Orders so I'm not expecting a fight worth 40+ points, but at least one fight around 20 points would be nice to find. Even if the lowest each fight was worth was put to 15 points it would be so much better. At least make it more than 3.

There likely isn't anyone in your slice with enough points to be worth 40 to you. They'd have to be in the 1400+ range for that and scores haven't been hitting those levels much lately.

Yanos91

That's very true about the shielding/delayed notification, you've made some good points there Jamie.

In regards to my score that's pretty high this event, ive found it the same with lower scores too, around 900 like you say. No way I'd expect a fight worth 40 at 1100+, that wouldn't be fair.

I know the argument will be it's the same for everyone, but putting a minimum of around 15 points a fight would save so much ISO and time skipping, it does take some fun away from the game.

Phumade

A fundamental problem is that there aren't enough available targets at the 900+ level.

Everyone at that level is fully shielded and won't show up in matchmaking until they unshield. Yes there are tons of high scoring players but they are fully coordinating shields to minimize their visibility to the random public. They only time they unshield is fight battles that have been previously que'd up. The net effect is that you can only find high point matches by coordinating with other high level players.

What drives this behavior? The fact that losing a single battle to a low ranked opponent can drop 40+ points. The kicker is that the lower ranked opponent often has characters just as strong as your team! There needs to be a new mechanic that allocates points based on the opponent team composition vs their point levels.

If a 166 team wants to take out my 270 team, they should get the same points whether or not they are 400 points ahead of me or behind me.
Maybe a better compromise would be part of the points is composed of team composition and part would come from the difference in score. High level PvP is super boring if you aren't coordinating in a high level battlechat. And I really believe that is a result of not enough point viable targets


Just my thoughts...

Phumade

a couple of things have fundamentally changed from the pre sentry nerf days:

1. high level players and super alliances have become much more coordinated and I would venture that their are very few lone wolf players competing at the 1K level.
1a. You could almost view super alliances as a mini economy. They effectively are only competing amongst their peers and excluded the general population by aggressive shielding. i.e. if your in one of the meta alliances, you only seek out matches against other alliance members who are telling you when to search for matches.

2. Even if they relaxed the MMR algorithm and went back to whatever they were using during the heady days of 2K scores, I don't think the present scores would rise very much because, shielding and communication tactics are much more refined than the days of sentry bombs.

Unknown

Phumade wrote:

fundamental problem is that there aren't enough available targets at the 900+ level.
...
What drives this behavior? The fact that losing a single battle to a low ranked opponent can drop 40+ points. The kicker is that the lower ranked opponent often has characters just as strong as your team! There needs to be a new mechanic that allocates points based on the opponent team composition vs their point levels.

If they did that people would game the **** out of it, putting up someone like Elektra/Xavier before shielding, and letting alliance mates easily beat them with 166s, gaining more points.

Phumade wrote:

a couple of things have fundamentally changed from the pre sentry nerf days:

1. high level players and super alliances have become much more coordinated and I would venture that their are very few lone wolf players competing at the 1K level.
1a. You could almost view super alliances as a mini economy. They effectively are only competing amongst their peers and excluded the general population by aggressive shielding. i.e. if your in one of the meta alliances, you only seek out matches against other alliance members who are telling you when to search for matches.

2. Even if they relaxed the MMR algorithm and went back to whatever they were using during the heady days of 2K scores, I don't think the present scores would rise very much because, shielding and communication tactics are much more refined than the days of sentry bombs.

There's 2 other things that have really affected scores:
3. Shield cooldowns. All points are driven down by less PVP play, and less shield manipulation injecting points into the economy.
4. Deadpool's Daily Quest. Fewer people, particularly 2-3* transitioners are putting time into PVP.

Previously, for a 3* team, the equilibrium was probably around 1000; now it's around 600
For a 2* team, the equilibrium was around 600, now it's around 300.

Nellobee

The real issue here is that everyone above a certain level spends all but a few minutes shielded in many hours.

Which means no one can target them. I would suggest this could be resolved with either a longer shared cool down for shields, or by allowing you to be targeted while shielded (you just wouldn't lose points if hit while shielded).

Phillipes

Yanos91 wrote:

Has anyone else found it ridiculously difficult to find a fight worth over 3 points in pvp's after hitting 1000 points?

I understand that for players higher than you the fight is worth more points and less for lower, and that fights are worth less higher up so 1st place is a close battle, but it doesn't seem balanced at all.

I unshielded for one fight, which took me several hundred iso to find, skipping fights every 10mins or so over a few hours, then shielded again. I then watched attack after attack come up on my screen from people with equal or greater points than me, yet when I go in to queue these players they don't show. Clearly they aren't shielded otherwise they wouldn't be attacking me!

Am I missing something or is it really just that unfair?

I'm sitting at 1106 in Doctors Orders so I'm not expecting a fight worth 40+ points, but at least one fight around 20 points would be nice to find. Even if the lowest each fight was worth was put to 15 points it would be so much better. At least make it more than 3.

If this only would be true (3 points matches AFTER 1000 points.)
There are time slices where you don´t even have 900 points and there are only 3 pointers there. I needed to be shielded, loging into game every once in a while, skip several people only to find out there are still only 3 pointers out there.

Wonko33

While shielded check a few matches every 15-20 minutes until you find a good points one, don't waste ISO doing 10-15 skips, you'll just be seeing the same ones over and over.

if they are in a top alliance check every few minutes after and you'll see some other good matches from his alliance mates. They seem to line up their alliance mates while they are hopping then hit them a few minutes later after they re-shield

Line up 3 good ones, wait 15-20 minutes, hit them and re-shield. Good alliances members don't stay unshielded long so they won't be able to retaliate because the loses will be on their shield. It won't create any animosity because you are not sniping them while they are unshielded.

Good luck