What's going on with the PVP difficulty!?

Unknown

OK so I have a pretty good, powerful roster that includes maxed out xforce, Elektra and invis woman on about 165. I have over 10 maxed out 3* including Cyclops, scarlet witch, mystique, black panther, psylocke, hulk, GSBW etc so its by NO means a shabby line up.

I much prefer playing PVP and used to get up to the 1k mark almost every time but NOW I am struggling to get over 600 without REALLY hammering my health packs and HP to buy more and using almost every member of my line up.

what the hell is going on?
The AI is getting cascades that are so ridiculous I just end up quitting early on because I know there's no way I'm ever going to win and every board seems biased to them. I played against blade and mystique today and the board was FULL of pink and reds when incidentally I needed blacks and greens and blues really. Mystique ended up doing shapeshift about 3 times and each time the tile was in a location impossible for me to reach and the same can be said for blades keep your enemies closer. When I do those abilities however they're usually dispatched off the board 2 turns later.

Surely this cant just be me experiencing this but I am quickly losing patience with it as I just don't enjoy playing when I'm losing 5 matches straight against teams I really should be beating.

Unknown

I think you're on tilt. It'll appear as though the board itself is stacked against you in every single match, just like you said. Push for the climb later after you've taken a break and let your Healthpacks regenerate. When you mind is no longer on tilt, you'll be steamrolling through these teams. Good luck!

kilgarin

I don't think you're crazy. I've played this game for 560+ days I really feel like something is up. The last few PvPs have felt heavily stacked in the AI's favor. Usually I would chalk it up to confirmation bias but it's been much too frequent here recently. Infuriating.

Unknown

Its the SheHulk green grind effect. The devs must be so happy that they've come up with a cover that turns every match into a miserable war of attrition. Green taking the two highest colours away means that matching 3 is the only way forward and with the larger health pools, cheaper iso and multiple boosted covers this makes the match a joyless slog and almost a lottery to win.
It can be mitigated by having a decent passive like Prof X or maybe a maxed Blade. I have neither and the game might have lost me this time. I knew it was going to be bad when this all started a couple of months ago, this pvp showed me how bad.

woopie

Personally, I love to complain about AI cascades, but there always seems to be some 4-5 match cascade (including 1-2 match 5s) per fight. I'd say the split is about 50/50 in terms of whether I get the cascade or the AI gets the cascade, but it's definitely there.

Unknown

Yeah cascades happen, if there wasn't cascades considering how many moves we make in this game in a day that would be a freak. But we should usually get more cascades than the AI because we can match 5 at a right angle but the system finds it impossible.
If we get the cascades we move on quickly and forget about it, if they're done to us its game over and we usually have to wait until our packs refresh. The reason we notice the ones done on us more is that there's more jeopardy involved.

Malcrof

I had 2 level 150ish chars.. and was able to hit 600-700 in a pvp easily in the past 2 seasons.. I finally got a mess more covers, and brought 5 chars to 112 with the iso reduction.. now it appears i am in the top bracket?? Did 10 levels to lesser chars really bump me up so high that 400 points is ridiculously hard?

Yah, something is different this season.

Unknown

I hardly EVER get 5 matches unless im using scarlet witches arcane incantation.

and whilst the comments about us only noticing it more when it happens again us.....WE'RE the players and want to enjoy the game. the AI isn't going to get hugely frustrated and just stop playing are they? lol

I have a maxed blade but whenever I use him it just seems to be a board full of blues and greens.

I also hate the fact that if you're up against a red hood now....if you don't have one urself then ur pretty much ****. I used to get rid of R.Hood quite quickly using xforce's green and it was just about bearable but now he's on the board a lot longer and by the time he's beat the damage is done and he (along with the inevitable enemy cascades) has fuelled the AI team so much there's no way you're coming out of it with decent health to carry over.

It's just ridiculous that after a few moves the AI will have tonnes of AP in every colour and you have like 4 :0/

MarvelMan

MarCr wrote:

Yeah cascades happen, if there wasn't cascades considering how many moves we make in this game in a day that would be a freak. But we should usually get more cascades than the AI because we can match 5 at a right angle but the system finds it impossible.
If we get the cascades we move on quickly and forget about it, if they're done to us its game over and we usually have to wait until our packs refresh. The reason we notice the ones done on us more is that there's more jeopardy involved.

I definitely get more match 5s than the AI (they have to back into them either by not being able to do anything else or a cascade) but they NEVER miss a match 4....which I am totally guilty of due to lack of sleep. Those match 4s seem to lead to cascades, but I bet its about 50/50. The big thing is just matches going longer so there being a better chance the player is distracted and not catching the best move, plus humans are not very good at identifying the best move.

The difference for me is that Im facing moderately high level featured, both for IMHB and SheHulk, plus 240/240. Lots of health to go through, more matches therefore more health lost.

Unknown

and thus less enjoyable having to spend either HP or real money on health packs to keep playing.

I can easily go through all of my best characters in a couple of rounds and then have no choice but to give up and there's a very good chance I haven't won all those rounds too.

Where's the enjoyment in that? there is NOTHING more frustrating than going up against a team you KNOW you should beat but you end up getting killed due to AI cascades (I don't believe for one second that they're 50/50 as AI seems to start cascades regardless of what match they make- 3, 4 or 5). They ALWAYS end up with a load more AP then I do.

Heartburn

i notice i would get about the same amount of cascades as the AI, maybe a slight favor to them. but then again i was shaking the board with xforce while theirs came naturally.

Unknown

X-Force is my most used character but he's been hit by that nerf BIG time. His black is only good if there's a lot of the strongest colour on the board and his green's damaged is almost halved.

god it makes me mad lol

simonsez

bustapup wrote:

what the hell is going on?

My thoughts exactly. This was my morning PvP session: 5 matches, 1 wipe, 6 characters down, 5 health packs used, and a net gain of 88 points. Every match was the same. I fire off pun green or cmag/shehulk red, and the board just sits there. The AI does the same, and it gets a magic cascade leading to a bottomless AP bucket. I fire shehulk green, and I empty yellow and teamups. The AI fires shehulk green, and clears blue EVERY time, along with red or black. The rng was nowhere near r

Unknown

MarCr wrote:

Its the SheHulk green grind effect. The devs must be so happy that they've come up with a cover that turns every match into a miserable war of attrition. Green taking the two highest colours away means that matching 3 is the only way forward and with the larger health pools, cheaper iso and multiple boosted covers this makes the match a joyless slog and almost a lottery to win.
It can be mitigated by having a decent passive like Prof X or maybe a maxed Blade. I have neither and the game might have lost me this time. I knew it was going to be bad when this all started a couple of months ago, this pvp showed me how bad.

Yes! this. OMG that **** furious charge has been infuriating.

Malcrof

ddvrom wrote:

MarCr wrote:

Its the SheHulk green grind effect. The devs must be so happy that they've come up with a cover that turns every match into a miserable war of attrition. Green taking the two highest colours away means that matching 3 is the only way forward and with the larger health pools, cheaper iso and multiple boosted covers this makes the match a joyless slog and almost a lottery to win.
It can be mitigated by having a decent passive like Prof X or maybe a maxed Blade. I have neither and the game might have lost me this time. I knew it was going to be bad when this all started a couple of months ago, this pvp showed me how bad.

Yes! this. OMG that tinykitty furious charge has been infuriating.

Buffed IF against she-hulk blue, not so fun either

Unknown

I was just talking to my alliance about this right now. It's getting ridiculous. Ive never been attacked this much during an event. Barely got to 600 when I usually get to 1k. But its also the fact that I have none of the boosted characters at max level. So gonna see how next week is gonna go.

Unknown

god I know....im sick to death of seeing teams of Shulk, Blade and CMags! arrrrgh!

Vhailorx

PvP is generally more of a slog since the health shift. And she-hulk's new green is definitely annoying to fight. Otherwise, I haven't noticed a particular change in this event, and I certainly wouldn't rely on anecdotal evidence of cascades to guess that the tile odds have been tweaked.

I did get attacked a bit more than "normal" between 500-700 in the imhb event, but I assumed that was because people wanted that 1k imhb red cover.

Unknown

The longer a match goes, the greater the chances that the computer is going to land a super magic cascade. The computer doesn't have to get luckier, it just has to wait. And if your characters are worn down from the longer matches or the AP blasting shenanigans, then your odds of that cascade ending you are higher.

PvP had its difficulty increased substantially through health buffs and amped-up characters. With more durable opponents, you're bound to hit spurts of bad luck that even the AI can't fail to win with. And to increase the fun, you get to lose 2 to 5 matches against other players in the time it takes you to win a couple.

FUN!!!

In an attempt to be constructive: PvP scoring has always favored speed, and relatively low health opponents have always enabled fast play and recovery from unlucky boards or computer-side miracles. Now that this game has had its emergency brake pulled, the entire PvP format probably needs to be re-evaluated. Long, difficult, exhausting matches might make sense and be satisfying if we were doing something other than playing a zero-sum point-accumulation game against everyone else in the world. As it stands, though, that's exactly what we're currently doing.

Unknown

I think they need to switch to a model that removes losses from the equation entirely. Scores might go up a bit, but - given that the average match now requires 1-2 health packs - probably still no higher than they were before this round of changes. You gain points on a win, lose nothing on a loss, either offensive or defensive. That way, they're encouraging actual roster diversity (people buying more roster slots and keeping more characters on hand), making PVP less of a slog, and de-emphasizing quickness as a major part of the meta.

Malcrof

Ben Grimm wrote:

I think they need to switch to a model that removes losses from the equation entirely. Scores might go up a bit, but - given that the average match now requires 1-2 health packs - probably still no higher than they were before this round of changes. You gain points on a win, lose nothing on a loss, either offensive or defensive. That way, they're encouraging actual roster diversity (people buying more roster slots and keeping more characters on hand), making PVP less of a slog, and de-emphasizing quickness as a major part of the meta.

then they lose money on shields, so that won't happen, as much as we would love it to, then some of us could actually get a 4* cover or 2.

I do strongly agree this is how the sim should work though.