Your WORST MPQ moment of the day (REALITY thread)

StevO-J

Playing PVP in the Wiccan event... trying to get to 900 for the 4* cover, but at about 825 I'm only given opponents I can't beat. Used the skip about 20 times but the same 5 opponents are being cycled, so I restart the app hoping that might help... still the same 5 names after skipping ANOTHER 20-30 times. I guess the game is telling me to NOT play, alrighty then...

Working as intended, I presume... 

Dogface

StevO-J said:

Playing PVP in the Wiccan event... trying to get to 900 for the 4* cover, but at about 825 I'm only given opponents I can't beat. Used the skip about 20 times but the same 5 opponents are being cycled, so I restart the app hoping that might help... still the same 5 names after skipping ANOTHER 20-30 times. I guess the game is telling me to NOT play, alrighty then...

Working as intended, I presume... 

This has happened to me once. I also was around 825, lots of skipping, then by chance I found a target, won and was attacked along the way, so I'm no further. This went on and on. I was so fed up, but eventually I ended up with 40 wins and got the 4*.
I only go for the 10 CP now, or 575 for the shards. 

HoundofShadow

What unbeatable teams are you facing? I think it could be helpful to have a thread where 4* players post teams they are having difficulty beating in the current PvPs. But, there doesn't seem to be many 4* players here.

Dogface

In my case it's maybe not about being unbeatable, but not going through the trouble. Gritty Bishop/BRB, or Worthy/HE teams. I also dislike 5* Prof, bc if I'm fighting him I'm more concerned denying match-4's than playing my own game. 

StevO-J

HoundofShadow said:

What unbeatable teams are you facing? I think it could be helpful to have a thread where 4* players post teams they are having difficulty beating in the current PvPs. But, there doesn't seem to be many 4* players here.

Maybe not literally unbeatable teams, but at least in the sense that attacking them will take so much time and effort that even an eventual win will have taken too long and I have been attacked during the match and lost points (as Dogface referenced above) or that it will take so many health packs it isn't sustainable for more than 2-3 matches.

I'm playing with champed 4*s, so make of that what you want. But truth be told, I am no fan of PVP as it stands, and while I could champ a few 5*s I am not willing to put any Iso into them because I fear my PVP experience will be even worse when I do. Now I can join a bracket in the final 8-9 hours and play to about 900 (with 10 health packs), throw up a shield and be done with it. That's fine by me, I don't need more. Most times I get a top 25/50 result, maybe a top10 when the bracket is fresh, but that's fine for the amount of effort it usually takes.

I am not looking to put an unholy amount of effort into PVP to get beaten back down just before getting to a higher prize, I've had that happen way too often already at the 900 mark. I play this game because I want to build out my roster and characters, not to make it feel like a job in an attempt to get higher slightly faster. It's not called a game for nothing, it's supposed to be fun, right? And in the current state of the game that 'fun' seems harder and harder to come by.

I appreciate the gesture, but I can't say I'm looking for ways to beat those stronger teams. I'm ok with the way things are going for me, but I was just disappointed that the game made the decision for me that playing was done. No big deal, just that it happened much sooner than in other events.

Dogface

The easiest way to test if your theory holds up is to skip a PVP. As you say you care less and less, skipping a PVP shouldn't be a problem (or if you must play, join late). With no notifications to 'ruin' your other matches, your other matches should be smooth sailing.

Vhailorx

OJSP said:

<snip>

This past week, I've had at least 5 matches showing these behaviours and throughout the 5 years or so I've been playing, probably hundreds (or even thousands because I didn't notice this behaviour immediately). Whenever I see these behaviours, I could predict with 95% confidence now that I'm being hit. Of course this is anecdotal evidence. Without looking into the codes (which would get us banned and its not something I could do anyway because I'm not a programmer), the best I could do was to ask people who could coordinate their hits to try finding a pattern amongst themselves. But, no one seemed to be interested to try it out yet.

<snip>

So your theory is that when you receive a hit while playing a match (pve or pvp), the game becomes significantly more likely to give cascades to the ai team?  And when this happens your subjective experience is (1) first you experience the in-match cascades issue and then (2) shortly thereafter you receive notice of a hit?

There is definitely lots of server lag with the game's netcode, as any of the myriad wild complaint threads by new pvp players on these forums can attest, but I just don't see an obvious mechanism that would lead server lag to produce a change the tile RNG alogrithm.  Maybe the RNG seed number is taken from a server clock?  so a laggy server can lead to the algorithm using the same seed more than once?  why use a server-side value as a seed number?  would it be an effective anti-cheating measure?  Is that plausible (someone with more coding knowledge than me, please weigh in!).

I would not be surprised if the RNG generator in MPQ does not produce particularly high-quality output over the long term (I don't think video games often bother with the hassle of high-quality generators), but that is the fancy math sense of a set of random numbers have truly random properties.  I don't really know if the difference between high and low quality RNG is meaningful for something like MPQ.  I assume that the major gaming commissions have regulations on the minimum quality requirements for electronic RNG in casinos (how else could digital slot machines ever be taken at face value), but I don't know if governments have yet caught up to the fact that loot packs are basically gambling and carried those regulations over. 

TPF Alexis

Trying to slog my way through the 5Es with a 2/2/2 Gambit. Okoye doesn't boost his red, and taking her red out of play really hurts the team. Similarly, losing Chuck's purple is pretty harsh. I've had some success with Storm, but the team just doesn't have the health to hang on long enough for later clears.

qandols

That node is like playing with one hand bound behind your back. My Gambit is 1/1/1 and I use Gritty and that works quite ok.

TPF Alexis

OJSP said:

TPF Alexis said:

Trying to slog my way through the 5Es with a 2/2/2 Gambit. Okoye doesn't boost his red, and taking her red out of play really hurts the team. Similarly, losing Chuck's purple is pretty harsh. I've had some success with Storm, but the team just doesn't have the health to hang on long enough for later clears.

Would Kitty Valkyrie help?

It might have. But fortunately, now I've moved on to The Savage Land, and the 5E in this one is all goons.

Mr_F

OJSP said:

Climbing comfortably in Scrapper 142 when suddenly the opponent got cascades. It was Gritty against Okoye Thor. Kitty almost got downed in one turn from full health. Lost the match eventually. Got a hit notification.

Playing against WorthyCap team and almost got stunned locked. Took longer than it should to win. Got a hit notification.

Got another 2 examples from earlier today, but I think these 2 were the most convincing as the hit notifications came immediately.

Positive bias it is. Now try to search a situation when ya got bad cascades ect. and loses and there was no hit notification whitin 5 minutes. If you tell me how often this happen, then we talk again. So far, You just came up with hipothesis and show us that everytjing confirms it which is called Positive bias. Try to disprove your statement, and then we talk.

Mr_F

OJSP said:

Mr_F said:

Positive bias it is. Now try to search a situation when ya got bad cascades ect. and loses and there was no hit notification whitin 5 minutes. If you tell me how often this happen, then we talk again. So far, You just came up with hipothesis and show us that everytjing confirms it which is called Positive bias. Try to disprove your statement, and then we talk.

Okay. What if I tell you that happens only 1 out of 100 matches?

Then it would make me to more likely to believe ya. As for me I did not saw same but I am not that much hitted back.

I was reading your statement from some time and just wanted to point out that you should check the opposite too.

It is strange. Not impossible and also possible but if the latter, then it would be not nice. Wish ya luck. Not sure that what is happening or what is causing it (may not be just hitting).

DarthDeVo

Did a hop earlier today. Three matches, all fairly fast, no bad cascades. Still was hit three times on my last match. 

Did another hop later. No bad cascades or any other indication I was being hit (except for an actual notification from the game), but hit I was all the same. 

EDIT: I *did* have some nasty make-you-want-to-throw-your-phone cascades in my closing grind of The Hunt last night. Except I hadn't started any PvP event -- not Scrapper 142, not Identify Theft (still haven't started that), nor Sim (also yet to start). But that didn't stop the cascades from happening. 

sambrookjm

Today's Behemoth Burrito featured Jean Grey as one of the enemy team members, and Main Event Hulk as one of your team members.  As soon as I saw this, I knew exactly what would happen on my first turn.  Sure enough, Hulk's tile destruction triggered a Match-5 before my first turn even started.  BOOM!  Insta-stun.

jp1

sambrookjm said:

Today's Behemoth Burrito featured Jean Grey as one of the enemy team members, and Main Event Hulk as one of your team members.  As soon as I saw this, I knew exactly what would happen on my first turn.  Sure enough, Hulk's tile destruction triggered a Match-5 before my first turn even started.  BOOM!  Insta-stun.

Same. I wonder what percentage of players this happened to. All I could do was laugh.

krakenoon

Spent the whole match waiting for her to stun me and Doom to throw attack tiles or nuke. It never happened & the only thing fired was feral claws, so Strange & Moonstone made it pretty easy.

krakenoon

@OJSP

I wasn’t looking to contradict anyone, I was just super surprised when the only thing the other team threw was feral claws. Now, I will say it didn’t feel like a standard board but more like one of the rare favorable ones (I think it was around 15 moves to finish).

DeNappa

sambrookjm said:

Today's Behemoth Burrito featured Jean Grey as one of the enemy team members, and Main Event Hulk as one of your team members.  As soon as I saw this, I knew exactly what would happen on my first turn.  Sure enough, Hulk's tile destruction triggered a Match-5 before my first turn even started.  BOOM!  Insta-stun.

My Hulk didn't trigger one, but of course the opening board had a match-5. Matched it anyway, it's only DDQ so I can take the hit

AXP_isme

Is it worth recording your matches so that you can go back afterwards and identify a pattern? If it was me I would certainly have an element of confirmation bias coming in to play but then I have been polishing my tin foil hat quite a lot recently. 

bluewolf

OJSP said:

A quick search in youtube got me to one of our old forumite's streams. I know people have different views about raisinbman, but if anyone is interested, he was showing us how he got 1300 at the end of an event (Heavy Metal) there. The match was unremarkable, except at 1:18 when Scarlet Witch's CD went off and created a potential T-shaped yellow match-5 and at 1:34 he made a comment that he "just got hit in Smash Hit, which I though was this event". Edit: forgot to put the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGpUrqDjCoM

How did he know about the hit when he didn't even finish the match? 

The game has notifications you can enable. They will tell you when you get hit. You possibly could get a notification on a second device while playing on another? It looks like maybe he was running an emulator on a PC to play the one match so he could easily have had the notification on a phone.