Your WORST MPQ moment of the day (REALITY thread)

Anon

Pulled another Blue cover for Ronan. He's now 3/3/9.

Akoni

Monkeyfoo said:

HoundofShadow said:

Show us your roster and opponents you are facing and we'll see how to help you and then move you from this thread to Best MPQ Moment of the day.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KTdhQMDyek2HPNqw8
Hopefully this works to view the roster and some matchups. 
I posted some vids and am going to upload a few more on  youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5kF3GLlFEjyjzEA-9L-FNQ 

Your roster looks good. Better than mine in many regards. Your 5* have more covers than mine, you have more of them than I do, and the 4* you do have champed are pretty decent. From what you provided I see two things:

1. You might be suffering from the big-fish-taken-from-a-small-pond-and-thrown-into-a-lake scenario. The same happened to me not too long ago. Once my player level hit a certain number, I was thrust into pools against stronger opponents. Remember that a shield clearance level has a range (i.e. 85 to 350). I made up those numbers, but you get the idea. If your level in the top right corner of the home screen (on most mobile devices) goes up, you will be given stronger opponents even if you select the same SCL on every event. PvP operates differently. Nonetheless, as you play and level up you will find yourself dropping from the front to the back of the pack and working your way back up. This continues to happen as long as there is a bigger pack to move up to based on your level in the game.
2. Your gameplay could use a little touching up. Focusing on your match against Polaris/Sabretooth/ALoki, I noticed that you targeted Sabretooth first. Depending on your team and play style, this can be a good strategy, but Beast's blue power was not producing enough strike tiles for Sabretooth to match. Meanwhile, Polaris was nicking away at your health every single turn. I would argue that based on your play, Polaris should have been targeted over Sabretooth. In addition, you chose not to prioritize blue matches and special tile matches, both of which are desirable to the enemy Polaris since a single firing of her blue power can create a cascade of events that can end the match.

In your case, I don't think there is anything unfair going on. What you're experiencing is just the ebbs and flows of the game. What I would call misplays could be chalked up to your lack of experience with certain characters of which you do not have. I say keep playing. You'll find yourself doing well again when your roster catches up in this bigger pool.

DAZ0273

Monkeyfoo said:

DAZ0273 said:

entrailbucket said:

What I hear constantly is that if a player rosters their first 5* character and/or levels their first 5* character, PvP immediately becomes impossible due to matchmaking.  How does this impossibility manifest itself?  What does this wall of super-difficult fights actually look like? 

It's obviously not lvl550 opponents.  Are these "impossible" fights against other lvl270 5*?

Before boosted 5* I was running pretty strong characters out there at lvl500-520 and frequently taking retals or hits from full 4* teams.  Those fights were winnable for them, so I'd like to find out what an impossible PvP fight looks like in relation to one's current roster.

As you will see above I thought this poster was legit. To find out they are a 5 year Vet makes me conclude this is a wind up.

I am not sure what you mean by wind up. Just want to be clear that I am not trying to be deceptive. Up until recently I  was doing OK. win some lose some,  but now that everyone just has Polaris/Rocket/Betaray/medusa it is problematic for me.



I am thinking I am going to see about deleting some 5*, or just doing PVE mainly until I can get some more covers. I see some tips on going against polaris etc, but don't have the characters. 

OK cool, then please accept my apologies for misreading the situation.

Timemachinego

Monkeyfoo said:

HoundofShadow said:

Show us your roster and opponents you are facing and we'll see how to help you and then move you from this thread to Best MPQ Moment of the day.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/KTdhQMDyek2HPNqw8
Hopefully this works to view the roster and some matchups. 
I posted some vids and am going to upload a few more on  youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5kF3GLlFEjyjzEA-9L-FNQ 

Not intending to be too mean here, but those are lovely match-ups! I'd happily take some of them on and my roster is a lot smaller than yours! I think you've overleveled your 5s for how good you are at this game... you're playing with veteran sized characters but not the game-sense required at that point.

There absolutely should be some warnings in game because in the case of PVP bigger isn't always better, whereas in PVE it's just pure advantage. Would it be a horrible thing for the MMR tiers to be said outright? I think most players involved with the community in some way are either told or eventually figure out these ranges for themselves...It's also needlessly punishing to a specific sort of player (say one who just wants a HUGE Cable) to be in the same over-all bucket, especially given boost rotations.

In closing, our MMR model sucks and needs help

HoundofShadow

Actually, his mmr looks fine to me. His top 5 levels are 375, 345 x 3, 330, so his average is about 350. However, the game is still showing him level 27x-29x 4* instead of 340-360 4* characters. 5* opponents wise, even if he didn't level his 5* and keep it at 255, the game will still throw him level 300++ 5* opponents. 

Based on the above, the game either ignore those 5* up till a certain leve or they have two mmr based on level of 5* and the tier they are in. If you noticed, those 5* and 4* opponents levels shown are similar to his 5* and 4* characters levels. I remember the magical number for not triggering champed 5* opponents are 360. I've never been through that stage before so I have no idea how true that is.

Timemachinego

HoundofShadow said:

Actually, his mmr looks fine to me. His top 5 levels are 375, 345 x 3, 330, so his average is about 350. However, the game is still showing him level 27x-29x 4* instead of 340-360 4* characters. 5* opponents wise, even if he didn't level his 5* and keep it at 255, the game will still throw him level 300++ 5* opponents. 

Based on the above, the game either ignore those 5* up till a certain leve or they have two mmr based on level of 5* and the tier they are in. If you noticed, those 5* and 4* opponents levels shown are similar to his 5* and 4* characters levels. I remember the magical number for not triggering champed 5* opponents are 360. I've never been through that stage before so I have no idea how true that is.

I'd have to look again but I'm pretty sure the high 4s were boosted this week, there was an outlier somewhere in there but I think given the teamed character they just had an oddly huge specific boosted 4? As I said, those are CHOICE matchups, the player just outleveled their ability to play the game well, which I think is a sort of design problem. I see enough complaints that there should probably be a warning for breaking 255 and the same for 360.

entrailbucket

They can't tell us how matchmaking works because that's not how matchmaking works!

Remember, the game can't make up fights for you, it can only show you other players' teams that actually exist.  The algorithm does the best it can with what it has available, but "what it has available" is entirely dependent on which other players are in your end time, unshielded, and around your point level.

This is why my first advice to players having matchmaking issues is to do something different.  Either choose a different end time or play at a different time than you usually do.  The change can be night and day.

HoundofShadow

Boost are not factored into mmr, so shield sim is a good way to check mmr without those boosted levels confusing players.

Timemachinego

entrailbucket said:

They can't tell us how matchmaking works because that's not how matchmaking works!

Remember, the game can't make up fights for you, it can only show you other players' teams that actually exist.  The algorithm does the best it can with what it has available, but "what it has available" is entirely dependent on which other players are in your end time, unshielded, and around your point level.

This is why my first advice to players having matchmaking issues is to do something different.  Either choose a different end time or play at a different time than you usually do.  The change can be night and day.

But it's not just fairy dust and math and acting like there's some kind of magical mystery to it just makes it harder for new players to know what to do, which is the exact opposite of what a declining game like this should. There are HARD limits at 270 and 360 which decide your matchups, surely lower than that as well... 99% of the people posting here are aware of that and probably know more nuance about it than I do; the fact you have to crawl through a thread like this to have it stated is only good for people that profit from hidden knowledge and overall bad for the game, imo.

entrailbucket

There are not hard limits, and it's not a mystery.  The algorithm itself is easy to understand, the problem is that the algorithm has to give you matches that exist.

If the algorithm called for you to fight opponents between levels 300-350 and there were none of those available, the game doesn't just throw up its hands and say "try again later," it has to give you *something*. 

I have lvl550 matchmaking, but the game can't just show me lvl550 opponents.  There aren't enough of them, and frequently there are none available at all.


Try playing either right at the very beginning or right at the end of an event and see how different it is.

Timemachinego

entrailbucket said:

There are not hard limits, and it's not a mystery.  The algorithm itself is easy to understand, the problem is that the algorithm has to give you matches that exist.

If the algorithm called for you to fight opponents between levels 300-350 and there were none of those available, the game doesn't just throw up its hands and say "try again later," it has to give you *something*. 

I have lvl550 matchmaking, but the game can't just show me lvl550 opponents.  There aren't enough of them, and frequently there are none available at all.


Try playing either right at the very beginning or right at the end of an event and see how different it is.

I never see none, but I do often see just a couple, and it'll let me cycle through them forever until someone new enters the pool... given how little of PVP actually happens in game in most brackets, I'm still in favor of "the algorithm" just making matches up when the bracket gets thin, fwiw.

There are absolutely limits though, I guess calling them hard was a misstep on my part because they're only in place sub-800 (and admittedly I have no idea what happens 1300+), but that's probably what most people see and should be explained.

I have and do play in both of those scenarios; I think you're assuming a lot about the present state of the game given your overlook whereas I was a new player 18 months ago and have at least a recent purview of the state of things and how they work currently. You're out of touch with the new player experience and that's where most of our commentary needs to go unless we just want to ride this into the ground.

entrailbucket

800 is not a magic number, it depends on which slice you're in and what else is available at any given time.  I've had events where that number was 400 and events where it was 1000 and everything in between.  You can roughly sort of figure out where it'll be depending on the point values of your first few queues and what you see after your first few matches.

HoundofShadow

Actually, if you dig through the dinosaur threads for the first 2-3 years of MPQ, the dev did tell players how mmr roughly works when they made changes.  I read those threads and MMR didn't change a lot. They even gave the calculation about the point differences between yoouur oppoenents.

However, what's true is that they didn't release the exact mmr algorithm, which makes sense. We need to remember that there are players who use these information to game the system, and the dev have tried to reduce the impact of some of these "manipulations". If we live in a world where everyone behave morally and altrustically, the dev might give more information. Unfortunately, we don't live in such world..

Timemachinego

That's news to me! Thank you!

I'm generally in 2 & 5 and they seem pretty stable but that could definitely explain some of my better climbs, I'll pay more attention to my early match-ups to try and get a sense for it!

It's things like that though, where someone like me who feels pretty confident in their tier of play and get results confirming that confidence... and then finds out extra nuances of, we could at least communicate SOME of this with players in a way that doesn't have them screwing up their match-ups or requiring them to read a big-ole forum or reddit primer on, right?

(and all the credit to the writers of said documents, definitely made my experience better and I am constantly grateful and sending people to them!)

If you're a 10 minutes a day, 10 cents a month game you can totally just leave stuff up in the air because no one is taking that very seriously, but by the very fact that a relative newbie at 1.5 years is talking to a super-vet, this game is way more than that and it strikes me odd that the in-game presentation of all these important subtleties is SO lacking.

entrailbucket

Timemachinego said:

That's news to me! Thank you!

I'm generally in 2 & 5 and they seem pretty stable but that could definitely explain some of my better climbs, I'll pay more attention to my early match-ups to try and get a sense for it!

It's things like that though, where someone like me who feels pretty confident in their tier of play and get results confirming that confidence... and then finds out extra nuances of, we could at least communicate SOME of this with players in a way that doesn't have them screwing up their match-ups or requiring them to read a big-ole forum or reddit primer on, right?

(and all the credit to the writers of said documents, definitely made my experience better and I am constantly grateful and sending people to them!)

If you're a 10 minutes a day, 10 cents a month game you can totally just leave stuff up in the air because no one is taking that very seriously, but by the very fact that a relative newbie at 1.5 years is talking to a super-vet, this game is way more than that and it strikes me odd that the in-game presentation of all these important subtleties is SO lacking.

2 and 5 are the absolute worst slices you could choose, no wonder you've been having trouble! 

As far as ease of scoring it goes 1->4->3-> a giant gap ->2 and 5 in some order.

That's not documented anywhere because it's not by design.  When they created time slices 7 years ago, each of the big alliances at the time took over one slice and sort of set the rules of engagement for it.  Over the years many of the alliances have changed due to wars, mergers, etc, but mostly the spirit of each slice is the same.

I imagine the devs are aware of the scoring differences but wouldn't know how to explain them.

Really the major problem is that all the PvP knowledge lives in other apps.  In the past, as soon as players got serious about PvP they joined Line, and players who weren't on Line just weren't serious about playing PvP.

HoundofShadow

If your average players can't be bothered to read through in-game FAQ, I doubt they will bother to read all these subtleties. Case in point: there are still players who played for more than one year who don't know what special tiles mean, despite the fact that this has been explained in in-game Help/FAQ.

You can get the dev to explain every single subtleties in the game, but if only 1-5% of the playerbase are interested in those information, I think those efforts are better channeled somewhere else. 

If you are really interested in the game, you will have the urge to find out more information. That's where the community come in. A community can build bond among players but a detailed guide about the game can't.

Monkeyfoo

Just wanted to say thanks for all the input. Going to try and pay more attention to gameplay and properly matching to defend and attack characters. Also trying to find out more about putting characters together that benefit each other.
Still not happy with some character powers and abilities, but that is fine. 
Going to play a lot more PVE so I don't get as frustrated at losing, lol. 

shardwick

@Monkeyfoo I would put five yellows into your 4* Rocket and Groot. That yellow ability is one of the best in the game.

Mr_F

@Monkeyfoo

When I was playing on "normal", daily pace, I was at your point too. From what I saw, you are a 3* player who is transitiong into 4* land (or is already there, depending who you use mostly).

1st, you did the classic mistake of leveling up the 5* ro maximum because of whatever reasons. You can fix that by NOT leveling them any further. No matter who that character is. You WILL screw your PVP expierence if ya do that.

I know what I am writing by expierence: the more level they have the more often you will see 5* teams in PVP. I have 1 5* champion (Wasp, kinda fan of her) and 3 more 5* at 390-420 level (cureently higher possible) and whenever I jump PVP all I see are 3x 5* Champions mixed with Highly leveled America Chavez, Main Event Hulk, Polaris and Rocket&Groot from 4* land. So basically, I am already o 5* land there despite I still did not leaved 4* land.

2nd, before I got into that state I have expierenced same as you. Basically what You exoierence is a "glass ceiling". You can reach a certain cap of pts at which you start to see either players using weekly boosted 4* you do not have or some kinda of meta teams who are way stronger from what you pull of. And unless you will use shields, you cant progress higher, For example, Beta Ray Bill/Polaris - I have that combo in my roster. My BRB is 2/1/1, lv 300 and my Polaris is 287 and I could easilly do 50 wins with that. Even know I can do that, albeit with much more effort (long story, not for today).

My advice: In PVP, Play highest, possible SCL (10 if you unlocked) and focus on wins only. 13 wins for CP, 16 for 4* shards. That is enough to progress steadily. Do your wins and forget the event. Trust me, I did the math. Its enough. JUST that way (PVP SCL 10 + PVE SCL 7) fully covered ~80 4* within a year.

TheEyeDoctorsWife

 Took 40 tries in Spicy to get the cover today 

Also, entered a PvP slice as #500 twice in a row the last 2 days . ( The odds of that in a fair game is 250,000 to 1).