Grinding

Unknown

Hey guys,

I am just curious, have you all kind of felt the more you grinded, the worse your prizing became?

I compared the room(s) I am in versus my friend's rooms for PVE and PVP and I find that I get harder rooms even though I have less leveled people and a smaller roster count. I grind a little more than he does for pve and pvp, trying to get all resets or hit high and shield.

On the other hand, my friend does not work/play as much and he never shields, but he'll get placement awards pretty much all the time. He's been playing longer than I have, but it just seems like you are rewarded more if you are a minimalist player because you will get easier rooms for pvp and will be seeded based on who is like you the most.

What this is doing is causing me to go against some elite players who have much more diverse rosters/levels/covers than me and I will never be able to catch up to them. I feel like I am in an eternal cycle of hate somehow because I was "trying" harder to get covers. It's begun to actually wear at me to the point where I feel like "what is the point of grinding when I am going to be punished for it?" But at the same time, "I want to grind because I want to get more covers."

This is a pretty dismal situation because either way, I do not come out a winner. I either grind to death and get minimal covers or I do not grind and get nothing. Heck, I am not even so sure if I just let my pvp and pve ranking go completely down, if I will get into easier rooms because for pvp, I was never doing that well to begin with, yet I get paired against people who have very full rosters and multiple level 166/270 heroes. I either won't get there quickly or never get there at all because I will never rank #1 no matter how hard I try!

This is the first time I've felt punished for grinding and I feel like this pvp system is completely flawed how they match people in rooms, but I was curious if anyone else felt this same sting or feels like it's biased in anyway. I honestly don't understand how my friend can get into easier rooms with 1) a bigger roster, 2) higher levels, 3) being more "vet" than I am, 4) performing at a higher level due to player base. What would you guys suggest?

puppychow

Your topic title is a misnomer, because grinding usually refers to pve events, where you hit nodes for points repeatedly (thus the "grind"). You're referring to pvp events, and the game developer has made a number of changes that results in what you have observed. First, they have removed banding. Previously, the AI tries to match you with players in a similar range of points, or band. Now, it seems like the game matches you based on who is currently playing the event in your time shard. Second, the much ballyhooed scoring change has made it easier to win and lose a huge sum of points. Wins result in 50% more points compared to before. But that corresponds to a large point loss for the target with high scores. There seems to be a reduction in point loss in the early going.

Now, with your friend's situation, it's most likely that he landed in an easier shard. For season pvp events, you get to pick from one of 5 time slots, and each is a shard. Then it gets broken up even smaller into groups of 500 players (it's a 5,000 player bracket for the season though). So it's possible, due to luck, for players to land in more or less competitive brackets.

Unknown

Actually, I am talking about grinding down nodes as well as pvp. I thought I had said that in my post though because in comparison to my friend, both rooms are still harder since it takes me much more points to actually get a rank prize.

So in effect, the end result is still the same, it takes much more effort to grind down the nodes and pvp in order to get a top-50 or top-100 prize. I apologize if I did not make myself clear.

Out of curiosity, in the season node of the 5000 players in the bracket, in our pvp shards, do we also play against the 5000 or is it just a random assortment that can be inside or outside of the 5000 that we are paired against in the season?

Also, will it help to skip a few pves and not grind as hard for the upcoming events in hopes of getting into an easier room? Or is it just personal confirmation bias?

simonsez

If you're saying that the more you play and the more you develop your roster, the harder the game becomes, yeah, that's pretty much been the running theme around here...

Oldboy

This is a game where players with the more developed rosters are punished/penalised for their efforts. The devs only reward the newbies with the easier levels because they want to keep them on. That's why there have been so many vets leaving.

So if you want to keep on playing, know that it'll only get harder from here on.

OnesOwnGrief

Oldboy wrote:

This is a game where players with the more developed rosters are punished/penalised for their efforts. The devs only reward the newbies with the easier levels because they want to keep them on. That's why there have been so many vets leaving.

So if you want to keep on playing, know that it'll only get harder from here on.

If by penalized you mean able to skip PvE for new 3 star characters and still place top 5-25 for their covers in PvP, and alliance does well enough to hit top 100 for 4's, then yeah. I've been penalized for over 6 months now.

simonsez

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

If by penalized you mean able to skip PvE for new 3 star characters(

No, I'm pretty sure he meant being forced to skip PvE because it's pointless trying to overcome high-end scaling. But let's be real, you already knew that. Not being able to compete on a level playing field is hardly a perk.

Xenoberyll

If you score high in PVE you'll get lumped into a bracket with other high scoring players. Because there's no better feeling than seeing people win their bracket with half your score when you came in just short of top 10 in yours.

Winning gets punished. That's how we roll...