PVP Point Scores Steadily Increasing

Vhailorx

In this most recent PVP (Hollowpoint Kiss), the top 100 alliances all had 18,630 points or more.

That's a minimum average of ~930 per member.

Prior to the recent point shift, 13,500 points was more than enough to comfortably sit top 80 or higher. And even last season 17,000 or more was generally enough for a top 100 finish in each event.

(I think I have the math right, but please correct me if my relatively sparse score records are inaccurate).

So it seems clear that PVP scores overall are steadily increasing (even after the major point increase several months ago). Soon it will basically require 1k per member on average just to get a second a 3* cover for the alliance?

A couple of questions occur:

(1) Is this a good thing?

(2) Are players getting better? or are more people just getting better rosters as we close the second cycle of ddq?

(3) Should the prog rewards for each PVP event, or each season, be altered accordingly? either higher or lower?

(4) Are we getting back to a pre-shield cooldown environment again, where the top players are posting insanely high scores, which makes the progs easier for everyone, but also incurs the wrath of DC for (presumably) putting a kink into their carefully planed reward tiers?

dr tinykittylove

More experienced players, stronger rosters, more mentoring within alliances, experienced people founding new competitive alliances, it all adds up.

I feel like it might help if they extended alliance cover rewards down a little.

IamTheBiggs

Indeed, it is not just alliance mentoring, it is also better alliance communication and even cooperation among the various alliances. People are beginning to understand the meta-game more and more.

This could be a good thing, depending on how the developers help the game evolve.

Chrono_Tata

I imagine that the devs will overhaul progression rewards again once the 5-stars start coming out, so gonna reap the easier progression rewards while they last.

timbopp

Speaking for myself, I have every 3* character cover-maxed so my goal now is 4* characters. I don't have the time to try to rank 1st in PVE or PVP so I need to hit that 1000 point PVP progression reward at least and even push for 1300.
I have been getting 1000 points consistently since the points won/lost ratio was changed.

El Satanno

Chrono_Tata wrote:

I imagine that the devs will overhaul progression rewards again once the 5-stars start coming out, so gonna reap the easier progression rewards while they last.

Now that's an interesting way to look at it. I think it's more intuitive to guess that with 5* coming out, we'd be more likely to see better rewards at the lower tiers. After all in the current state of the game, 3* have a hard time against 4* (more or less), which can be reasonably extrapolated to mean that 3* will have no chance at all against a 5*. Hence, enhancing the reward structure to keep the people not playing at 4* yet from giving up in frustration.

GurlBYE

I think it has a less to do with the extra 3 stars that nearly none of the alliances that can reach those scores need, and every single thing to do with the fact that a bunch of the newer characters covers have been appearing at 1000 and 1300 progression (pretty confident I've seen carnage and antman a decent amount in recent pvps both being less then 3 months old. and thats the only way for those people to progress with 4 stars without buying covers and pve is too slow and requires more investment.
The HP doesn't hurt either, because more 4 stars are coming.

Those covers are falling onto people with that character fully covered, if anything it shows a bit of a flaw with alliance progression and how it should reflect the metagame. If 4 star rosters and alliances are hitting the top progression, maybe lowering the 3 star down a bit and putting the 4 star into the alliance reward mix would even it out.

I don't think any of the people who reached 1Kor 1.3K or even 900 were using loaner black widow.

nwman

Let's not forget d3 improved loaner characters from 1 cover to all 3. This might be getting more people to play on the lower end.

At least 3/4 the way up on my climb I was still finding the odd loaner gsbw worth 45+ points.

So that puts me around 750 at the time.

GrumpySmurf1002

Scores are definitely increasing (season 17 was the highest per event to date), but it should be noted what the final standings looked like in season 17.

Top 25: 237721
Top 50: 215977
Top 100: 203420
Top 105: 190416
Top 113: 169271

Top 100 is competitive, but it's a very small group competing for those last few spots. The gap between 50-100 is smaller than 100-105.

In an individual PvP, that gap is obviously smaller, so I think it just feels more competitive than it really is. 500-800 points doesn't seem like a lot, until you're constantly missing by that much.

blinktag

With the 4* progression rewards, there are also players now who achieve progression and drop shields, effectively donating those points to the competitive pool.

All of the dynamics mentioned by others above are factors too, I think.

simonsez

I have two theories as to why scores are increasing:

1) With 4*s being released every 6 minutes, in a given PvP more people need the 1000/1300 progression rewards.

2) More people have more fully covered 3*s now, and instead of making threads whining that HB should be nerfed because they can't compete, they've realized that buffed 3*s can take them very far in PvP

Dayv

Another issue is that there are probably more active, high-scoring players and alliances now than there were when the progression rewards were last updated, so more hands are reaching for the same cake.

TxMoose

also very highly slice dependent. I know slice 4 had brackets where 1000 was outside of t100 but I know ~1050 took ~10th in my slice 1 bracket last event too. I know you're talking about overall and alliance scores but individual placement can vary wildly. I changed brackets and mine is full of x men and I'm sure placement will be tough here. hopefully progressions will be easier, even if it is Elektra.

mohio

I think the answers are basically all in here already. My take on it is just a natural maturing of the game and the nature of the PvP system we are saddled with. Let me explain (hopefully) briefly.

The PvP system is such that if you can score 8-900, you can just about score as high as you feel like, accounting for shields, time left, etc. Prior to buffed 3*, this often took at least one 4* on your team, or at least the "best" 3* team you could potentially make in that given event. Now, all it takes is maybe 2 of your 3 chars being buffed and maxed (or near maxed but at least cover maxed) and you should fit into this group. As the game has aged over the past several months more and more people are falling into this category. Also, as others have brought up, now that we haven't seen any new 3* in a while, that has given people time to finish off the latest batch of 3* and more importantly focus their iso on those characters as well, since who is wasting any on low-covered 4*? It all combines to a much larger population of players with the type of roster that can easily put up 1k on a consistent basis.

There's a small additional factor which are the people who could hit 1k previously are now looking at spending an extra 3-600 hp to reach 1300 for an additional 4* cover and since they are all that is left to obtain, and still very rare, they are finding it worth the hp expense to hop to these higher scores. The previous effect is undoubtedly bigger since it's effecting a greater number of people, but it's still going to raise the top 100 average alliance score.

One last thing to note are the increase in the multi-alliances. At least in ours I know that we try to help out some of our transitioning players by bringing them into our top team to get them covers that they need (especially now that all the vets need basically no 3* covers). So, the vets who are volunteering to drop down can either go join the second team for top 250 rewards, or they can merc out their 1000+ for better rewards. I'm not super familiar to the merc room, but I think there is enough action to say that a lot of people are moving in and out in the last few hours of an event and this can only serve to increase the top 100 threshold as more and more teams are jockeying for position.

TxMoose

as an example of what mohio said:

first, I looked at my first gamependium roster from 2 months ago. 1 at 166, 1 other close to 166, and 5 round 140. today I have 8 maxed (counting my 153loki) and will soon have 12 at 140. roster development definitely plays a role. 2 months ago I had just started hitting 1K on the rare occasion the boosted list lined up right. now I rarely miss it, regardless of boosteds. learning to play in the system we are given also plays a big role. maximizing return on shield hp spend is something that has happened for me over time. now I'm pretty consistent getting there with a 3/8/3 shield plan. spend 300 hp, get about 200 back. net spend is generally ~100 hp and if I'm pve'ing, that is basically hp neutral. if not, my pile slowly dwindles. seems I've gotten off the beaten path... anyway...

also, the alliance I'm in (a pvp only alliance) is a couple short and we seem to have partnered with a pve alliance and the top players that do the other well merc to the other for event endings and the 2 that we get far surpass the performance of the 2 we lost, so each event we are scoring higher individually and have gotten stronger as a group, if only because of a couple of consistent mercs.

DubbaHuss

They really started shooting up these last 3 pvp's, semingly with the introduction of the overall leaderboard d3 posts. That whale trap is so blatant someone should call Greenpeace. I'm guessing they anticipated that.

Vhailorx

DubbaHuss wrote:

They really started shooting up these last 3 pvp's, semingly with the introduction of the overall leaderboard d3 posts. That whale trap is so blatant someone should call Greenpeace. I'm guessing they anticipated that.

I dunno, the number of players at the very top of the game (those routinely getting 2k+ and really competing in the global scoreboard) is so small that I don't think it can be all that meaningful compared to the the whole player population. same with the group of players shooting for 1300. Then again, the top 100 alliances is also a pretty small community (only 2000), so maybe whale scores are significant.

Given that the legendary tokens are being added at 1300, I suspect that the 1300 tier reward was not as profitable as they had hoped (which doesn't surprise me. the 300 point gap is too big. and shield hopping in a cooldown environment is too cumbersome. committing to 2 or 3 additional shield hops minimum just isn't worth the HP/time/frustration to me, even for a 4* cover).

GrumpySmurf1002

For reference

Vhailorx

Thanks for the data smurf!

The scoring dip around season 13-15 was clearly a result of people taking time to figure out the post health-shift/scoring change/weekly boost meta.

But what caused the scoring dip in october 2014? was it just the anniversary week?

Also interesting to see that the shield cooldown introduction in jan/feb 2015 really only affected the high-end of scoring.

top 1 scores have also shot up recently (noticeably faster than top 100 scores), likely as a result of the global scoreboard and resultant bragging rights.

With 10k as the new top prog reward per season, in seems clear that demiurge is trying to make 10k the minimum standard "high level" season score. That being the case, scores are probably going to continue climbing a little bit higher and I wouldn't expect demiurge to do much about it.

FierceKiwi

Vhailorx wrote:

DubbaHuss wrote:

They really started shooting up these last 3 pvp's, semingly with the introduction of the overall leaderboard d3 posts. That whale trap is so blatant someone should call Greenpeace. I'm guessing they anticipated that.

I dunno, the number of players at the very top of the game (those routinely getting 2k+ and really competing in the global scoreboard) is so small that I don't think it can be all that meaningful compared to the the whole player population. same with the group of players shooting for 1300. Then again, the top 100 alliances is also a pretty small community (only 2000), so maybe whale scores are significant.

Those scores also make it easier for the upper-middle class and ultimately middle class (and really everyone else) to climb higher too.

GrumpySmurf1002

Vhailorx wrote:

Thanks for the data smurf!
The scoring dip around season 13-15 was clearly a result of people taking time to figure out the post health-shift/scoring change/weekly boost meta.

But what caused the scoring dip in october 2014? was it just the anniversary week?

You can tell by the date ranges that early seasons were more than 10 events. Either season 5 or season 6 is when 10 events became the standard. (my work filter blocks the images so I can't tell for myself, and my memory is shot)

edit: For reference, the other dips were Sentry nerfing (7 or 8), shield cooldowns (10-11?) and then the horrific MMR change (13&14). The 75pt change came before season 15, and then the 1300 progression before 16. I think I've got the timeline right there.