Episode 4: Iso-8 Brotherhood Discussion

Unknown

This is the hardest event I've done in terms of keeping up.
I am finishing top 5 in each sub but really struggling to stay top 10 in main.

Two full clears each time plus grinding each mission to <200 is what I've found to be the best. It's helped me to gain some momentum.


On a side note I think when spidey gets nerfed ER will see these over events get balanced down because not many save luck will be doing 230 if character enemies even get up there with hardly anyone beating high level opponents often...

Unknown

dudecoolguyman wrote:

On a side note I think when spidey gets nerfed ER will see these over events get balanced down because not many save luck will be doing 230 if character enemies even get up there with hardly anyone beating high level opponents often...

I hope they reset enemy levels when they nerf spiderman & don't leave us to lower the levels by dying over & over to them, otherwise people who are fighting level 230s won't be able to compete for a while.

Actually, I wish the enemy scaling was more sensible and reset each tournament.

Unknown

The one battle against Rag,Ares, and Venom at high levels where you have to use Marvel Mags. Is. Hell. That is all.

kensterr

Not bad... got a Psylocke black cover from Lone Star Skirmish. Spent 150 HP on shields and got the cover + 250 ISO and 100 HP back.

Unknown

ChampBailey wrote:

The one battle against Rag,Ares, and Venom at high levels where you have to use Marvel Mags. Is. Hell. That is all.

It's funny, I'm LOVING Mags in this tourney. Mine's only boosted level 6, but he's a blue battery for Spidey. Start with +3 blue/pink and then 2 pink matches and it's good to go. I might have to level him up

Unknown

nicholasjohnconger wrote:

ChampBailey wrote:

The one battle against Rag,Ares, and Venom at high levels where you have to use Marvel Mags. Is. Hell. That is all.

It's funny, I'm LOVING Mags in this tourney. Mine's only boosted level 6, but he's a blue battery for Spidey. Start with +3 blue/pink and then 2 pink matches and it's good to go. I might have to level him up

Same, 9 purple and it's game over for them & one boost isn't too expensive. I've struggled more when required to use Psylocke because with 1/1/1 level 20 she didn't do anything better than Punisher does. I've got Psylock to 2/2/2 now, so could potentially level to 51 and do more match damage, but probably wouldn't want to use her outside tournaments she's buffed in.

kensterr

You guys think Algeria will open in time?

Unknown

Heading out for the night, but here is what I can ascertain for now.

For this last run, I tried to duplicate my odd observation on another phone/account. The results were mostly intriguing.

For sure:

-- The scaling system from Thick as Thieves is present and operates in a similar manner to how it did in that event. This means that players possess a "PvE MMR" that governs the levels of mobs that they see. When a fight is won, rating points are gained; when a fight is lost/retreated, points are lost. The ratio of points gained in a win or points lost in a defeat/retreat is impossible to directly ascertain.

Likely:

-- As implied by comments via IceIX, what the player sees appears to be some sort of function of (Player's PvE MMR + "Community" Rating) <-- although this formula may be overly simplistic.

-- The levels of opponents in encounters appear to increase in tiers, or certain MMR thresholds. This would be analogous to reaching the progression rewards in PvP events, except that the players are "rewarded" with higher level encounters. This increase appears to be a flat multiplier to enemy levels that increases at each "progression tier".

-- The player's MMR carries over to all PvE events. Thus, performance on one sub directly affects the levels of enemies in other subs.

Plausible/Theorycrafting

-- There may be an individual "Community" rating for each node in a sub instead of a blanket rating, based upon overall community performance.

-- If there is an individual node "Community" rating, there may be some form of lesser ripple effect on other nodes in the event. For example if a win on a node gains +10 PvE Community MMR (arbitrary numbers), other nodes may receive a +5 Community boost in response. Similarly, this effect works in reverse. (Personal Note: This is the unusual observation that I have not been able to isolate. Something is definitely here, but I cannot clearly identify this with any real certainty and this seems to be only reasonable explanation I can think of for explaining this phenomenon.)

-- As most players are unlikely to attempt missions that appear to be suicidal, generally only wins are recorded or enough that the results tend to positively biased. This leads to a scenario where the "Community MMR" rating of a node is always increasing, which is slowly raising the minimum attainable levels of nodes in subs.

-- There may be some from of personal or community MMR rating decay over time, but that is nearly impossible to derive with any real accuracy.

-- Therefore, if a player wants to grind out nodes consistently, then he/she will have to "manage" their PvE MMR, just like in PvP tourneys. Otherwise, inevitably, personal PvE MMR + wins contributing to increasing "Community" MMR will eventually guarantee a multiplier high enough to ensure 230s x3 on most if not every node.

Feel free to discuss or poke holes in this for the sake of trying to figure this one out.

Unknown

bughunt wrote:

nicholasjohnconger wrote:

ChampBailey wrote:

The one battle against Rag,Ares, and Venom at high levels where you have to use Marvel Mags. Is. Hell. That is all.

It's funny, I'm LOVING Mags in this tourney. Mine's only boosted level 6, but he's a blue battery for Spidey. Start with +3 blue/pink and then 2 pink matches and it's good to go. I might have to level him up

Same, 9 purple and it's game over for them & one boost isn't too expensive. I've struggled more when required to use Psylocke because with 1/1/1 level 20 she didn't do anything better than Punisher does. I've got Psylock to 2/2/2 now, so could potentially level to 51 and do more match damage, but probably wouldn't want to use her outside tournaments she's buffed in.

I have a 3/2/3 Psylocke right now and I pumped her up to 55. She is a monster, especially if you pair her with Patch.

eidehua

^ Yep, love using Psylocke +Patch+OWB: lots of strike tiles, instant attack tiles to benefit form them, and OBW double strike tile dmg. + against goons OBW can increase all CD timers and Patch's purple enemy tiles don't hurt as mad.
Curious, do you use psylocke's red or Patch's red?

I'm using psylockes red @ level 18 (only got red/black covers) and I just like to use red for the animation, lol.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

bughunt wrote:

nicholasjohnconger wrote:

ChampBailey wrote:

The one battle against Rag,Ares, and Venom at high levels where you have to use Marvel Mags. Is. Hell. That is all.

It's funny, I'm LOVING Mags in this tourney. Mine's only boosted level 6, but he's a blue battery for Spidey. Start with +3 blue/pink and then 2 pink matches and it's good to go. I might have to level him up

Same, 9 purple and it's game over for them & one boost isn't too expensive. I've struggled more when required to use Psylocke because with 1/1/1 level 20 she didn't do anything better than Punisher does. I've got Psylock to 2/2/2 now, so could potentially level to 51 and do more match damage, but probably wouldn't want to use her outside tournaments she's buffed in.

I have a 3/2/3 Psylocke right now and I pumped her up to 55. She is a monster, especially if you pair her with Patch.

Daaaaaaaamm. You use HP to level up Psylocke?

eidehua

^ he got lucky and got 2 covers from the tokens, and I assume he placed in the lone star tourney

Unknown

eidehua wrote:

^ Yep, love using Psylocke +Patch+OWB: lots of strike tiles, instant attack tiles to benefit form them, and OBW double strike tile dmg. + against goons OBW can increase all CD timers and Patch's purple enemy tiles don't hurt as mad.
Curious, do you use psylocke's red or Patch's red?

I'm using psylockes red @ level 18 (only got red/black covers) and I just like to use red for the animation, lol.

I use Psylocke's red. I have a 5/3/5 Patch and he doesn't have a ton of tiles in his name anyway, especially because Psylocke takes over red. Plus her strike tile is much stronger than one of Patch's tiles.

Unknown

eidehua wrote:

^ he got lucky and got 2 covers from the tokens, and I assume he placed in the lone star tourney

Correct. Top 5 in Lone Star, top 10 in the Simulator, got two from my tokens from yesterday's subs.

Unknown

Also not to spam but this is a separate point: I'm 1st in one sub and the other I'm not getting good rubberbanding. I somehow made it into first overall in the main. I don't think it's worth it for me to keep grinding missions at this point but it's hard to tell. There's very little separation in this event.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

Also not to spam but this is a separate point: I'm 1st in one sub and the other I'm not getting good rubberbanding. I somehow made it into first overall in the main. I don't think it's worth it for me to keep grinding missions at this point but it's hard to tell. There's very little separation in this event.

Based on the reward structure I'm guessing 100K is going to be the top score for the guys who didn't grind nonstop (125K is the 8000 reward, which was fairly unreachable unless you did nothing but grinding in last event). Right now I'm seeing separation of about 5K between #1 and #10 in the overall bracket, and that can prove to be significant at the end.

Unrelated to this, but the ending time of the sub brackets seems pretty bad for weekends. It's noon PST or 3pm EST. That works for the weekend but it's really not a good time for weekdays.

eidehua

jozier wrote:

eidehua wrote:

^ Yep, love using Psylocke +Patch+OWB: lots of strike tiles, instant attack tiles to benefit form them, and OBW double strike tile dmg. + against goons OBW can increase all CD timers and Patch's purple enemy tiles don't hurt as mad.
Curious, do you use psylocke's red or Patch's red?

I'm using psylockes red @ level 18 (only got red/black covers) and I just like to use red for the animation, lol.

I use Psylocke's red. I have a 5/3/5 Patch and he doesn't have a ton of tiles in his name anyway, especially because Psylocke takes over red. Plus her strike tile is much stronger than one of Patch's tiles.

Yep, forgot Psylocke is boosted causing the takeover of red

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Feel free to discuss or poke holes in this for the sake of trying to figure this one out.

Great job. One thing to add, I had the impression that the distance between your main event score and the first placed main even score also factors in. Waiting for the stacks to reset usually lowers difficulty slightly as people bypass you, just to flip back to 230 once you get close to the top again. It could probably be explained by timed deterioration, doesn't feel linear enough though, more like a reverse rubberbanding effect.

Unknown

To clarify, brackets rubberband by the first place in the SUB bracket? So that I should join right away to guarantee (likely) the highest score possible? Or do they rubberband via your main in which case it doesn't matter when i join a sub to some extent?Or is it like last event where the rubberband is attached to the highest score in the sub brackets world wid? In which case it didn't matter just like when rubberbanding snaps to the leader of your main bracket?

At a glance, I would guess its sub....am I correct?

mischiefmaker

Lyrian wrote:

Heading out for the night, but here is what I can ascertain for now.

Awesome stuff, great work in testing this. If you have theories you need multiple accounts to help test, let us know.

One thing that has been nagging at me though -- if the formula is some linear combination of (personal MMR + community MMR), then how is it possible that people are doing well with weak rosters? For example, top 10 in my main bracket has two rosters with L70 CStorms and nobody else anywhere near that level, and weak MMN and Spider Man builds. Another top 10 doesn't even have CStorm that high. They would have the same community MMR as everyone else by definition, and they'd have high personal MMR by virtue of doing well. I know CStorm is buffed, but I can't see even a buffed L70 CStorm consistently taking out 3x230s.

The two possible explanations I can think of, assuming results are legitimate:
1. All three of the players in my top 10 are timing their clears perfectly such that they play the minimum necessary to maintain placement and/or are losing often enough to keep their personal MMR low.
2. There is a level component that we're missing.

#2 seems like a far more likely scenario to me, especially because a lot of the people I see reporting L230s across the board are also people with very high level rosters. I'd be very curious to see reports of what level heros people are using to win fights and what their opponent levels look like. Also it'd be interesting to test whether MMR reduction is affected by what level heros you lose fights with.