skip jail

adamdivine

In the top gun vs, I am in slice 4 with top 5 players all having more than 4000 points. I currently only have 704. Why in the world am I being placed in skip jail???!!!! I keep seeing the same 4-5 players and can't get a fight worth more than 35 points. Does this happen to anyone else? I always try to get into this slice as I usually find it easier to score points, but the last two vs have been like this.

pheregas

Had something similar happen to me yesterday. Was looking for people to queue before making the final climb from 900. Played a few, then wouldn't you know it? The same 5 people ranging in point values from 4-19.

Really?

4 points???

MarvelMan

Skip jail isnt a function of the leaderboard, its a function of people available/unshielded in your mmr range.

That said, it sucks. At one point I had the same person show up 7/10 while I was searching for people to hit. And that was after I tapped them once. I had hoped that the new PVP MMR would fix some of it, I havent noticed a difference there.

TG did strike me as strange. I never bothered to max Failcon but he is fully covered....yet sitting at 1295 for hours, with over 1k iso spent skipping, I havent been able to find any ccs, even with mates calling them out a ton.

fmftint

Every
Single
Event

Miztiq

pheregas wrote:

Had something similar happen to me yesterday. Was looking for people to queue before making the final climb from 900. Played a few, then wouldn't you know it? The same 5 people ranging in point values from 4-19.

Really?

4 points???

I had that happen in the duck event in the 800s - got stuck for about 2 hours with nothing but 16-19 point match-ups. More than 5 ppl but all unusually low points. Must have skipped at least 100 times and eventually tripped over two 70 pt cupcakes, thank god, but didn't see anything around the normal 30-40 range.

Have never seen that before - related to the new scaling?

HaywireII

I was in slice 4 as well and I saw the same thing. It's a hopefully unintended side effect of shields. After a certain amount of points (600 for me) you get attacked more than you can attack so if you want to get the progression rewards you have no choice but to shield. The higher you go, the more people are shielded and the fewer options are available as attackable opponents. The result is that the matchmaker just gives you the same 4 or 5 opponents over and over.

I believe it's also the same reason that when you get attacked you tend to get attacked by multiple opponents at the same time. You are one of the few unshielded targets so you get a lot of unwanted attention.

snlf25

Miztiq wrote:

pheregas wrote:

Had something similar happen to me yesterday. Was looking for people to queue before making the final climb from 900. Played a few, then wouldn't you know it? The same 5 people ranging in point values from 4-19.

Really?

4 points???

I had that happen in the duck event in the 800s - got stuck for about 2 hours with nothing but 16-19 point match-ups. More than 5 ppl but all unusually low points. Must have skipped at least 100 times and eventually tripped over two 70 pt cupcakes, thank god, but didn't see anything around the normal 30-40 range.

Have never seen that before - related to the new scaling?

Welcome to my nightmare, been that way for me for so long I've forgotten the last time I got 1000 points. My thought is, if I have enough points that I'm visible to everyone then-

everyone should be visible to me!

HaywireII

snlf25 wrote:

Welcome to my nightmare, been that way for me for so long I've forgotten the last time I got 1000 points. My thought is, if I have enough points that I'm visible to everyone then-

everyone should be visible to me!

Everyone is shielded and can only see unshielded players. No one breaks shields unless they have 3 worthwhile targets queued up and a shield off of cooldown. For any given player you have to be skipping during just the right 5 to 10 minutes that they are unshielded to actually queue them up.

I bet PvP was interesting before there were shields.

HaywireII

Crazypants free for all will fit some people's criteria of being interesting. I didn't say it was necessarily better since I wasn't playing back then.

I'm working off of the (possibly incorrect) understanding that when you beat someone in PvP you win more points than they lose. If this is true then if there was constant fighting with no shields there would be a lot more points being pumped into the PvP ecosystem and more people would be able to make the progression goals. Getting into the Top 10 would be an ugly ugly thing though.

BlackSheep101

Only up to a point. Once you get above a specific threshold (I misremember the exact number), what you win and what they lose are the same.

Ruinate

704 is right at the **** spot. This happens to many people every event and there's nothing you can really do about it. Hit those 35 pointers (if beatable) or try looking for new queues later. Don't mistake old cache for new queues. Queues really start to open up once you're at 900 points or so.

snlf25

HaywireII wrote:

snlf25 wrote:

Welcome to my nightmare, been that way for me for so long I've forgotten the last time I got 1000 points. My thought is, if I have enough points that I'm visible to everyone then-

everyone should be visible to me!

Everyone is shielded and can only see unshielded players. No one breaks shields unless they have 3 worthwhile targets queued up and a shield off of cooldown. For any given player you have to be skipping during just the right 5 to 10 minutes that they are unshielded to actually queue them up.

I bet PvP was interesting before there were shields.

Not really what I meant, what I mean is, if I've got 980 points and everyone in the bracket can see and queue me I should be able to see everyone, including the 2* team of the guy that just cleared the seeds for a little iso and a stockpile. I can bang my way through 4 or 5 of those teams and get my 1000 points without praying I find somebody "in my own mmr" that I can beat. If I can get railed by nearly completely covered 5* and 4* champion teams why can't I hit below my weight class too? Fair is fair.

Ruinate

snlf25 wrote:

HaywireII wrote:

snlf25 wrote:

Welcome to my nightmare, been that way for me for so long I've forgotten the last time I got 1000 points. My thought is, if I have enough points that I'm visible to everyone then-

everyone should be visible to me!

Everyone is shielded and can only see unshielded players. No one breaks shields unless they have 3 worthwhile targets queued up and a shield off of cooldown. For any given player you have to be skipping during just the right 5 to 10 minutes that they are unshielded to actually queue them up.

I bet PvP was interesting before there were shields.

Not really what I meant, what I mean is, if I've got 980 points and everyone in the bracket can see and queue me I should be able to see everyone, including the 2* team of the guy that just cleared the seeds for a little iso and a stockpile. I can bang my way through 4 or 5 of those teams and get my 1000 points without praying I find somebody "in my own mmr" that I can beat. If I can get railed by nearly completely covered 5* and 4* champion teams why can't I hit below my weight class too? Fair is fair.

You can. I'm assuming you're a 3-4 player from the way you write. A 3* player at 980 being higher rated than a 4* player is completely normal. But a 2* player isn't going to be that high. So at 980, you will see teams below your weight class, but they won't be worth hitting most of the time.

adamdivine

I guess I figured that with the overall points being so high in my slice, the break point for getting stuck would be higher. The top few people finished with over 5000 points for God's sake!! I wound up with 798 and placed 172 and I needed 2 shields to get there. I know the argument for these ultra high scoring slices is that there are more points for everyone, but that sure doesn't seem to be the case.

mazerat

I think it'd be nice if shielded players weren't invisible. But then people could hit max, swap to cupcake, and get farmed for infinite points. Maybe if their score "phantom" decreased anytime they lost while shielded so that shielded players would be visible and hittable but only worth a finite amount of points to other players?

Clyve

Presuming the new matchmaking algorithm is more accurate and is potentially reducing the number of appropriate opponents you can fight at any given point value, perhaps they should consider increasing the size of slices (currently 500 I think? Increase to 1000?) adjusting placement awards appropriately.

HaywireII

aesthetocyst wrote:

Oh, you are correct. How it works is that the points the loser loses are multiplied by their score then divided by 1000. So up to 1000 there is a "discount" that helps a person rise. BUT, since it is a diminishing discount, past 500 it's little help, and past 700 just about no help at all.

And before April 2015, the divisor was 800, not 1000. So less buoyancy back then. Meanwhile the top progression were at 1300 or even 1400. VERY few were hitting those back then!

Also, you would think all boats would be rising, but a player can only win one match at a time, but be defeated an infinite number of times while doing it. If everyone if pounding everyone, the result is everyone winds up in the middle, and just about anyone trying to climb is dragged back down, as they are worth more than others, and thus targeted more than others.

For an epic thread about PVP scoring, check this out:

Upcoming Changes to Scoring in Versus Events

It's about the last major changes to PVP scoring and progressions. Once upon a time, defensive wins paid just like offensive wins. Now they are divided by 3. I still think that stinks, but it got exploited. Lead to quite a discussion.

Reading through those details if I hit the seed teams for the typical 200 points then over the course of the event won 30 matches and lost 30 matches (assuming they were even matches to make the math simple) I'd be sitting around 770 points. If everyone started at the beginning and played throughout the course of the event I think there would be a lot of points floating around. Of course it doesn't work that way; plenty of people join a late bracket or climb late so they aren't injecting many if any points into the ecosystem.

Add shields to the mix and we have today's system where you can get as many points as you want if you are willing to spend HP for shields and ISO to queue up cupcakes.

mindsuckr

MarvelMan wrote:

Skip jail isnt a function of the leaderboard, its a function of people available/unshielded in your mmr range.

That said, it sucks. At one point I had the same person show up 7/10 while I was searching for people to hit. And that was after I tapped them once. I had hoped that the new PVP MMR would fix some of it, I havent noticed a difference there.

TG did strike me as strange. I never bothered to max Failcon but he is fully covered....yet sitting at 1295 for hours, with over 1k iso spent skipping, I havent been able to find any ccs, even with mates calling them out a ton.

I've noticed that if you get stuck in skip jail, just force close the game, open it back up, and it should break the cycle.

Clyve

aesthetocyst wrote:

Clyve wrote:

Presuming the new matchmaking algorithm is more accurate and is potentially reducing the number of appropriate opponents you can fight at any given point value, perhaps they should consider increasing the size of slices (currently 500 I think? Increase to 1000?) adjusting placement awards appropriately.

Brackets contain 500 players. Your targets are not limited to those in your bracket, they are limited to those in your slice (everyone who opted in to the same end time).

Slices contain multiple brackets. There is no known limit on the number of players in a slice.

TIL, thanks!

Maybe it would be worth removing the slice target limitation then? Or would that be too crazy?

HaywireII

Was just thinking about this again and point values for a win encourage starting late and steamrolling everyone who came before you. Why do 38 point matches for a few days when you can just do 75 point matches for a couple hours at the end.

Make wins and losses worth more points at the beginning of the event and have the value of both wins and losses shrink as you get closer to the end. That encourages early and active participation.

Redrobot30

This topic is why I always make my final climb either before the last 8 hours or even the 3 hour mark sometimes before I put a shield up myself. I never run out of decent targets and you avoid being attacked yourself a bunch of times. That final climb usually goes on for about an hour though and really only ends once I have run out of health packs. Usually nets me about 400-500 points on top of the 500+ I was sitting on before that point.