bug with getting wrong event placement

Unknown

I posted this in features but I haven't gotten a response from anyone.

I just finished the West Sudan sub of the Hulk event (I think it was West Sudan, it was the one on the right side), I was in 1st place with 1 minute to go and I started a high point node that I had been saving for the last minute. about 200 points which is a lot higher than most of the other players have been beating in my bracket in the last half hour.

so, coming from 1st, plus an extra 200 points. I finished top 20 in the event. I don't think that this is very likely that 5 people below me were holding onto 500+ point nodes that they also beat in the last minute.

This has happened to me a few times before in PvP but it's never been as obvious as this.

I sent an email to customer support and I'm sure they will help me out but I want to raise a larger point that we need to be able to verify the final ranking and points after the end of an event.

We've had problems with people not getting rewards in the past and while it's understandable that technical issues happen now and then, allowing us to see our final standing is the only way we can be sure we are losing out because of a bug vs other players just honestly beating us to the punch.

I spend HP on health packs and shields during events which is basically real money. If I don't have a way to verify results, I would much rather err on the side of filing a complaint despite being honestly beaten than holding back and not getting the extra HP, iso and covers.

Unknown

You don't get credit for your 200 point node if you finish it after the sub ends.

It's not that unreasonable that 4 people passed you (remember, it's top 4, not top 5).

HailMary

davecazz wrote:

I was in 1st place with 1 minute to go and I started a high point node that I had been saving for the last minute...

so, coming from 1st, plus an extra 200 points. I finished top 20 in the event.

Are you sure you finished the fight before the end of the event? I once missed out on a Brotherhood subevent top tier due to finishing my last fight 10-20 seconds after the sub closed.

Unknown

jozier wrote:

You don't get credit for your 200 point node if you finish it after the sub ends.

It's not that unreasonable that 4 people passed you (remember, it's top 4, not top 5).

right, the problem is that if matches dont count if they are finished after the end, then I was #1 with less than a minute to go. I doubt that 4 people could all just manage to finish their matches in that window of time.

I constantly refresh my rank pages before I fight so I dont have to worry about not getting the latest rank data.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

jozier wrote:

You don't get credit for your 200 point node if you finish it after the sub ends.

It's not that unreasonable that 4 people passed you (remember, it's top 4, not top 5).

right, the problem is that if matches dont count if they are finished after the end, then I was #1 with less than a minute to go. I doubt that 4 people could all just manage to finish their matches in that window of time.

I constantly refresh my rank pages before I fight so I dont have to worry about not getting the latest rank data.

It happened to me on the first day of the subs. I went from #1 and #5 in two subs to top 20 in both. It's possible that 4 out of the top 10 in your bracket were in their last match when you last refreshed before entering your final battle and they finished before the end of the sub.

Unknown

Only the actual leaderboard is up to date. Your ranking on the mission map can be a minute or so behind the actual rankings. In fact, every time I looked at the actual leaderboard to verify my ranking in a close bracket, my ranking has always dropped, sometimes by a lot of places.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Only the actual leaderboard is up to date. Your ranking on the mission map can be a minute or so behind the actual rankings. In fact, every time I looked at the actual leaderboard to verify my ranking in a close bracket, my ranking has always dropped, sometimes by a lot of places.

thats exactly what I'm trying to say, I use the leaderboard to verify my standings, I never rely on the rank on the map screen. I am quite compulsive in going to the leaderboard and refreshing back and forth between the your rank and top ranks in order to make sure that are up to date.

I was ranked #1 on the leaderboard with less than a minute to go in the sub.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Only the actual leaderboard is up to date. Your ranking on the mission map can be a minute or so behind the actual rankings. In fact, every time I looked at the actual leaderboard to verify my ranking in a close bracket, my ranking has always dropped, sometimes by a lot of places.

thats exactly what I'm trying to say, I use the leaderboard to verify my standings, I never rely on the rank on the map screen. I am quite compulsive in going to the leaderboard and refreshing back and forth between the your rank and top ranks in order to make sure that are up to date.

I was ranked #1 on the leaderboard with less than a minute to go in the sub.

Like Jozier said, the people behind you may have been in the middle of a 10 minute match (for all we know) when you last checked the standings. Then during the time between when you started your last match and the end of the sub they finished, jumped ahead of you in the standings and stayed there because your match took too long and wasn't counted.

1 minute left is kind of pushing it. Of course it depends on the two teams involved, boosts and the board you start off with but I try not to start a match that late. And using that time to check your standing before starting is a waste of time because people are going to be moving while you're playing and can't see them anyway.

Unknown

beezer37_84 wrote:

davecazz wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Only the actual leaderboard is up to date. Your ranking on the mission map can be a minute or so behind the actual rankings. In fact, every time I looked at the actual leaderboard to verify my ranking in a close bracket, my ranking has always dropped, sometimes by a lot of places.

thats exactly what I'm trying to say, I use the leaderboard to verify my standings, I never rely on the rank on the map screen. I am quite compulsive in going to the leaderboard and refreshing back and forth between the your rank and top ranks in order to make sure that are up to date.

I was ranked #1 on the leaderboard with less than a minute to go in the sub.

Like Jozier said, the people behind you may have been in the middle of a 10 minute match (for all we know) when you last checked the standings. Then during the time between when you started your last match and the end of the sub they finished, jumped ahead of you in the standings and stayed there because your match took too long and wasn't counted.

1 minute left is kind of pushing it. Of course it depends on the two teams involved, boosts and the board you start off with but I try not to start a match that late. And using that time to check your standing before starting is a waste of time because people are going to be moving while you're playing and can't see them anyway.

trying to explain this as clearly as possible.

your point about starting a match with 1 minute to go is taken, and I wont be doing that any more. I didnt understand that a match that ends after the timer doesnt count toward your rank.

however, the main point that no one is addressing is that I had an up-to-date leaderboard with <1 minute to go and I was #1 and there were 4 players below me with quite a range of points that they needed to make up. They would have all had to finish tier matches in that 40 second window for them to ALL beat me in points.

now, I understand what you are saying and there is probably some misunderstanding with how the game actually works.

but my main point is that the game needs to give us information so we can be informed.

for example, you are saying that scores dont count if they are completed after the end of the timer. the game doesnt tell you that anywhere. if that was the case, the game should tell you that the match was finished after time expired and that you did not earn points for finishing it. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind.

also, we could all really use a way to verify final scores. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind either. There are bugs, bugs with rewards and bugs with who knows what else. also cheaters. Maybe this isnt a bug and legitimately happened but since we are all spending real money on these matches, wouldn't we all want to verify the results?

Unknown

Just to add a bit... (I'm feeling to urge to over explain things today)

After you complete a node, your client sends the updated data to the MPQ servers. Once the event timer is up, the server begins to calculate results for the bracket. If you are still playing the current round when your data is polled, your win/loss will not count. This is because your local client hasn't reconciled the updated data with the server. You'll usually know this because you'll receive the first time completion bonus, even if you've already completed it. This can work in your favor too -- if you are failing hard on a last minute mission, you can stall and wait until after the deadline retreat/die.

It would appear that these results are polled sequentially. It's unclear whether each bracket is done one after the other, or if these tasks are threaded simultaneously. Whatever the case, if you are playing past the deadline and you manage to finish prior to your individual data being polled, your results can still be uploaded and added to your final score.

As you know, the length of time it takes to report the results vary from event to event. Typically, it's about 1-2 minutes, but we've all seen it take 30+ in rare cases. When exactly your personal data is gathered during that period is anyone's guess.

This info is based partially on information provided by IceIX in an earlier thread and on my own observations by way of a packet sniffer.

Unknown

Even though i dont think it is a bug i completely agree with you that we should be able to see the leader board after the event finish to see how we are place.

Unknown

Jachdo wrote:

Just to add a bit... (I'm feeling to urge to over explain things today)

After you complete a node, your client sends the updated data to the MPQ servers. Once the event timer is up, the server begins to calculate results for the bracket. If you are still playing the current round when your data is polled, your win/loss will not count. This is because your local client hasn't reconciled the updated data with the server. You'll usually know this because you'll receive the first time completion bonus, even if you've already completed it. This can work in your favor too -- if you are failing hard on a last minute mission, you can stall and wait until after the deadline retreat/die.

It would appear that these results are polled sequentially. It's unclear whether each bracket is done one after the other, or if these tasks are threaded simultaneously. Whatever the case, if you are playing past the deadline and you manage to finish prior to your individual data being polled, your results can still be uploaded and added to your final score.

As you know, the length of time it takes to report the results vary from event to event. Typically, it's about 1-2 minutes, but we've all seen it take 30+ in rare cases. When exactly your personal data is gathered during that period is anyone's guess.

This info is based partially on information provided by IceIX in an earlier thread and on my own observations by way of a packet sniffer.

thanks for the explanation, this helps me a lot. but let's forget about wether the 200 points were counted or not. I understand that they are not counted.

if you look at the rest of the information I provided, you will see there is still a problem with the fact that I got bumped out of the top 4 from 1st.

Unknown

davecazz wrote:

however, the main point that no one is addressing is that I had an up-to-date leaderboard with <1 minute to go and I was #1 and there were 4 players below me with quite a range of points that they needed to make up. They would have all had to finish tier matches in that 40 second window for them to ALL beat me in points.

now, I understand what you are saying and there is probably some misunderstanding with how the game actually works.

but my main point is that the game needs to give us information so we can be informed.

for example, you are saying that scores dont count if they are completed after the end of the timer. the game doesnt tell you that anywhere. if that was the case, the game should tell you that the match was finished after time expired and that you did not earn points for finishing it. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind.

also, we could all really use a way to verify final scores. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind either. There are bugs, bugs with rewards and bugs with who knows what else. also cheaters. Maybe this isnt a bug and legitimately happened but since we are all spending real money on these matches, wouldn't we all want to verify the results?

Unfortunately, this probably isn't going to happen. At least not without significant optimization to the server and the client, both which would take a lot of time and resources.

I do content development for a software company and focus primarily on SAAS solutions. I can tell you that real-time updating is premium occurrence and not something you would normally see implemented on a global scale. The role of the server is to manage, store and interpret the data being submitted by our client devices (whether it be an iPhone, PC, or whatever), and deliver updates back. Consider all the data you personally are altering while playing the game -- score changes, completion stats, rankings, progression, etc. All of that needs to be transmitted over wire, received by the server, processed and sent back to update your interface. Now multiple that by 300k+ people.. a lot of 1's and 0's!

This flood of data is typically managed by throttling server poll times. I don't know the architecture of MPQ, but I'm fairly certain there is a cache on your local device that stores your updates. When a change is needed, a ping is probably sent to the MQP server requesting a connection. Your IP address would be queued up and prioritized based on load and bandwidth restrictions. Once it's ready, the connection is established and BAM you get updated. If every client were to be updating 'real-time' (as much as that would be possible), it would take a hugely uneconomical amount of resources. Demiurge isn't an enormous company, so I'm sure they outsource a lot of their infrastructure. Their ISP would probably take a **** if they were bombarded with all that data at once.

The closest thing we have I can think of is the "Top Ranked" button. Pressing this seems to initiate an on-demand poll. This is also probably why we are limited to seeing just our rank and the top ten.

HailMary

davecazz wrote:

if you look at the rest of the information I provided, you will see there is still a problem with the fact that I got bumped out of the top 4 from 1st.

At your last refresh, was the gap between #5 and your last score too large for any one fight to have negated?

If not, then it's absolutely possible that you were legitimately passed by at least 4 people in that minute, without any need to conjure shenanigans. In Brotherhood, I've seen my sub ranking drop from #2 to #12 between 10-second refreshes with 2 min on the clock.

davecazz wrote:

if that was the case, the game should tell you that the match was finished after time expired and that you did not earn points for finishing it. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind.

Sure, that'd be nice, though my default assumption has always been that overtime matches don't count toward sub scores. Think about it: if they did count, they would need to always count, which means that live last-second leaderboards wouldn't reflect actual standings and people who get distracted in the middle of an overtime match would hold up the reward delivery process for everyone.

davecazz wrote:

also, we could all really use a way to verify final scores. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind either.

Again: sure, that'd be nice, but it doesn't have that much to do with your specific situation, since placement-reward receipt pop-ups always indicate your placement tier.

Jachdo wrote:

Pressing this seems to initiate an on-demand poll. This is also probably why we are limited to seeing just our rank and the top ten.

Can confirm. I've occasionally seen a brief loading screen when pulling up leaderboards.

Unknown

Jachdo wrote:

davecazz wrote:

however, the main point that no one is addressing is that I had an up-to-date leaderboard with <1 minute to go and I was #1 and there were 4 players below me with quite a range of points that they needed to make up. They would have all had to finish tier matches in that 40 second window for them to ALL beat me in points.

now, I understand what you are saying and there is probably some misunderstanding with how the game actually works.

but my main point is that the game needs to give us information so we can be informed.

for example, you are saying that scores dont count if they are completed after the end of the timer. the game doesnt tell you that anywhere. if that was the case, the game should tell you that the match was finished after time expired and that you did not earn points for finishing it. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind.

also, we could all really use a way to verify final scores. not sure why this is so hard for people to get behind either. There are bugs, bugs with rewards and bugs with who knows what else. also cheaters. Maybe this isnt a bug and legitimately happened but since we are all spending real money on these matches, wouldn't we all want to verify the results?

Unfortunately, this probably isn't going to happen. At least not without significant optimization to the server and the client, both which would take a lot of time and resources.

I do content development for a software company and focus primarily on SAAS solutions. I can tell you that real-time updating is premium occurrence and not something you would normally see implemented on a global scale. The role of the server is to manage, store and interpret the data being submitted by our client devices (whether it be an iPhone, PC, or whatever), and deliver updates back. Consider all the data you personally are altering while playing the game -- score changes, completion stats, rankings, progression, etc. All of that needs to be transmitted over wire, received by the server, processed and sent back to update your interface. Now multiple that by 300k+ people.. a lot of 1's and 0's!

This flood of data is typically managed by throttling server poll times. I don't know the architecture of MPQ, but I'm fairly certain there is a cache on your local device that stores your updates. When a change is needed, a ping is probably sent to the MQP server requesting a connection. Your IP address would be queued up and prioritized based on load and bandwidth restrictions. Once it's ready, the connection is established and BAM you get updated. If every client were to be updating 'real-time' (as much as that would be possible), it would take a hugely uneconomical amount of resources. Demiurge isn't an enormous company, so I'm sure they outsource a lot of their infrastructure. Their ISP would probably take a tinykitty if they were bombarded with all that data at once.

The closest thing we have I can think of is the "Top Ranked" button. Pressing this seems to initiate an on-demand poll. This is also probably why we are limited to seeing just our rank and the top ten.

I'm a game programmer and I have a lot of experience with games like this that have a server side component. it's actually not that hard to do this. certainly a lot easier than implementing alliances.

Pretty much all the changes are UI only.

first, when you finish a game, it should send the score directly to the server. not hold onto it for later. if you hold onto it, it there is a risk that the score will never show up on the server in the case that the game was closed, crashed, etc and never loaded.

the rank that you see in the map screen is likely updated when you enter the map screen, after each match, when you load the leaderboard and every x minutes if you just sit around the map screen.

there is no reason why the leaderboard is not 100% up to the second when you first load it.

The changes that I am suggesting, include the following.

if the match is completed after the timer has expired. show a message that clearly tells the player that it was not counted toward his score.

after the event is completed, continue to show the event but disable the nodes on the map so that you can't enter another match. show a message that tells the player that the event has ended.

continue to leave the leaderboard and reward tabs work as they currently do. This is all we need in order to look at our rank and verify that the placement is correct concerning any reward that we should have won.

replace the timer on the main event button with the words. "event completed"

so, basically it's a couple new dialogs, some reworking of the map screen, and the disabling of some features in the ui.

Unknown

@davecazz - I'm fairly certain that we were in that same bracket. The "hard" sub event? At any rate, I was in 3rd with less than a minute to go, and a lot of people were within striking distance. I ended up in Top 20. Don't think it was a bug or glitch, just a horse race at the end. With the way servers gather and report scores, you can never be 100% sure, but there were enough people breathing down our necks to make it feasible.

Unknown

HailMary wrote:

If not, then it's absolutely possible that you were legitimately passed by at least 4 people in that minute, without any need to conjure shenanigans. In Brotherhood, I've seen my sub ranking drop from #2 to #12 between 10-second refreshes with 2 min on the clock.

sure it's possible, just hard to take on good faith when you are spending money on an event. especially when bugs do exist (like with rewards not working properly).

most PvE and PvP require people to spend real money on shields and health packs (to a lesser degree power-ups). It's the real money aspect that makes me want to have the verification. it's not just losing a game of angry birds. it's losing out on those last 3 health packs you used up during the last hour.

Another thing I think needs to be added.

if the match does not count once the local timer has expired. we should see the timer in the match itself so we know wether we are wasting our time of not.

Unknown

walkyourpath wrote:

@davecazz - I'm fairly certain that we were in that same bracket. The "hard" sub event? At any rate, I was in 3rd with less than a minute to go, and a lot of people were within striking distance. I ended up in Top 20. Don't think it was a bug or glitch, just a horse race at the end. With the way servers gather and report scores, you can never be 100% sure, but there were enough people breathing down our necks to make it feasible.

Yea, I remember you in the bracket. I was going to play this sub casual and just get an easy top 20 but since I had some good nodes left I really tried to get the 2 tokens.

HailMary

davecazz wrote:

most PvE and PvP require people to spend real money on shields and health packs (to a lesser degree power-ups). It's the real money aspect that makes me want to have the verification. it's not just losing a game of angry birds. it's losing out on those last 3 health packs you used up during the last hour.

Fair enough.

While I'm guessing that you're farther along in general roster progression than me (so you see much higher enemy levels), I will say that I haven't needed to spend real money to get Top 4's and Top 20's in the Hulk subs. I actually haven't spent a cent on this game. In PvP, I've never used shields, and have cracked Top 5 a couple of times. Another player in my alliance doesn't spend any money either, but accrues HP fast enough to pop shields when he wants to in PvP.

davecazz wrote:

if the match does not count once the local timer has expired. we should see the timer in the match itself so we know wether we are wasting our time of not.

I like that. Simple and effective.

Unknown

Sorry, it looks like my posts are getting staggered with your own. I completely understand your concerns.. I actually made a similiar post elsewhere because I thought there may be an issue. I was top 5 in one of the event with >1 min and ended up placing in top 100. While there may in fact be an issue, this is most likely just a matter of latency. Given the rubberbanding and reset schedule, the last few minutes of the event must see a ridiculous spike in activity. The server is probably just strained providing everyone with their game data.. remember that it has to send the match information too, not just the scores and point values.

They've likely re-prioritized the work flow so that game data takes precedence over lesser important tasks like scoring updates. If "x" is the lowest activity in the game and "z" is the spike that occurs 2% of the time when matches end, you want to optimize your infrastructure to handle "y". If "y" mode can't handle all of "z" mode, something has to give. Would you rather have a latency in rank values or a "Cannot Connect with Shield Servers" error at a crucial time? I think a lot of these changes occurred during the last release and they are still ironing out the wrinkles. I've been wondering about this ever since the hotfix was needed for the "Save game corrupted" issues last week. I could be way off base, but I was thinking this also might be the reason they decided to run an old PvE event using the legacy format for refreshes.

(Staggered again!)

first, when you finish a game, it should send the score directly to the server. not hold onto it for later. if you hold onto it, it there is a risk that the score will never show up on the server in the case that the game was closed, crashed, etc and never loaded.

the rank that you see in the map screen is likely updated when you enter the map screen, after each match, when you load the leaderboard and every x minutes if you just sit around the map screen.

there is no reason why the leaderboard is not 100% up to the second when you first load it.

That game data is being cached somewhere for sure, even webapps do this. I suspected it was on the local device because of the hacking issues they were seeing on Steam. Someone found out that token results were actually determined locally and were able to manipulate that. I believe they've made changes since, but even if our data were being sent immediately, there is no way it is all being reconciled and returned instantly.

First off, the data must be stored somewhere.. Unless it's a proprietary database (which is doubtful), they are probably using a SQL or Oracle instance. The front end needs to accept the connection, transfer the data from memory on to the physical media, and move it from that cache on to a table in the database. All of that info then needs to be interpreted and tabulated.. This is almost certainly being performed on another network entirely, likely through one of Google's datacenters. The actual boxes running the MPQ source will need to poll that raw data, do whatever magic it does, and return it. Even a beastly array that is processing hundreds of thousands of threads at once would choke unless properly throttled. I mean, look how often websites crash when too many requests are submitted at once -- the end of a large event is probably akin to a DDoS attack on the server.

There is no such thing as 'instant' when dealing with a client/server relationship over the WAN. Too many variables and checkpoints. In times of high volume, a priority protocol has to be in place to ensure critical data is handled first, and in this case, our rank listing wouldn't be at the top of that list. I'm not saying that some more optimization couldn't be put into place.. but to provide that level of connectivity and service, it would cost more than is practical. Look at Blizzard -- if there ever were an expert on this subject, it would be them. Yet, they launched Diablo 3 on a fail boat. They could have beefed up their org to be prepared for cataclysmic traffic, but they didn't. Not because they were caught off guard, but because they looked at the cost, balanced the loss vs. gain, and said "tinykitty it, let them eat queues"

To wrap these rants up, I don't think there is an issue and I don't think these delays are normal, but instead a result of the server prioritizing returns based on a high volume scenario. Ideally, the server could handle everything, all the time, but this is not in line with best practices and is also a pretty fail move business wise. Therefore, I don't think there will be a major change aside from some tweaks here and there.

[On a side note, I really hope IceIX reads of this and tells us how completely wrong we are and that the delays are the results of a solar flare or something]

Unknown

Jachdo wrote:

[On a side note, I really hope IceIX reads of this and tells us how completely wrong we are and that the delays are the results of a solar flare or something]

my assumption about the delays were that the server was waiting for all the outstanding matches to complete. thats why I thought matches that start right before the end were actually counted.

there is no reason for results to take 5 minutes to calculate. if all match data is submitted when the timers expire, then the server should have what it needs and be able to send it back to the client.

that is unless there is some kind of huge latency bug in the back end.

point taken about blizzard but the servers for diablo and WoW are way more complex than what we have here. this is pretty minor server functionality. a little bit of leaderboard support. tournament support. my last non mobile project was http://www.wgt.com which had a lot of these features but in addition had real time multiplayer golf games which is also a factor more complex than what we have. I assume that by now MPQ has a sensible scaling architecture on the back end that can support the current audience with bugs and crashes happening on the server every now and then. the server never seems to be down for more than a few minutes.

I'm sure they are using a pools of servers for both their database servers and app servers. most of the time with these apps, it makes sense to cache data in app server RAM instead of having to retrieve it form the database each and every time. The trick is how to do keep your pool of app servers updated with the latest data so if you are connecting to server 1, you see the scores of players that are coming into server 2. Even in the worse cases, this is usually not a problem to keep all the app servers fairly up to date unless there is a serious architecture problem.

from looking at leaderboards, it seems like they are doing a pretty good job with this, ranking seems to be pretty stable. if there was indeed regular latency issues with scores you would see the leaderboard jump around much more chaotically.

that said, it's not unreasonable to say that there can be issues with the logic that keeps all the app servers up to date. in fact, WGT had a similar issue with their tournament leaderboards in that players were not getting the placement that they actually attained. For sure, if you were top 5 with <1 min and placed top 100 it would be pretty unlikely that 20 players beat you in that window of time (assuming there was at least a top 10 or top 20 in between). Losing 1 or 2 positions at the end make sense, but not 5 or more.

That said, there could be an issue if the client is keeping track of the timer, then you could potentially move your clock back a bit to give you an extra 5 minutes in the tournament. could this be the reason why the results take longer sometimes? I know they said they just moved the clock to the server for the news items but not sure if they did the same thing with the event timers or other timers in the game like with health.

At the end of the day, I know the devs are working as hard as they can and the game performs well considering that it hasn't been out for very long. Despite that I think there should be a goal in making the game so that all the players can trust the data from the leaderboards and that there aren't 20 scores that for some reason are not being accounted for (the case you are saying with app servers not having up to date data).

the other goal is that players should be able to verify our results and have messaging that clearly tells us wether points are valid or invalid for the current event.

HailMary wrote:

While I'm guessing that you're farther along in general roster progression than me (so you see much higher enemy levels), I will say that I haven't needed to spend real money to get Top 4's and Top 20's in the Hulk subs. I actually haven't spent a cent on this game. In PvP, I've never used shields, and have cracked Top 5 a couple of times. Another player in my alliance doesn't spend any money either, but accrues HP fast enough to pop shields when he wants to in PvP.

yea, I'm at the point where I have a strong 2* team and need 3* covers. the only reliable way to get 3* characters is to place top 5 in tournaments and in order to do it consistently (because your opponent's strength scales with you) is to develop good shield tactics. you might notice that 90% of the top 10 are shielded in the last couple hours of the event and 40% are shielding in the last day so you don't lose ground overnight. the process is, shield, fight 3-4 opponents quickly, then shield before anyone can retaliate, rinse and repeat. I think once you get a strong 3* team it gets easier to get HP by winning tournaments but they just nerfed that out by not giving HP when you sell a 3*/4* cover.

in the high leveled opponents, it's great when I can win 5 in a row without getting beaten, but if you accidentally get decimated in the last hour, it's pretty temping to use a health pack.

I also don't sell my old characters so my earned HP mainly goes toward cover slots.