How could someone attack me 3x in a row?

Quebbster

Konman wrote:

This is another of those unwritten etiquette rules that you get punished for not reading? Brilliant.

Or possibly someone tricking people into thinking it's a cupcake to boost their own score.

Phumade

Gameplay is relatively mature at this point. Players have evolved their tactics beyond how to beat so and so into how do I can I force more favorable i.e. easy matchups that are worth maximum points.

mpqr7

Oooh, a trap-cake! I've never heard that term, but it makes total sense.

If you're going to attack a cupcake, you'd better bring your A Team, even if it's an easy battle. That way, retaliations against you won't be so juicy.

Also, you should probably shield shortly after eating it.

Astralgazer

Sorry for typo. I was going for 50 HP not CP. And to reiterate: I don't mind retaliation. It's just an unpleasant experience to be targetted over and over. That being said, this thread opens my eyes to the broken PVP system where there is a cartel of 4* heavy hitters pledge truce to one another and seek easy preys instead.

That this system has gone unchecked for a such a long time that it has bred a tradition shows that this is the system most profitable to the devs. It will continue.

The best thing I can do for now is to shoot for 725 then accept that I will lose 300-400 points from retaliation or whatever. Then I will try to maintain a hover at 500 for season score.

Thank you for opening my eyes.

GurlBYE

Quebbster wrote:

tizian2015 wrote:

How a player should know, that this specific team is under " the cupcake-rules"?

Looking at the fielded team and the amount of Points it's Worth should give you a clue whether it's a cupcake or not. If you suspect it is, check the opponent's roster to confirm. If he has maxed four- or fivestars but is Fielding one- and twostars, it's probably a cupcake.

tizian2015 wrote:

How to know, how much time the "friendly cupcakeplayer" needs to shield?

Time enough for one more fight in case they do a mid-hop bake so they can put their A-team back on defense. That's why I try to take on a different opponent Before hitting a cupcake.

it's still a **** system that doesn't work unless someone feels like doing more homework just to play the game.

If the person had a roster strong enough to wait at their current number and check someones roster, they wouldn't be looking for weaker teams to begin with.

GurlBYE

Phumade wrote:

Probably a harvested trapcake.

Probably the easiest way for 5* to climb through 600 is via trapcaking. I.e. putting out cc and hitting retals. At a low level sub 600. its the easiest and most reliable way to climb without hitting other 5*.

There are alot of weird quirks in mmr that make it possible and quite easy to triple a que. The one thing thats not clear in the message is "why didn't you shield?"

If you going to take a high level player on, did you really expect that he was going to let you take 70 points? His return triple probably only barely =70.

Time of climb is also pretty important. If you did that on day 1, the baker was ready, had a game plan and you got beat by a better tactic. In fact, I pretty much can guaranteed that you over climbed past the equilibrium pt and you were caught in his que field by virture of where he layed out the cc. I.e. if everyone in the shard is at 400. The baker is at 1k, your at 700. You are still in his que regardless of roster disparity. In the last 12 hours, the baker would never risk trying to triple you, but in the first 2 days, you were farmed for iso and or 2* covers.

lots of tactics have evolved as players refine their understanding of game psychology and tactics. In the aggregate, most players play like the zombie horde (i.e. sheep) and its easy to see patterns that can be taken advantage of. For example, you could plot out the time of bracket join vs avg score of the bracket top 10. and you would see that the later you join the bracket, the higher the avg score of top 10. (yes that drops at the very end)

Probably the most telling statement in your post was that you knew his roster was sandbagged, and you still took the risk on the assumption that he couldn't or wouldn't retaliate back.

The easiest way for a person with 5 stars to advance, is to just play.

They've already payed.
They don't need any of the rewards either.
Most people will skip them or spend so long fighting them that they'll lose points in the match.

There's some tactics sure whatever, but nearly all tactics are beat by "have a stronger roster"

it'd be different if we were all using rental teams of equal strength, or this was balance of power.
But its not.

Bowgentle

There's this misconception that players with stronger rosters prey on weaker rosters.
This is simply not true.

Except for some weird edge cases - if you climb really early and break the glass ceiling on MMR, say, you go to 950 in the first few hours of the PVP - the game only serves up stronger rosters as enemies.

If you're a 5* player, and play in the last 8 hours of a PVP, you will not see anything other than 5* rosters, most of them having higher levels on their 5*s.
You may luck into seeing a few 4* guys once you're past 1200 or so, but never below.

So no, we don't beat up the little guys, we mostly beat each other up.
Which is also the most idiotic aspect of PVP - you never feel like your roster has improved, because you're constantly thrown against stronger teams, never weaker teams.

I know, it's hard to believe for a 3* player who gets hit 5 times in a row by someone with a much stronger roster, but that's not the experience for the 4/5* crew.

Quebbster

Bowgentle wrote:

There's this misconception that players with stronger rosters prey on weaker rosters.
This is simply not true.

Except for some weird edge cases - if you climb really early and break the glass ceiling on MMR, say, you go to 950 in the first few hours of the PVP - the game only serves up stronger rosters as enemies.

If you're a 5* player, and play in the last 8 hours of a PVP, you will not see anything other than 5* rosters, most of them having higher levels on their 5*s.
You may luck into seeing a few 4* guys once you're past 1200 or so, but never below.

So no, we don't beat up the little guys, we mostly beat each other up.
Which is also the most idiotic aspect of PVP - you never feel like your roster has improved, because you're constantly thrown against stronger teams, never weaker teams.

I know, it's hard to believe for a 3* player who gets hit 5 times in a row by someone with a much stronger roster, but that's not the experience for the 4/5* crew.

Very much this. I recently maxed OML, and I figured a fully powered fivestar would make PvP easier. Turns out the main effect is that I got visible to even stronger players, so I get hit a lot more now.
(OML still helps a lot though, so I don't regret maxing him. It was a bit jarring to see all those hits come in though).

Huatimus

Astralgazer wrote:

Sorry for typo. I was going for 50 HP not CP. And to reiterate: I don't mind retaliation. It's just an unpleasant experience to be targetted over and over. That being said, this thread opens my eyes to the broken PVP system where there is a cartel of 4* heavy hitters pledge truce to one another and seek easy preys instead.

That this system has gone unchecked for a such a long time that it has bred a tradition shows that this is the system most profitable to the devs. It will continue.

The best thing I can do for now is to shoot for 725 then accept that I will lose 300-400 points from retaliation or whatever. Then I will try to maintain a hover at 500 for season score.

Thank you for opening my eyes.

I don't think your description is accurate at all. There's no 'cartel' of heavy hitters seeking easy preys. With MMR as it is now, they're pretty much only seeing each other until the so called easy preys hit high enough points. Most of the points actually come from hitting each other while shielded.

Points are lost faster than they are gained, so if players didn't cooperate, devs will be more profitable from people buying more shields. In fact, if you think this is somehow unfair, unchecked and your eyes have been opened to the existence of this so called cartels, why don't you try and join one instead and see for yourself what the situation truly is from the bigger picture rather than only from your own personal point of view?

Do you really think that the most optimal way for a heavy hitter to hit 1300 PVP progression points is to bully a score 700 1-pointer a few hundred times if you can even be found via skipping at that point in time?

Polares

Bowgentle wrote:

There's this misconception that players with stronger rosters prey on weaker rosters.
This is simply not true.

Except for some weird edge cases - if you climb really early and break the glass ceiling on MMR, say, you go to 950 in the first few hours of the PVP - the game only serves up stronger rosters as enemies.

If you're a 5* player, and play in the last 8 hours of a PVP, you will not see anything other than 5* rosters, most of them having higher levels on their 5*s.
You may luck into seeing a few 4* guys once you're past 1200 or so, but never below.

So no, we don't beat up the little guys, we mostly beat each other up.
Which is also the most idiotic aspect of PVP - you never feel like your roster has improved, because you're constantly thrown against stronger teams, never weaker teams.

I know, it's hard to believe for a 3* player who gets hit 5 times in a row by someone with a much stronger roster, but that's not the experience for the 4/5* crew.

This.

And It has gotten progressively worse. I guess a lot of people has some 5s already maxed by now so having a team of 5s doesn't shield you that much anymore. I usually play in the 4th slice, and the difference between how it was a couple of seasons ago to how it is now is quite big. From going to 300 to 1300 with just a couple of attacks to having to use 4 shields to get to 1300, doing very fast hops, etc. I might need to move from 4th slice to another one...

And I almost don't see any cupcake AT ALL.

tiomono

Huatimus wrote:

Astralgazer wrote:

Sorry for typo. I was going for 50 HP not CP. And to reiterate: I don't mind retaliation. It's just an unpleasant experience to be targetted over and over. That being said, this thread opens my eyes to the broken PVP system where there is a cartel of 4* heavy hitters pledge truce to one another and seek easy preys instead.

That this system has gone unchecked for a such a long time that it has bred a tradition shows that this is the system most profitable to the devs. It will continue.

The best thing I can do for now is to shoot for 725 then accept that I will lose 300-400 points from retaliation or whatever. Then I will try to maintain a hover at 500 for season score.

Thank you for opening my eyes.

I don't think your description is accurate at all. There's no 'cartel' of heavy hitters seeking easy preys. With MMR as it is now, they're pretty much only seeing each other until the so called easy preys hit high enough points. Most of the points actually come from hitting each other while shielded.

Points are lost faster than they are gained, so if players didn't cooperate, devs will be more profitable from people buying more shields. In fact, if you think this is somehow unfair, unchecked and your eyes have been opened to the existence of this so called cartels, why don't you try and join one instead and see for yourself what the situation truly is from the bigger picture rather than only from your own personal point of view?

Do you really think that the most optimal way for a heavy hitter to hit 1300 PVP progression points is to bully a score 700 1-pointer a few hundred times if you can even be found via skipping at that point in time?

Sounds suspiciously like a cartel.

People pressuring others to do things their way. So they can see the big picture.

"This will be better for everybody if you just coooerate."

All joking aside, I think higher level rosters are sometimes clueless. I do not have a single cover maxed 4 or even a usable 5. I play casual, I hit 700 maybe once a season. The amount of times I get stomped on by rosters with champed and boosted 4's and 5's in the 350 range is crazy. So if my points are too low to make me "visible" what's going on?

All I hear from people higher up is that you always face teams above your level. If I want anything more than 15 to 20 points I have to tackle teams with champed 4's and decent 5's. This makes no sense to me. And I have to skip 5 to 10 times to even find teams that are comparable to mine. While being hit by "bigger teams".

I understand that people will "play the system" to benefit themselves as much as possible, but you have to acknowledge that the system is pretty odd. It seems like it punishes people at every level.

Story mode is looking more and more appealing to me as my only mode.

Astralgazer

Apologize in advance if I have offended. The most recent posts however, contradict the early ones which say that most of you heavy hitters have truce amongst yourselves. This is what I call cartel.

I just want to have pleasant experience from a game. Games that are difficult, but fair, tend to give me that experience.

I enjoy PVP because it pits me with a varied opponents, unlike in PVE where it's Jugg and Moonstone all over again each time.

I play as I have time, I don't often have the luxury to wait until the last 2 hours or whatever tactics necessary to go anywhere in PVP.

But I guess one thing stands: that PVP is for those willing to spend RL money for shield. As long as it's the case, stray weaklings will always be butchered.

Quebbster

Astralgazer wrote:

Apologize in advance if I have offended. The most recent posts however, contradict the early ones which say that most of you heavy hitters have truce amongst yourselves. This is what I call cartel.

I just want to have pleasant experience from a game. Games that are difficult, but fair, tend to give me that experience.

I enjoy PVP because it pits me with a varied opponents, unlike in PVE where it's Jugg and Moonstone all over again each time.

I play as I have time, I don't often have the luxury to wait until the last 2 hours or whatever tactics necessary to go anywhere in PVP.

But I guess one thing stands: that PVP is for those willing to spend RL money for shield. As long as it's the case, stray weaklings will always be butchered.

You absolutely do not need to spend Money to shield. It's quite possible to earn the HP needed for an eight-hour and one Three-hour shield without paying a dime. The guys who regularly use more Shields than that are probably putting a bit of Money in the system though... and for that I am thankful since they keep the game up and running.

madsalad

GurlBYE wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

tizian2015 wrote:

How a player should know, that this specific team is under " the cupcake-rules"?

Looking at the fielded team and the amount of Points it's Worth should give you a clue whether it's a cupcake or not. If you suspect it is, check the opponent's roster to confirm. If he has maxed four- or fivestars but is Fielding one- and twostars, it's probably a cupcake.

tizian2015 wrote:

How to know, how much time the "friendly cupcakeplayer" needs to shield?

Time enough for one more fight in case they do a mid-hop bake so they can put their A-team back on defense. That's why I try to take on a different opponent Before hitting a cupcake.

it's still a **** system that doesn't work unless someone feels like doing more homework just to play the game.

If the person had a roster strong enough to wait at their current number and check someones roster, they wouldn't be looking for weaker teams to begin with.

I look at it this way: if you want to advance and be competitive in any game, you are going to research rules, gameplay strategies, etc... Cupcaking is one of those strategies.

If you are not playing competitively then you really shouldn't care about getting swatted. If you think you're not playing competitively and care about getting swatted then you are playing competitively.

To be good and exceed in any game requires knowledge, practice and patience. There is always a system.

madsalad

Also, for those complaining about 3* rosters getting stomped on by heavy hitters (4*/5*) is it possible that you are starting the climb in PVP too early? I would love to know when you actually start playing each round. If you start really early and you are hanging around at a lower level, it is possible that the 4*/5* rosters that are hitting you are hitting you during their late game climb. They may be starting their run withing the last 13 (or less) hours of an event and if you are just sitting there they will see you in their queue until they get high enough that you are no longer within range.

Huatimus

Is there a gang of people who're targeting you so hard that you can't even compete? Pretty sure that's a no.

Is there a gang of people forcing you to do things their way and dictate how you play the game? Pretty sure that's a no too.

Is there a bunch of people who're only hitting each other while shielded/cup caking to inject more points into the system so that everyone gets more points and easier to hit progression rewards for everybody? That's a yes, and if that counts as a truce and a cartel, then I guess you're right by your definitions.

I don't think that it's fair to blame high level rosters at any rate when it's obviously the system that's screwed up. Low level rosters complain that they're being beaten by high level rosters, high level rosters complain that they're being matched against each other only.

@tiomono I'm going to hazard a guess that you have at least 2 5* in your roster and that makes level 270+ 4* a suitable match for you(in the eyes of the current system even if your 5* does not have a lot of covers).

chamber44

madsalad wrote:

Also, for those complaining about 3* rosters getting stomped on by heavy hitters (4*/5*) is it possible that you are starting the climb in PVP too early? I would love to know when you actually start playing each round. If you start really early and you are hanging around at a lower level, it is possible that the 4*/5* rosters that are hitting you are hitting you during their late game climb. They may be starting their run withing the last 13 (or less) hours of an event and if you are just sitting there they will see you in their queue until they get high enough that you are no longer within range.

i think this is where the disconnect is with MPQ. It morphed into a game full of loopholes and exploitations, meaning that there are definite strategies to success (when to play, what slice works, etc). This means it's harder and harder for those of us who can't play at optimum times to keep progressing. That's not really anyone's fault ... it's just a bummer for the people who (fairly or unfairly) just wanted to play a simple Match-3 game skinned with their favorite comic book characters.

madsalad

chamber44 wrote:

madsalad wrote:

Also, for those complaining about 3* rosters getting stomped on by heavy hitters (4*/5*) is it possible that you are starting the climb in PVP too early? I would love to know when you actually start playing each round. If you start really early and you are hanging around at a lower level, it is possible that the 4*/5* rosters that are hitting you are hitting you during their late game climb. They may be starting their run withing the last 13 (or less) hours of an event and if you are just sitting there they will see you in their queue until they get high enough that you are no longer within range.

i think this is where the disconnect is with MPQ. It morphed into a game full of loopholes and exploitations, meaning that there are definite strategies to success (when to play, what slice works, etc). This means it's harder and harder for those of us who can't play at optimum times to keep progressing. That's not really anyone's fault ... it's just a bummer for the people who (fairly or unfairly) just wanted to play a simple Match-3 game skinned with their favorite comic book characters.

You can still play the match-3 game w/o penalty. It is still there. The rest of the game is based on roster strength and strategy and it takes time to get to that level of play. It is not a perfect system but it's not terrible either. Again, it's like any other game/thing in life: you want to be better/do better? - put in the time, the practice and the time to learn about the game/strategy and you will do much better. If people are not wiling to put that time in, then they will continue to perform at the same level.

Alsmir

madsalad wrote:

chamber44 wrote:

madsalad wrote:

Also, for those complaining about 3* rosters getting stomped on by heavy hitters (4*/5*) is it possible that you are starting the climb in PVP too early? I would love to know when you actually start playing each round. If you start really early and you are hanging around at a lower level, it is possible that the 4*/5* rosters that are hitting you are hitting you during their late game climb. They may be starting their run withing the last 13 (or less) hours of an event and if you are just sitting there they will see you in their queue until they get high enough that you are no longer within range.

i think this is where the disconnect is with MPQ. It morphed into a game full of loopholes and exploitations, meaning that there are definite strategies to success (when to play, what slice works, etc). This means it's harder and harder for those of us who can't play at optimum times to keep progressing. That's not really anyone's fault ... it's just a bummer for the people who (fairly or unfairly) just wanted to play a simple Match-3 game skinned with their favorite comic book characters.

You can still play the match-3 game w/o penalty. It is still there. The rest of the game is based on roster strength and strategy and it takes time to get to that level of play. It is not a perfect system but it's not terrible either. Again, it's like any other game/thing in life: you want to be better/do better? - put in the time, the practice and the time to learn about the game/strategy and you will do much better. If people are not wiling to put that time in, then they will continue to perform at the same level.

So how much time, how much time spend practicing and what do I need to learn to prevent getting hit by 2+ champed 4* characters in PvP, while all I have is 2 3* champs?

I love that attitude: "It's kinda broken, but it was broken for me so it's only fair if it's broken for everyone else. Learn to play issue!"

Quebbster

Alsmir wrote:

So how much time, how much time spend practicing and what do I need to learn to prevent getting hit by 2+ champed 4* characters in PvP, while all I have is 2 3* champs?

2 3* Champs is on the low side - I guess you are relying on those two guys all the time? Work on the rest of your threestars (best ones first of course) and you'll find that you can hit higher and higher...
A lot of it is Learning the timing of the play though - when it's relatively safe to climb, at what Point you should shield, and so on. Practice makes perfect.