On "dealing with" cupcakes

carrion_pigeons

DarthDeVo wrote:

I would second that. PvP should just be: 1. Open match. 2. Look at battles and point totals being offered in each node. 3. Don't like the ones available? Skip until you find one you do. 3. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I think this is a bad idea. Obviously, the game is *designed* to be just this, but I feel pretty confident in saying that if the game really were just this, that it wouldn't be very popular. The emergent gameplay that stems from alliances gaming the system is where all the social interaction and strategy comes in. If it weren't for that, the game would be nothing but endless grinding, and would get pretty dull extremely fast.

In the absence of actually engaging content being put out by the developers, the community has stepped up to fill in the void where the actual "game" part of the game should be, that anyone who looks hard enough can find and be a part of. Admittedly, they've done it by creating a counterculture that advocates playing in ways that are directly discouraged by the actual game, and that isn't ideal, but saying the game should just be played how it's designed to be played - when that style of play pretty much sucks - doesn't help anyone.

STOPTHIS

carrion pigeons wrote:

What would constitute a solution that people would be okay with, do you think?

The main thing that makes CCs possible (from an execution point of view) is the fact that if you get hit by a comparatively easy team, you can hold that team in a node for an extended period of time, right? If this is prevented, then baking a cupcake becomes a huge gamble where you deliberately take a weak team against a stronger team and hope you don't get unlucky. So it seems that by far the simplest thing that would kill this tactic (at least dead enough to not be a main strategy element) is to just make it so all retals overwrite the retals currently on your nodes.

This absolutely is a "fix" that fails to address the OP's concerns, though. So what would be a fix that does address them?

I think the most popular solution on the forums is splitting PvPs into tier brackets. So you'd have to choose between playing a 2* Pvp or a 3* PvP or a 4* PvP or a 5* PvP (or maybe do what they do in Pokemon and divide it by frequency of use? or even just by level?) with a varying quality of rewards to incentivize moving to a higher bracket. This doesn't precisely solve the CC meta but it does make it much less plausible that it would be a major issue, given the right implementation.

Another possibility I like is tying rewards to your actual MMR. This would require restructuring the rewards model in PvP in general, but you could set it up so that placement rewards strictly covers, and then you get an amount of Iso/HP/CP proportional to your MMR score rewarded to you at the end of an event. This would disincentivize playing to lose at a fundamental level, and would have the effect of spreading out MMR scores much more, which would make matchmaking better in general.

I don't have much against CCs, personally, but given that they are trying to kill them, I hope they find a way to do it that doesn't make everyone hate the game (more than they already do).

The only thing I worry about in a braking PvP into brackets based on star tiers is the potential of monotony. We've seen the 5* players complain of the lack of variety in teams they see. Usually something like OML/other 5*/featured 3*. I wouldn't want every tier to be that.

My dumb idea that I haven't full thought through is tier-ing based on score. The idea is every 200-300 points would bump you up to a new tier and once you hit that tier you can't fall from it. So, if the first tier is set to 300 points and you hit it, that's your new minimum score. You can still get hit, but you'd only lose points until your score falls to that point. The twist is that people in lower tiers can't hit you. So someone sitting at 900 points can't bake a cupcake for players below 300 or 600. The added bonus is the possibility of eliminating retaliation nodes that are only worth 1 point. This would also limit the damage done by coordinated attacks on players.

I do see some problems with it. Like 2 players could climb by just repeatedly retaliating against each other or that it would limit how much is spent on shields, thus make it unlikely. Like I said, it's a dumb idea. Just spitting out ideas that might make cupcakes less effective, but not hurt everyone.

IamTheDanger

Pylgrim wrote:

Instead of looking at cupcaking as an evil issue that needs to, ominously, "be taken care of", can you please pass the message that it needs to be seen as a symptom of a more insidious, larger issue which is the one that needs to be addressed?

This, I completely agree with. I rarely play PvP, and I've used Line for over a year and a half. So if I wanted to, I could easily join the bakers.

The problem for me is the same as several others. I don't like losing 150-250 points in the time it takes me to win a single match. There is no way to defend against it. If I were able to defend myself when attacked, (and I mean "me", not the Ai), if it was truly PvP, then I'd play it all the time. And by true PvP, I mean actual player against actual player. Not player against Ai. I don't like the Ai fighting my defensive battles for me.

I imagine this would require a major overhaul of coding and programming, so it probably won't happen. However, HiFi has stated that it's being worked on, and I have faith that Demiurge can come up with middle ground kind of solution. When that happens, I'll start playing PvP. Probably. Until then, it just doesn't in intrest me the way it is.

SnowcaTT

I lost Line for 5-6 seasons due to an update that didn't work for me. It was a bummer, it was much harder to hit 1300. It was pretty fun and less time consuming to play though!

I recently re-gained Line. It's much easier to hit 1300. It's much more fun to have a back-and-forth discussion with folks. It takes a lot more time, and I can see why I railed against it without it, and why others would.

Long ago the Devs said they didn't want "outside communication" to be needed - but it practically is with current MMR and reward tiers. I wouldn't mind seeing cc's go away, and I've long (and still) promoted getting rid of all player names, and make sure alliances can't hit each other. CC's may still "find a way".

In my first six months here I posted something about wishing that PVP mattered for the full 2.5 days, that your point loss wouldn't be so severe, that it wouldn't require payment to play the entire time and keep those points. To this day, I still wish this.

dsds

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

Pylgrim wrote:

Instead of looking at cupcaking as an evil issue that needs to, ominously, "be taken care of", can you please pass the message that it needs to be seen as a symptom of a more insidious, larger issue which is the one that needs to be addressed?

This, I completely agree with. I rarely play PvP, and I've used Line for over a year and a half. So if I wanted to, I could easily join the bakers.

The problem for me is the same as several others. I don't like losing 150-250 points in the time it takes me to win a single match. There is no way to defend against it. If I were able to defend myself when attacked, (and I mean "me", not the Ai), if it was truly PvP, then I'd play it all the time. And by true PvP, I mean actual player against actual player. Not player against Ai. I don't like the Ai fighting my defensive battles for me.

I imagine this would require a major overhaul of coding and programming, so it probably won't happen. However, HiFi has stated that it's being worked on, and I have faith that Demiurge can come up with middle ground kind of solution. When that happens, I'll start playing PvP. Probably. Until then, it just doesn't in intrest me the way it is.

Yeah I suggested something like that. I am even more lax than that. I don't mind the ai fighting for me if it speeds up the fight because to wait for a player to move both sides would at least double the time. The problem I have is that the ai shouldn't be fighting for me for multiple battles at the same time. If it is true pvp with ai defending for you, then your ai should only fight one battle not 5-10 battles at once.

DarthDeVo

carrion pigeons wrote:

DarthDeVo wrote:

I would second that. PvP should just be: 1. Open match. 2. Look at battles and point totals being offered in each node. 3. Don't like the ones available? Skip until you find one you do. 3. Wash, rinse, repeat.

I think this is a bad idea. Obviously, the game is *designed* to be just this, but I feel pretty confident in saying that if the game really were just this, that it wouldn't be very popular. The emergent gameplay that stems from alliances gaming the system is where all the social interaction and strategy comes in. If it weren't for that, the game would be nothing but endless grinding, and would get pretty dull extremely fast.

In the absence of actually engaging content being put out by the developers, the community has stepped up to fill in the void where the actual "game" part of the game should be, that anyone who looks hard enough can find and be a part of. Admittedly, they've done it by creating a counterculture that advocates playing in ways that are directly discouraged by the actual game, and that isn't ideal, but saying the game should just be played how it's designed to be played - when that style of play pretty much sucks - doesn't help anyone.

I've got nothing against social interaction fostered by the game. That is why I joined the forums and make posts, after all.

I guess the issue that bothers me the most about it is that, until I came here, I had no idea any such strategies existed. It's probably highly likely that most people playing the game do so casually and don't get involved in the forums or Line or anything like that. So probably the vast majority of people playing are just doing it the way I described and not seeing too many benefits from playing in that manner.

It's likely they're not hitting decent progression and even less likely they're getting placement rewards. I actually try for these things (albeit not using cupcaking/baking, outside coordination, shield hopping, etc.) and have a hard time earning decent rewards. In effect, they're being punished because they aren't making an extra investment of time that others are essentially exploiting.

Maybe they don't have the desire, time (honestly, I probably spend too much time playing and on the forum as is, can't imagine spending more time figuring out coordinating attacks and such) or are just plain ignorant of these strategies. Like I said, I had no idea any of this existed until I came to the forum.

So then it becomes a matter of, "Is PvP worth the time and energy I sink into it?" Personally for me, it's just barely a yes at this point. As I mentioned earlier, I have had a little more luck lately at least getting to the 650 mark, but it seems like without fail I'll get REALLY close to 725 but then just get hammered back down to 500 (or worse) which is where I pretty much stay, and it's been a long time since I was T100. So for the time and effort I put into PvP, it's mostly not worth it. I think I've resigned myself to the fact I need to beef up my roster a bit before I have an easier time maybe getting to at least 800 and T100.

And truthfully, this is probably less a cupcaking/baking issue and more an inherent design flaw issue that makes it hard to hit the progression/placement rewards. I just know that when I first started learning about all of this (probably within the last month or so, and I've been playing for about 4.5 months) I kind of felt like it was an unfair advantage, especially since I'm pretty sure I was retaliated against pretty hard on several occasions for accidentally sniping when I thought I was merely lucking out from the system accidentally feeding me a seed team for 75 points.

morph3us

DarthDeVo wrote:

[Does cupcaking increase the total number of points in a given slice, thus making it easier for everyone to hit progression?

For what it's worth, it does. An example, to illustrate.

I'm climbing with a pair of 5*s, and I eventually get to 1300 points. At this stage, I can just shield up, and call it done. If I do so, because of MMR, the only people who can queue me are other people with equivalently levelled 5*s, and who are already close to 1000 points (give or take). So, I shield, and I might get 3 bounces off my shield later. If we assume they're 60 point bounces (just to average the values out), that's 180 points that have been added to the shard, and those people who just bounced off my shield are now worth 60 points more each for people who will eventually hit them. In addition, those 3 people who are worth more are also 5* players, so they're not queuable by the 3* and 4* players who are trying to reach progression, so those points are effectively siloed from the rest of the shard.

Now, let's say I'm climbing with a pair of 5*s, and I also eventually get to 1300 points. At this stage, I bake a cupcake of the loaner and two 2*s. Because this team is more widely queuable than my pair of 5*s (down to maybe 800 points or so, and by 2*, 3*, 4*, and 5* players), after I shield, I get 10 bounces (which is actually pretty low, I probably get a lot more). Again, assuming they're 60 point bounces, that's 600 points that have been added to the shard, and that's 10 more people who are worth more to other people who will eventually hit them. I might add, to address the criticisms of the "closed shop, benefiting a small clique", usually, when doing that sort of thing, I'd notice about 30% of bounces are from people I don't know, so it's really common for those points to spread out to other players outside the battle chat, which is absolutely fine.

DarthDeVo wrote:

And truthfully, this is probably less a cupcaking/baking issue and more an inherent design flaw issue that makes it hard to hit the progression/placement rewards. I just know that when I first started learning about all of this (probably within the last month or so, and I've been playing for about 4.5 months) I kind of felt like it was an unfair advantage, especially since I'm pretty sure I was retaliated against pretty hard on several occasions for accidentally sniping when I thought I was merely lucking out from the system accidentally feeding me a seed team for 75 points.

I'd agree with that. Hitting progression rewards is actually really difficult for most people, because of limited queues and points. I've been playing this game for a long time, and I've played without battle chats, without cupcakes, shield hopping the old fashioned way, taking 4-6 hops to get to 1300 points. It's slow, and time consuming, and much, much worse since shield cooldowns were introduced. Whether that's the original design intent, I'm not sure. I think cupcakes help with adding points to a shard to make progression more achievable in a more casual friendly way (oddly enough). I'm not a fan of massive point inflation due to cakes, I have to admit, though.

Also, for what it's worth, most bakers aren't really that fussed if a random person hits them during a bake. It's part of the game. If someone bakes, they're taking a risk, and need to shield up fast afterwards. Retaliations against random hits are pretty rare, in my experience.

On an added note, if you want to see what happens to points in a shard without cupcakes, go and play in S2 sometime, and see what happens to high value targets once you get past 600 points or so. I think cupcakes are something that, at least in part, developed because of the difficulty to finding reasonable point value targets to hit higher progression.

Edited to clarify the first point about MMR siloing points in a shard.

puppychow

jobob wrote:

Cupcakes are a fun little side game that keeps things interesting for a lot of vets, and helps a lot of newcomers progress... I don't know that it's something the developers really want to go after.

It's really two issues. First, game devs may believe that too many players are hitting the 1k/1.3k rewards. Second, the point inflation in pvp may be discouraging players w/ lower shield rank rosters from spending hp to buy shields and compete. If baking cupcakes lead to, on a macro-level, lower spending by players, then game devs will certainly try to stop bakers.

morph3us

puppychow wrote:

jobob wrote:

Cupcakes are a fun little side game that keeps things interesting for a lot of vets, and helps a lot of newcomers progress... I don't know that it's something the developers really want to go after.

It's really two issues. First, game devs may believe that too many players are hitting the 1k/1.3k rewards. Second, the point inflation in pvp may be discouraging players w/ lower shield rank rosters from spending hp to buy shields and compete. If baking cupcakes lead to, on a macro-level, lower spending by players, then game devs will certainly try to stop bakers.

They probably do lead to lower spending, at least on the face of it. Cupcakes probably halve the number of shields required to reach progression. I guess the follow on question is whether the increased ease of entry and success rate leads to more people spending on that smaller number of shields to try and reach progression.

Reading between the lines, it seems like we have a proportion of people here who feel defeated by PvP and their ability to reach their desired progression point, and therefore do not spend on shields at all. Conversely, how many people are spending on shields who otherwise would not, because they know they can reach their desired progression with teamwork/cupcakes?

Norksman

morph3us wrote:

On an added note, if you want to see what happens to points in a shard without cupcakes, go and play in S2 sometime, and see what happens to high value targets once you get past 600 points or so. I think cupcakes are something that, at least in part, developed because of the difficulty to finding reasonable point value targets to hit higher progression..

I play in S1 most of the time, have a 3* roster. I've gotten to 800 a few times, never 1k. I rarely see matches worth more than 50 points and I would say my float is about 200 points. If I am anywhere above that, I will get hit consistently. I think I have seen a cupcake once during my 450 days playing.

Ultimately, I find it hard to see that there would be any difference at my level of play whether people bake or not.

GurlBYE

The issue with this forum and topics that effect all of gameplay is that this forum is mostly an echo of veterans and whales (not an insult, hell I wish I had the cash, or kept up with the game from day 1) with the occasional voices of those from earlier steps of the game.

The majority here will almost always unanimously approach every topic leaning towards something in the end game, or that doesn't effect players inside of high end alliances with strict minimums or steeper.

Pvp is the strangest mode in this game to me because unlike a lot, the competition isn't based on gameplay but on using as many things outside of matching 3 as possible to get ahead.

Attacking alliance mates, coordinating for more point production, group attack unwanted people who may attack a person twice because the queue is giving 3 consistent options while draining one of the limited resources of the game for each shuffle. false teams, claiming slices between stronger alliances. Its fascinating.

Even rosters which are a result of gameplay (and a truck load of it, you aren't getting a cover per match here), but not gameplay itself are a larger impact on pvp than playing.

If there were rentals I'd be singing a different tune, but on a base level pvp is already a wild wild west, but I think thats what the top participants in it like about it.

instead of adjusting maybe they should just create a new competitive mode. Well a new mode because everything in this game is a competition outside of DDQ.

morph3us

Norksman wrote:

I play in S1 most of the time, have a 3* roster. I've gotten to 800 a few times, never 1k. I rarely see matches worth more than 50 points and I would say my float is about 200 points. If I am anywhere above that, I will get hit consistently. I think I have seen a cupcake once during my 450 days playing.

Ultimately, I find it hard to see that there would be any difference at my level of play whether people bake or not.

Here's the difference for you in a shard with no baking. You'd probably climb to 600 points or so, and then be faced with a horde of 30 point or less matches, until fairly late in the event. Those 45-50 point matches probably would be very, very rare until then (and 50+ matches virtually non-existent), because everyone would be shield hopping from 700 points plus, and staying out to be queuable for a very, very short time only.

As an aside, your float point isn't the point at which you can float without getting hit. Your float point is that point at which you can sit unshielded, and more or less tread water by playing a match here and there (but not constantly).

morph3us

GurlBYE wrote:

Pvp is the strangest mode in this game to me because unlike a lot, the competition isn't based on gameplay but on using as many things outside of matching 3 as possible to get ahead.

Attacking alliance mates, coordinating for more point production, group attack unwanted people who may attack a person twice because the queue is giving 3 consistent options while draining one of the limited resources of the game for each shuffle. false teams, claiming slices between stronger alliances. Its fascinating.

Even rosters which are a result of gameplay (and a truck load of it, you aren't getting a cover per match here), but not gameplay itself are a larger impact on pvp than playing.

You're absolutely right. PvP is a strange game mode, and everyone is playing it differently, and often discordantly, beyond the supposed competitive nature of the gameplay.

Player 1 might be a casual player, trying to build his/her roster, and trying to reach certain progression points. They might be HP poor, and feel that every point they earn in PvP is hard earned, and very much dislike being hit in game, as it makes their progress to that reward slower and more difficult.

Player 2 might be a slightly more hardcore player, who knows what their float point is, when to shield, when to hop, but isn't in a major alliance, but can hit 1k reasonably well.

Player 3 might be a player in a major alliance, who understands how to shield, and how to line up cupcakes, and finds they have no issue at all reaching their 1300.

Player 4 might be a 5* veteran, who is frustrated by 5* MMR hell. They know they'll reach their progression eventually, but really need iso, so they trapcake and yoyo up and down all the way through the event, just to farm iso.

Player 5 might be a 5* frontrunner/baker, who climbs early, and MMR grills as well as bakes to try and propagate points down throughout the shard.

Player 6 might be a sniper, who dislikes the thought of an "easy mode", or the point inflation that you see with cupcakes sometimes.

Player 7 might be playing a game within a game, like alphabet tag, where they're hitting a player starting with a different letter each time.

They're all playing in the same pool, but all playing very differently, and towards different objectives.

Astralgazer

What if "progression points" are just that: points made by progression. Like in the tv quiz show, where there are "safe points" where you can't go below that even if you lose? Say, the first "safe point" is 200. You can climb, and be beaten back, but never go below 200. The second is, say, 500; the third is 800. You would still need shield if you want to really get that 1k or 1.3k points, but the sense that you have progressed somewhat in PVP will be there. The distance between safe points is far enough to make it possible for players to "run out of gas" between safe points, and thus needing shields to protect their points.

This will deter CC in that one can hit bakers just after they pass a "safe point" and cannot be beaten down below that point. This way, the loss will be on the bakers. On the other hand, hitting a weaker player over and over would not give such an anguish for the victim, because they have safe points to anchor.

Dumb suggestion from a weak player. I know.

carrion_pigeons

Astralgazer wrote:

What if "progression points" are just that: points made by progression. Like in the tv quiz show, where there are "safe points" where you can't go below that even if you lose? Say, the first "safe point" is 200. You can climb, and be beaten back, but never go below 200. The second is, say, 500; the third is 800. You would still need shield if you want to really get that 1k or 1.3k points, but the sense that you have progressed somewhat in PVP will be there. The distance between safe points is far enough to make it possible for players to "run out of gas" between safe points, and thus needing shields to protect their points.

This will deter CC in that one can hit bakers just after they pass a "safe point" and cannot be beaten down below that point. This way, the loss will be on the bakers. On the other hand, hitting a weaker player over and over would not give such an anguish for the victim, because they have safe points to anchor.

Dumb suggestion from a weak player. I know.

I don't think checkpoints are a terrible idea, but they would have to come with a significant adjustment to how points are scored. As it stands such a change would make cupcakes trivially easy to bake. Maybe make it so you can never see people at a different check point than you? That would change a ton of things about how high end players compete, though maybe that's not actually a bad thing?

firethorne

I do love the checkpoint idea. Though, I think it is more a solution to the "lost more points than I won despite winning my match" problem. That is a huge problem, so checkpoints could really benefit the game. I still don't think it would change anything with cupcakes.

I think if you really want to change behavior, the only way to do it is to offer substantive rewards for so called "normal" play, and probably get outside of the point system box entirely

What about some sort of achievement system? Layer on additional rewards, like cp or significantly more ISO for beating 4 and 5* teams. The way to make people fight at their own class is to give them a reason to do so. If a 2* cupcake and a 4* champ both give the same rewards, there is no reason not to do the 2*. You don't need to change the cupcakes, you need to make a better alternative, a reason to go into the tougher fights.

MarvelMan

Check points sound neat, but are crazy exploitable. Once you cross a threshold, you wont care what happens until you push for the next. So it will create pools of people who have just hit one where you can pound them over and over and over without them losing anything. Id bet that would inflate scores more than CCing does, and be far more widespread as it would be much easier to identify without external communication. We, as a player base, are incredibly good at finding loopholes, ways to exploit mechanics, etc. And anything that introduces complexity WILL add to those.

Dragon_Nexus

MarvelMan wrote:

Once you cross a threshold, you wont care what happens until you push for the next. So it will create pools of people who have just hit one where you can pound them over and over and over without them losing anything.

Perhaps I'm being ignorant here but I fail to see an issue there? If there's a system introduced where you only see people in your section, anyway. I mean, you're hammering the same guy and moving on up the score board, eventually you'll pass him and he'll be worth less to you. By that point you've gone into his checkpointed area and are fighting bigger fish. You gain everything, he loses nothing...seems okay to me.

I do like the idea of checkpointing. It's been a long time since I've been able to hit 1000. I've been close, but generally speaking I feel content with hitting 900. I used to go in S4 but when it became difficult to break past 850, usually struggling to get to 800, winning a fight and then plummiting back down to 700, I was advised to switch to a different slice. I tried S3 for a season and haven't gone back to S4 since, I can get to 900 or 950 very easilly there, but 1000 is still ellusive. It's a shame because I used to hit 1000 much more regularly before championing nerfed the whole 3* roster. Not a 3* roster is easy points in PvP and 4*s are where the challenges lie for me. If I don't have this week's boosted 4* I have a harder time of it.

Cupcaking never bothered me too much. I felt a little grumpy about not really wishing to participate in the hardcore money grind of shield hopping and such and how it was screwing me out of hitting 1000 (I don't care about placement that much, top 50 or top 100 is fine with me). I'm not even that bothered about hitting 1300, though it would be nice. I'd be happy hitting 1000 and getting a 4* cover since it's the only way of getting a cover you know you need. These days I just can't do it. I get to 950 and get hit as often, if not more often, than I win. I tread water and sometimes get pulled away with the current. So now to avoid the stress and frustration I try to brewak 900 then shield and give up.

MarvelMan

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

MarvelMan wrote:

Once you cross a threshold, you wont care what happens until you push for the next. So it will create pools of people who have just hit one where you can pound them over and over and over without them losing anything.

Perhaps I'm being ignorant here but I fail to see an issue there? If there's a system introduced where you only see people in your section, anyway. I mean, you're hammering the same guy and moving on up the score board, eventually you'll pass him and he'll be worth less to you. By that point you've gone into his checkpointed area and are fighting bigger fish. You gain everything, he loses nothing...seems okay to me.

I do like the idea of checkpointing. It's been a long time since I've been able to hit 1000. I've been close, but generally speaking I feel content with hitting 900. I used to go in S4 but when it became difficult to break past 850, usually struggling to get to 800, winning a fight and then plummiting back down to 700, I was advised to switch to a different slice. I tried S3 for a season and haven't gone back to S4 since, I can get to 900 or 950 very easilly there, but 1000 is still ellusive. It's a shame because I used to hit 1000 much more regularly before championing nerfed the whole 3* roster. Not a 3* roster is easy points in PvP and 4*s are where the challenges lie for me. If I don't have this week's boosted 4* I have a harder time of it.

Cupcaking never bothered me too much. I felt a little grumpy about not really wishing to participate in the hardcore money grind of shield hopping and such and how it was screwing me out of hitting 1000 (I don't care about placement that much, top 50 or top 100 is fine with me). I'm not even that bothered about hitting 1300, though it would be nice. I'd be happy hitting 1000 and getting a 4* cover since it's the only way of getting a cover you know you need. These days I just can't do it. I get to 950 and get hit as often, if not more often, than I win. I tread water and sometimes get pulled away with the current. So now to avoid the stress and frustration I try to brewak 900 then shield and give up.

Say there was a checkpoint at 900, and someone passed it then couldnt drop below 900. If they can, you have the system where we are today where you dont lose the rewards but your score can drop. Once I cross 900, Ill pound that 900 point guy over and over and over til I hit the next threshold. He doesnt lose anything, I gain and dont affect others who are climbing. Yes, each fight will be less and less til you cross into the next threshold but if that person isnt losing anything and wont retaliate til you cross above, who cares? Far worse than CCing now.

revskip

I'll be sad if cupcakes are gone. Even though I'm not in battle chats they still would occasionally show up in my queue at exactly the most opportune times. The only two times I ever hit 1K and around half of the times I have 800 have all been because I found a couple of cupcakes at an opportune time. 4* covers are gated behind that 1k score which is unreachable for a 3* transitioner like myself. Hell, most of the time just getting to 800 requires a handful of factors to align for me.