Thank god cupcakes are gone

fmftint

We_are_Venom wrote:

PvP scores are actually reasonable now. No more select pvp alliances dominating slices. Feels good.

You realize this is the first event of this "new system" and alliances are still tinkering with what works and what doesn't work. Expect scores to climb as time passes. Players are much more creative than the "testers" Demiurge uses

Astralgazer

And ... The flame war continues...

I'm gonna sit this one out. I'm just happy I've got all three GSBW covers plus all three SHulk covers this season. Though 800 in events still eludes me somehow.

We_are_Venom

SnickerDog wrote:

The issue I have with the incredibly short-sighted op and follow up posts is that the points from cc's were NOT "hoarded in alliances". I'm not in one of those top-10 groups, yet every event I would use cc's to climb to 1400-1800 points. If I wanted to spend the money/HP I could go even higher. You make it seem like only those who knew the double secret password could que up a cc. That's not the case.
The Devs decided they didn't like cc. That's fine. But you shouldn't be taking a victory lap. The leaderboard is not going to change. The players that were top 10 last week will be top 10 next week. You're going to finish just like you finished last week. Best case - you bump up a level or two in placement rewards. Congrats on that extra 3* cover. I'm sure that's better than a guarantee to get 25cp every event.

The double secret paasword is LINE and yeah they do limit who is coordiniting by implementing passwords.

If they could've prevented you from tapping them they would've so dont act like they were doing you any favor out of pure generosity. It was simply bad timing.

If you could hit those numbers you can hit 1.3k legitimately so nothing has changed for you outside of not getting the freebies.

SnickerDog

What's changed is that I'm now going to have to use more than 1 shield to get the cp. Which sucks.

And I think you have a weird idea of all these top alliances conspiring to hoard all the points and beat down the little guys like yourself. That couldn't be more wrong. They're some of the nicest guys and gals out there. They didn't care who made use of the points (as long as you waited a few minutes before hitting them!)

We_are_Venom

SnickerDog wrote:

What's changed is that I'm now going to have to use more than 1 shield to get the cp. Which sucks.

And I think you have a weird idea of all these top alliances conspiring to hoard all the points and beat down the little guys like yourself. That couldn't be more wrong. They're some of the nicest guys and gals out there. They didn't care who made use of the points (as long as you waited a few minutes before hitting them!)

They literally did conspire to hoard points and it was done at the expense of the general playerbase.

Some are nice others are not. You keep talking the virtues of the abuse of the system but there were others creating trap teams to hone in on high value, low risk targets for their friends and team members.

They didnt care as long as it didnt affect them but that's a far cry from they were simply being generous and wanted others to succeed. As long as their conditions were met and they were getting theirs you could get a piece of the pie. You think they'd let you get those points of it meant lower placement? Hell no.

The scores are lower because everyone has to play the game now rather than smash level 5's. I'm ok with that.

Blahahah

I think a note could be made that most players aren't on LINE, but all players encounter cupcakes eventually.

So in reality, most people aren't aware of what "cupcakes" are. The removal of them only affects the minority who cared to use them, the majority will just notice none of them pop up, if they notice any difference at all.

The climb to 25 cp isn't hard, or rather, it's not harder than it used to be. The only difference is it isn't a free catch anymore, but a top progression reward shouldn't really be free in the first place. Thats probably the end goal, making the top progression less "cheapened" by the ability to harvest massive amounts of points.

That's just my insight though. It could warrant civil discussion on if the difference is really so large as to be angry about. For most players, I'd imagine, it's not.

Phumade

We_are_Venom wrote:

SnickerDog wrote:

The issue I have with the incredibly short-sighted op and follow up posts is that the points from cc's were NOT "hoarded in alliances". I'm not in one of those top-10 groups, yet every event I would use cc's to climb to 1400-1800 points. If I wanted to spend the money/HP I could go even higher. You make it seem like only those who knew the double secret password could que up a cc. That's not the case.
The Devs decided they didn't like cc. That's fine. But you shouldn't be taking a victory lap. The leaderboard is not going to change. The players that were top 10 last week will be top 10 next week. You're going to finish just like you finished last week. Best case - you bump up a level or two in placement rewards. Congrats on that extra 3* cover. I'm sure that's better than a guarantee to get 25cp every event.

The double secret paasword is LINE and yeah they do limit who is coordiniting by implementing passwords.

If they could've prevented you from tapping them they would've so dont act like they were doing you any favor out of pure generosity. It was simply bad timing.

If you could hit those numbers you can hit 1.3k legitimately so nothing has changed for you outside of not getting the freebies.

Actually the big alliances want you to eat the CC. Your probably too new to remember when we first started using check rooms. But the original intent was to have as many people in the room as possible specifically so people knew when it was safe to hit vs que. This is was long before the cc meta. In fact one of the real drivers between cross alliance coordination (private check room between 2 mega alliances) was specifically so that more people could be incorporated into a checkroom. Alot of people put time in to monitor multiple rooms to accomodate #check requests and help as many people as humanly possible in a fun inviting atmosphere.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience. That is on the room mods. We want more people to use LINE so that we can share all the insights that have been made in the game. In pve, LRs, and pvp modes. All the commanders have learned over many hard seasons that when people are scoring big points, then everyone's happy and its a fun loose relaxed atmosphere. In all honestly, we want all players at all tiers to be able to score 1200 pts. After that people can decide for themselves how they want to sort themselves out placementwise.

If your willing to give LINE a 2nd chance, I'll personally take responsibility towards getting you invited into the room that meets your preferred end times. And I'll get you invited to one of the pve rooms so that you can get updates on when various brackets flip.

Ultimately we want all players to have access to the information that lets them score according to the effort that they are willing to put in.

Blahahah

Phumade wrote:

We_are_Venom wrote:

SnickerDog wrote:

The issue I have with the incredibly short-sighted op and follow up posts is that the points from cc's were NOT "hoarded in alliances". I'm not in one of those top-10 groups, yet every event I would use cc's to climb to 1400-1800 points. If I wanted to spend the money/HP I could go even higher. You make it seem like only those who knew the double secret password could que up a cc. That's not the case.
The Devs decided they didn't like cc. That's fine. But you shouldn't be taking a victory lap. The leaderboard is not going to change. The players that were top 10 last week will be top 10 next week. You're going to finish just like you finished last week. Best case - you bump up a level or two in placement rewards. Congrats on that extra 3* cover. I'm sure that's better than a guarantee to get 25cp every event.

The double secret paasword is LINE and yeah they do limit who is coordiniting by implementing passwords.

If they could've prevented you from tapping them they would've so dont act like they were doing you any favor out of pure generosity. It was simply bad timing.

If you could hit those numbers you can hit 1.3k legitimately so nothing has changed for you outside of not getting the freebies.

Actually the big alliances want you to eat the CC. Your probably too new to remember when we first started using check rooms. But the original intent was to have as many people in the room as possible specifically so people knew when it was safe to hit vs que. This is was long before the cc meta. In fact one of the real drivers between cross alliance coordination (private check room between 2 mega alliances) was specifically so that more people could be incorporated into a checkroom. Alot of people put time in to monitor multiple rooms to accomodate #check requests and help as many people as humanly possible in a fun inviting atmosphere.

I'm sorry you had a poor experience. That is on the room mods. We want more people to use LINE so that we can share all the insights that have been made in the game. In pve, LRs, and pvp modes. All the commanders have learned over many hard seasons that when people are scoring big points, then everyone's happy and its a fun loose relaxed atmosphere. In all honestly, we want all players at all tiers to be able to score 1200 pts. After that people can decide for themselves how they want to sort themselves out placementwise.

If your willing to give LINE a 2nd chance, I'll personally take responsibility towards getting you invited into the room that meets your preferred end times. And I'll get you invited to one of the pve rooms so that you can get updates on when various brackets flip.

Ultimately we want all players to have access to the information that lets them score according to the effort that they are willing to put in.

You're a nice guy. I like your style. If I weren't a caveman, I'd join LINE because you make it sound so welcoming, but alas, I am a caveman. Still, props for being a good guy.

Didgeridork

Here's my situation, I am not a five star player. I do not have a usable five star (oml 1/1/2 lvl 315 is my highest). I have 7 champed 4 stars, and all my 3 stars champed. I play champed iceman/im40 most of the time, or like this event champed 4thor/im40. I have hit a minimum of 1300 in every season event for the past two seasons. I am in a top 10/25 alliance. I can not break 1000k in this event.

That's right. I can not, without the aid of cc (large or small) reach max progression, despite having a good roster, and having done it every single time the last two seasons.

What is happening is I can not queue anyone other than the same four or five people, all for matches worth 20-30 points. Because of this new system, because a good majority of the player base that I normally am matched with are now using five star rosters, I can not find them in my queue. I can not battle them unless they can trick the new system to allow them to put out a champed 3/4 star match instead of the five star team (the new cc that only works part of the time).

I am the player that most needs the cp at this point in the game, but I can not make progression to reach it. I have spent 750 hp on shields already but am stopping at 935 (5th place in my bracket currently).

It's not just about having easy 1 and 2 star cupcake matches worth 75 points so I can do a five minute shield hop and gain 225 points before I am hit back down (because I am prime meat at a high score, by not having a five star a team). It's about not having ANY matches at this point, other than the few blatantly lower roster transitioners who I had to multi hit repeatedly to even get to 900.

That's right, the people complaining about being hit multiple times, are going to now be hit even more because players like me, you are now all we can find and battle. I am going to hit your subpar fistcage team six times knowing you most likely can't retaliate even if you wanted to. I'm going to do that instead of hit a champed four or five star team who will hit me back and steal whatever I'd just won.

I'm not a guy who likes to multi tap, I honestly try not to. But this change is forcing my hand. And by making it so hard for me to hit max progression, I am now a liability to my team, which makes it even worse for me and others in my position.

Look, if the mmr allowed me to queue my choice of twenty or thirty different people, I could probably find one worth hitting and maybe get to progression, but since it only cycles between at most four or five, I've spent a couple thousand iso this event just praying I get a newb match out do the blue. Normally I could coordinate with my alliance (cc or no) and know when to search for matches, but now even when they are hopping and available for queue, I can't find them because their team is way higher than mine etc etc

i just hit day 666 and I'm so dissalusioned with this game right now

pfarewell

Yes. Cupcakes are gone. I just got hit for -90 points on a two hit shield hop. My three star roster was no match for the 4 star I've burned through more hp trying to reach progression than I ever have. Not fun. No progress for my roster.
Should I go back to pve? Another go around of the oscorp heroic? No thanks, I can only handle fighting the dark avengers before it gets old. I'll finish this season, but I won't waste my money on a game that has ceased to be fun because I can't compete with the players outside of my level.

AtlasAxe

Didgeridork wrote:

Look, if the mmr allowed me to queue my choice of twenty or thirty different people, I could probably find one worth hitting and maybe get to progression, but since it only cycles between at most four or five, I've spent a couple thousand iso this event just praying I get a newb match out do the blue. Normally I could coordinate with my alliance (cc or no) and know when to search for matches, but now even when they are hopping and available for queue, I can't find them because their team is way higher than mine etc etc

i just hit day 666 and I'm so dissalusioned with this game right now

This expresses exactly what I'm feeling this event (and was trying to discuss in my thread). It's not the lack of CCs, The MMR has been so tightened that it's crazy. If I wanted to play the same few teams over and over and over again, I'd play PVE regularly. At least there I'm not spending a couple of K in ISO to find the teams.

cletus1985

I'll throw my perspective into the ring here. Agree or disagree this is my personal opinion.

1) Cupcakes added a side game that honestly made PvP more fun. It's just another grind now and it's making me question if this game is really fun enough for me to continue playing (lord knows PvE grindfests aren't any fun).

2) The biggest issue with removing cupcakes isn't how many points are injected into each slice, but the fact that it's the only core mechanic they removed (the point loss differential they implemented is laughable at best). The fact that I can play from the beginning and get to 1.3k+ points and a 5* team can come in the last 3 hrs and hit me from 300 points to steal 75 points is ridiculous. Make a cutoff where the point differential that awards 75 points is the lowest you can queue someone from.

3) To all the people who are demoralizing cupcakes that aren't at the top of the hill: have fun never finding a target you can beat worth more than 30 points again past 800ish points. While you may have very rarely ever found an actual cupcake, I can almost guarantee you found the 3* rosters using them. From this new system they probably won't exist anymore, so be prepared to take down champed boosted 4* and 5* rosters. Hope all you wanted was placement, because progression is about to disappear, and placement was actually taken care of with SCL's.

4) Have a nice day. I'm not upset at anyone, just less interested in MPQ and feeling like the naïve will be wishing they were more careful what they wished for soon.

Vhailorx

We_are_Venom wrote:

SnickerDog wrote:

What's changed is that I'm now going to have to use more than 1 shield to get the cp. Which sucks.

And I think you have a weird idea of all these top alliances conspiring to hoard all the points and beat down the little guys like yourself. That couldn't be more wrong. They're some of the nicest guys and gals out there. They didn't care who made use of the points (as long as you waited a few minutes before hitting them!)

They literally did conspire to hoard points and it was done at the expense of the general playerbase.

Some are nice others are not. You keep talking the virtues of the abuse of the system but there were others creating trap teams to hone in on high value, low risk targets for their friends and team members.

They didnt care as long as it didnt affect them but that's a far cry from they were simply being generous and wanted others to succeed. As long as their conditions were met and they were getting theirs you could get a piece of the pie. You think they'd let you get those points of it meant lower placement? Hell no.

The scores are lower because everyone has to play the game now rather than smash level 5's. I'm ok with that.

This and your previous post are just wrong venom.

If the "double secret password" is a free to download app that anyone with access to MPQ can also use on the exact same device, then it's not a very secure password.

There are lots of people on these forums and in this thread who participate in LINE and baking. they are telling you that your statements are wrong. Baking was not a conspiracy to hide extra points from the little guys. Baking added points to every slice, it doesn't detract them and it doesn't hide them. The point of baking wasn't to avoid getting hit. It was to avoid getting hit while unshielded because hits are inevitable at high point values.

I don't know what you are trying to say about traps, but there was no vast baking conspiracy to get all the points and keep other players from getting any. Most of the time the first bakers in any slice were 5* players. They didn't need to bake at all as they could (and still will) reach 1300 with relative ease (though also with a fair bit of repetition as the enemy diversity up that high is apparently ****).

There is a very small contingent of MPQ players who do engage in play of that type. But people will be people, and there are always going to be some people to enjoy frustrating other people. They are a small enough faction to be meaningless when considering the playerbase as a whole.
You are correct that bakers were primarily interested in benefiting themselves and their coordination partners on Line. But they is not at all the same thing as actively trying to prevent other players from scoring well.

I agree with Phumade. The MPQ community on Line is, by and large, very welcoming and the large alliance families are almost always eager for new dedicated players. We aren't bloodthirsty marauders looking for newbies to pillage.

The bottom line is that playing above 900 points or so in the PVP system as currently set up is just not fun (just like off-season events in the old system, especially BOP where ccs weren't really possible). It's basically impossible to win more than 1 match before getting hit during shield hops. And that means at least 4 hops to go from the 4* cover to the final CP prog. 4 hops sucks! At a minimum its 550HP, and 4 ten minute sessions of play spread out over 11 hours and periodic node cycling for high value targets. That's just not a fun gaming experience. Even if it is the dev's intent, why should we players just accept that? It's not fun for most of us or worth our time/money.

morph3us

Also, both Venom and Blahahah have mentioned that reaching 900 has been no different, and I think this is true.

Where things have changed is for 4* rosters trying to climb beyond 1000 points. Early feedback is that most are posting incrementally positive hops of only 10 to 20 points, because they're being hit so much now. This essentially has reduced a safe shield hop to 1 match hops for the rosters who need to reach 1200 the most, which is a very expensive, tedious way to reach 1200. A comment was made by one of these players that the 4* rosters have become the new cupcakes. Meanwhile, those of us with 5* rosters are still walking up to 1200 with no issues.

grunth13

OP talks about the secret password being LINE, but what he forgets to tell you is that he is on LINE. His alliance coordinates hits on LINE. What he is truly mad about is that he wasn't invited to the cupcake party. He doesn't like people scoring high, but he has no problem with taking 75 points from someone who had spent 500 hp climbing high enough to be worth 75 points because he late starts.

OP, I'm usually top 5 in my bracket, be it when i scored 6k or when I'm scoring 1.2 (currently 4th with 18 hours left) so cc didn't matter. What i have noticed though is that only 4 people in my bracket have reached 1.2 progression...more will get there eventually in the next 18 hours, but before I would see tons of people hitting 1.3 24 hours before. If all OP wanted was placement, he could have just started very late and bracket snipe to get placement.

Quebbster

morph3us wrote:

Also, both Venom and Blahahah have mentioned that reaching 900 has been no different, and I think this is true.

Where things have changed is for 4* rosters trying to climb beyond 1000 points. Early feedback is that most are posting incrementally positive hops of only 10 to 20 points, because they're being hit so much now. This essentially has reduced a safe shield hop to 1 match hops for the rosters who need to reach 1200 the most, which is a very expensive, tedious way to reach 1200. A comment was made by one of these players that the 4* rosters have become the new cupcakes. Meanwhile, those of us with 5* rosters are still walking up to 1200 with no issues.

Sticks and Stones has 10 CP at 575 points and 15 more at 1200 (Clearance Level 7). If this model persists (and I see no reason it wouldn't), the weaker rosters should get some CP at least.

Blahahah

Quebbster wrote:

morph3us wrote:

Also, both Venom and Blahahah have mentioned that reaching 900 has been no different, and I think this is true.

Where things have changed is for 4* rosters trying to climb beyond 1000 points. Early feedback is that most are posting incrementally positive hops of only 10 to 20 points, because they're being hit so much now. This essentially has reduced a safe shield hop to 1 match hops for the rosters who need to reach 1200 the most, which is a very expensive, tedious way to reach 1200. A comment was made by one of these players that the 4* rosters have become the new cupcakes. Meanwhile, those of us with 5* rosters are still walking up to 1200 with no issues.

Sticks and Stones has 10 CP at 575 points and 15 more at 1200 (Clearance Level 7). If this model persists (and I see no reason it wouldn't), the weaker rosters should get some CP at least.

15 CP at 1200 points?
*triggered*

morph3us

Quebbster wrote:

Sticks and Stones has 10 CP at 575 points and 15 more at 1200 (Clearance Level 7). If this model persists (and I see no reason it wouldn't), the weaker rosters should get some CP at least.

Didn't notice that, thanks, Quebbster. So, 1 LT every 2 pvps is the new going rate for most 4* rosters, then (or at least what the devs think should be the rate of accrual for free to play players).

Frank NewCastle

Wholly agree with Cletus/Morpheus.

Big dogs with champed5*s actually put their scores at risk when baking...now they can't do that their scoring is almost unimpeded and their imperative to shield almost disappears.

My leaderboard this event is ridiculous. 4 5* well into the 2000s, and me in 5th nearly 900pts adrift. I have CPs, but the concentration of points is palpable.

Pylgrim

Alright, I was previously speaking in a predictive manner. I just went and climbed to 1k in Fist bump for a reality check. Here's the main difference, climbing from 700 points to 1k:

Before: A wealth of targets worth 50-60 points given by varied rosters from transitioning 3*-4* players to full 5* ones.
Now: A wealth of 4* teams worth 20-40 points. After much skipping, one or two 50+ points targets could be found and they were always 5* teams.

Sooo pretty much as I predicted? Note that I'm not even mentioning cupcakes. When cupcakes existed it was rare to see one while under 1k points, anyway, even if you stalked Line. However, everybody benefitted from the comparatively more thriving enviroment that the chain of points generated by ccs provided, including targets of reasonable difficulty for a fledging 4* roster such as mine.