Why is playing over the full run of a pvp not beneficial?

VizMantis

I've been trying to hit the 900 pt progression reward more frequently in pvp. In doing so, I've noticed that the system does not encourage play over the full 3 day period of the pvp.

For the first 2 days, the point pool is very shallow. I can't get very high before matches aren't rewarding very good point values. Then on the last day, I'm punished for having played early by high point losses, while my attackers, who started late are rewarded with higher match points.

Obviously, I can wait to play like everyone else and take advantage of this myself, but it seems extremely odd to punish people playing the game over the predetermined period. What's up with that?

fmftint

Play from the start, rise and fall, collect iso

The Herald

PvP could do with more work

It's more Player Vs Developer than anything else (as certain unmentionable sweet delights have shown recently, for good or for ill).

Clearance Levels, experimental formats over anniversary then in off season, and the baked goods prohibition have shown the Dev team are taking an active interest in working on PvP though so hopefully they will go on adjusting it into a happier state.

cyineedsn

If you know roughly how high your roster can float over the course of the event you can space out your climb without having to worry as much about health pack drain, and conflicting with pve grinds (if you do grind pve). There's a value to starting your final climb having a few hundred points already, vs starting at 0 in a mad dash to the finish

The Bob The

Yep. First, find your float point (the max score where your team doesn't get attacked or is rarely attacked). Climb to it when you like and pursue one of the following options (presented in order of HP cost):

- Push early to draw fire and farm retals for ISO
- Sit at float point until ready to push to your goal then shield to end or fall (depending on whether you're after placement)
- Push as far as you're comfortable, shield, Q up some decently score teams, fight 'em, repeat until satisfied

Like another poster said, knowing your float point lets you climb gradually without much static, which saves resources and helps avoid having to set aside bigger blocks of play time.

GurlBYE

VizMantis wrote:

Obviously, I can wait to play like everyone else and take advantage of this myself, but it seems extremely odd to punish people playing the game over the predetermined period. What's up with that?

Pvp isn't built super thoughtfully.

That's kinda all there is to it.

It's a roster check/ using Hp to block people who will inevitably attack you for a throttled amount of points while people with better rosters leap frog over you without you getting a turn.

mpqr7

The key is to just mess around the first 48 hours and then actually grind at the very end when you do your hops to shield.

The first few days are just kind of meaningless. You can get decent progression, but don't expect to float very high. And you certainly shouldn't be running shields, as they're expensive and worthless at that point. I used to do crazy amounts of shielding, but it just doesn't fit with most schedules.

It's expensive to run 24-hour shields, but if you try to run an 8-hour shield overnight, then you'll probably miss when it breaks in the morning, and then it will be totally useless. It's very hard to plan your life around that, unless you regularly only get around 6 hours of sleep per night.

dsds

I climb to 300 the first day or so and stay there. Because I am not worth a lot of points and also because I don't lose very many points if I am attacked. Then slowly climb with the bracket. Basically staying within rank 50-100 but never higher than rank 20. Then on the last day, I do my final climb to 725-900. My roster is mostly champed 3* with a few champed 4*.

This gives me good rank, and most progression rewards and I get a bit of iso. When I am under 500pts, I don't care much about the points of the opponents as I am purely doing it for the iso.
I don't use shields at all.

HaywireII

I climb as high as I can each day and let people hit me and climb back up. This gives me more ISO and since below 800 points I lose less than the other players win off of me I am increasing the amount of points in circulation. If everyone played actively for the whole 3 days everyone would be able to score higher.

The Herald

Try the following:

Initial climb to 400.

Reclimb, go to 600.

Float at 600 (you're logging back in to reclimb, you're just hitting retals and spinning your wheels here).

Towards the end of the event, climb to 800 and slap a shield on. You are now hopping.

BE THE BUNNY.

900 is all you need. That will progress your roster. You can either delve into shield shenanigans to get some form of placement or else crash and burn after.

But this is a reasonable thing for a 3* transitioner to shoot for.

You can float (well, bob up and down with retals) at 600, then strike!

Depending on how well the event favours your roster, you will sometimes need to shield a little before you go from 600 to 800. Let people who have you queued bounce off for 1-3 hours, then scramble before anyone can see you again.

A single 3 hour and a single 8 hour will pay for themselves out of climbing and grabbing you covers across a PvP event.

PvP is possible, the game just doesn't explain to you how to do it

VizMantis

aesthetocyst wrote:

The OP has a bit of tunnel vision.

I agree that I have tunnel vision in the matter of pvp. I'm pretty much exclusively focused on getting that 4* cover. To be perfectly frank, I find the whole system of yo-yo'ing points to be frustrating. I prefer the more direct point accumulation of pve (as grindy as it is), where I've spent most of the last 3 years casually playing.

Unfortunately, that meant relying on RNGesus for my 4* growth (although SCL has remedied this somewhat). I started drawing more trash covers than not and my growth was stalling out, so the 4* pvp progression reward seemed like the way to go. I've been successful in the endeavor, I just found the heavy emphasis on last-day play to be an odd design choice given the 3-day duration.

I see what you're saying about other goals/styles of play outside of my own working in this format. But then again, it seems like your examples would benefit, or at least continue to be valid, given a system that wasn't so heavily weighted to the final day.

VizMantis

Yeah, I didn't really have any solutions to push. It was more of an observational post born of my greater activity in pvp.

Your idea for micro placement rewards might work. I can see that encouraging early play, which would enhance the available points pool.

Nellobee

aesthetocyst wrote:

VizMantis wrote:

... a system that wasn't so heavily weighted to the final day.

Such as?

Shorter events ... like LRs?

If we had shorter, more frequents events, expect the payout to be reduced by whatever factor the time is reduced.

Perhaps a system that paid some "micro" placement rewards every 12(?) hours ... or even more frequently? That might encourage establishing placement quickly and holding or improving it. Would certainly reward early joining, and introduce new tradeoffs for players to choose from.

Could also encourage players to play obsessively or feel compelled to do so, and rebel (Seriously, giving people stuf in this game always pisses some of them off ). It would also have the effect of further enriching already strong players, those who can rise quickly and simply sit at the top. But, with the spectrum of player's power ever-widening, that's pretty hard to avoid.

You could easily weight scoring by time. Maybe winning an early match is worth full points, but by the last twelve hours, you only get 20% of your ideal 75-point easy win.

The math isn't hard.

jobob

I agree, ISO farming is the main benefit to early PVP.

I think almost all of us realize that the last 12h or so are WAAAAAAY more important for placement.

But, it is nice to not have to do it all at once. I find it a little easier to go from 800 to 1400 than from 0 to 1400.

And for players earlier in their roster, getting a few points- even if you can only float 300 - 400, is still nice because it will save health packs when you make your push.