No chance to recover

irwando

We need to reward competitive players by top X% instead of the hard numbering placement. The margins in this game are just too thin. One small error in timing, one small clear miss, or your clock being set a few seconds off can have a huge swing.

Even better, kill placement awards in PvE all together as it should be.

Tonight I missed grinding 2 nodes to zero, needing time for 2 more fights. Dropped me from 8th->22nd. So now instead of actively in the competition for for 3 covers I need to see if somehow i can scrape into top 20 for 2 covers if I'm lucky. There is no way to come back from that; no way am i going to end up in top 10 due to 5 minutes of lost play. Even my 8th place finish was only by <10 points. When scores are going to be in the 50k range or higher that's nothing. Such a small difference in points over the length of the competition should not result in a huge swing in rewards.

Yet another thing that tells me the devs don't actively compete in the game. What a craptacular feeling to lose so much over so little.

Smudge

Thing is, you'd need to change it to rewarding placement by achievement of overall % of possible points when playing perfectly, and then it just becomes a re-worked progression model.

Otherwise, we all know this dev team would just change it to .1-.2% gets top rewards, etc. down to top 10% gets the new 4* cover (assuming SCL7 for example). Converting placement rank to placement percentage isn't going to fix the situation for competitive PvE.

Dragon_Nexus

It's almost like if you watch a car race and someone takes a corner too wide and drops 10 places and has to try to recover but can't.

It might seem unfair, but you can't be the best without competing perfectly.

notamutant

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

It's almost like if you watch a car race and someone takes a corner too wide and drops 10 places and has to try to recover but can't.

It might seem unfair, but you can't be the best without competing perfectly.

Let's not pretend that MPQ is a game of skill. It is something like 80% time commitment (which is not a skill) and 17% luck (RNG). The last 3% is skill, but more in terms of long-term planning than how you actually play any individual matches. Punishing someone who actually DOES commit the right amount of time, but has slightly longer matches because of perhaps a few bad boards over the course of a last hour final grind is not really fair. Nor is it fun.

This has been the number one problem with their shift to the new PvE scoring system. The scores are way too clustered at the top. At could be this bad before, but not so consistently in even non-new character releases. The only real solution is to remove placement entirely, or as the OP suggested, some sort of complicated "close but no cigar" type reward system that doesn't punish you for being off by a few points.

StarScream

Participation trophies all around!

irwando

notamutant wrote:

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

It's almost like if you watch a car race and someone takes a corner too wide and drops 10 places and has to try to recover but can't.

It might seem unfair, but you can't be the best without competing perfectly.

Let's not pretend that MPQ is a game of skill. It is something like 80% time commitment (which is not a skill) and 17% luck (RNG). The last 3% is skill, but more in terms of long-term planning than how you actually play any individual matches. Punishing someone who actually DOES commit the right amount of time, but has slightly longer matches because of perhaps a few bad boards over the course of a last hour final grind is not really fair. Nor is it fun.

This has been the number one problem with their shift to the new PvE scoring system. The scores are way too clustered at the top. At could be this bad before, but not so consistently in even non-new character releases. The only real solution is to remove placement entirely, or as the OP suggested, some sort of complicated "close but no cigar" type reward system that doesn't punish you for being off by a few points.

All of this. Beating the matches isn't hard at my level - pretty much Jean & IM40 & SW takes every node pretty easily, but if you start to early you don't enough points to compete. If your grind is interrupted, you're done for the sub and for the event.. So you can be at the top, playing and life happens for 5 minutes over 4 days, and all of a sudden you're dropped significantly with no chance to recover. Its a **** way to reward lots of play.

irwando

StarScream wrote:

Participation trophies all around!

Ok, there's a difference between doing a few clears here and there and completing 56 clears a day most days (9x7) and 54 one of the days.

GurlBYE

StarScream wrote:

Participation trophies all around!

You do realize that most people who are doing the "best" in this game just threw money at it right?

GurlBYE

What interesting is that the dev team made this all so ridiculous because they feel the need to create artificial scarcity.

It sounds weird, but they'd only start doing more rewards if they basically did something like release characters twice as frequently as now.

So it's a pick your poison situation.

People have been talking about placement being gone out of pve for a WHILE now.

Honestly don't worry, this venom is bad and you'll get 1 cover in the next pve if you struggle. To top it off you likely won't get him fully for a few months, by then there will be several new characters around. Don't expect the final progression though because they decided to make it 4 clears for max prog. Because its not bad enough to run the same events every other week, but also make people entirely become burned out with your content as well.

PVE is very much just a test to see how many things you can drop to follow timers. I'd say blame the devs but its only as tight as it is because of the player base.

Phumade

The last inch is always the hardest. Honestly its all about planning and preparation and knowing your pace of play. Yeah it sucks to get caught behind a bad cascade and not finish a grind, but thats the penalty of trying to time to last min.

You need to have a risk mitigation strategy that lets you assess where your progress is in relation to what you had projected.

When we all suffering from all the game crashes, I lost many top 1/2 finishes due to having to reboot the game. At that point, I had to make a frank assessment of how badly I wanted top 1/2 vs guaranteeing a top 5 placement, and I adjusted my staring times accordingly.

Yes that cost me valuable points, but also forced me to think about other avenues where I could recoup points.

If we are going to keep pve competitive, then the tight timing and thin margins are gonna be necessary to force players to take real risks to win. There is nothing wrong is saying that miss timing a grind will cost you not just top 1/2 but most likely top 10.

And ultimately lets be honest. PVE is the only true competitive mode in the game. PVP is relatively simple by comparison, especially once check rooms and 5* rosters are factored into the compeititon.

GurlBYE

Phumade wrote:

The last inch is always the hardest. Honestly its all about planning and preparation and knowing your pace of play. Yeah it sucks to get caught behind a bad cascade and not finish a grind, but thats the penalty of trying to time to last min.

You need to have a risk mitigation strategy that lets you assess where your progress is in relation to what you had projected.

When we all suffering from all the game crashes, I lost many top 1/2 finishes due to having to reboot the game. At that point, I had to make a frank assessment of how badly I wanted top 1/2 vs guaranteeing a top 5 placement, and I adjusted my staring times accordingly.

Yes that cost me valuable points, but also forced me to think about other avenues where I could recoup points.

If we are going to keep pve competitive, then the tight timing and thin margins are gonna be necessary to force players to take real risks to win. There is nothing wrong is saying that miss timing a grind will cost you not just top 1/2 but most likely top 10.

And ultimately lets be honest. PVE is the only true competitive mode in the game. PVP is relatively simple by comparison, especially once check rooms and 5* rosters are factored into the compeititon.

PVE and PVP are both roster and time checks.

PVP just requires a stronger roster for placement.

Both are competing against other players for points, one is for a longer amount of time with limited points available
the other for a limited amount of time with points being entirely dependent on other players.

They aren't all that different, while scaling slows 5 star players down, they still tend to hit top 10 faster, because while the scaling is horrible a lot of players fail to acknowledge that the 3 star tier had their damage nerfed with champing, 4 stars are ridiculous champed and 5's also all have attacks with multiple uses. To simplify this argument, if the boss rush had been against 3 stars there would have been more ways to check them then fighting the 5 stars.

Phumade

GurlBYE wrote:

PVE and PVP are both roster and time checks.

PVP just requires a stronger roster for placement.

Both are competing against other players for points, one is for a longer amount of time with limited points available
the other for a limited amount of time with points being entirely dependent on other players.

LOL , Isn't every competition a roster and time check? In the NFL, the better roster who practices longer almost always wins the game. I can't think of a single competitive event (be it sports, or the "the voice") that doesn't revolve around having better talent and better preparation.

Your analysis of PVP and pve modes is fairly accurate and I would push back and say that they require two entirely different approaches to being successful. I don't necessarily see an issue in that.

No one expects a pvp focused roster/player who has extensive networking relationships with other alliances to have the same level of success in pve.

In the same fashion, pve rewards disciplined scheduling, node timing, and roster maintenance over and above having a super unbalanced roster.

Many people don't really talk about this aspect, but how your essentials are leveled makes a huge difference in how your grind goes. In events where I have a championed 4*, 3*, 2*, grinds are almost always sub 75min.

If I don't have a champed 4* (like KB) I almost always pay a time/ health pack penalty. This is doubly true if I just flipped my 2* and he's only at level 15 with 4 covers instead of 144 with 13 covers.

This is an important consideration and I specifically delayed flipping my 2* thor because he was the designed 2* essential for TaT.

If you've aligned your roster for the event, you will have much easier time than if you don't have the essentials leveled

GurlBYE

Phumade wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

PVE and PVP are both roster and time checks.

PVP just requires a stronger roster for placement.

Both are competing against other players for points, one is for a longer amount of time with limited points available
the other for a limited amount of time with points being entirely dependent on other players.

LOL , Isn't every competition a roster and time check? In the NFL, the better roster who practices longer almost always wins the game. I can't think of a single competitive event (be it sports, or the "the voice") that doesn't revolve around having better talent and better preparation.

Your analysis of PVP and pve modes is fairly accurate and I would push back and say that they require two entirely different approaches to being successful. I don't necessarily see an issue in that.

No one expects a pvp focused roster/player who has extensive networking relationships with other alliances to have the same level of success in pve.

In the same fashion, pve rewards disciplined scheduling, node timing, and roster maintenance over and above having a super unbalanced roster.

Many people don't really talk about this aspect, but how your essentials are leveled makes a huge difference in how your grind goes. In events where I have a championed 4*, 3*, 2*, grinds are almost always sub 75min.

If I don't have a champed 4* (like KB) I almost always pay a time/ health pack penalty. This is doubly true if I just flipped my 2* and he's only at level 15 with 4 covers instead of 144 with 13 covers.

This is an important consideration and I specifically delayed flipping my 2* thor because he was the designed 2* essential for TaT.

If you've aligned your roster for the event, you will have much easier time than if you don't have the essentials leveled

The issue is you are approaching the solution without acknowledging the problem. (also no need for nfl comparison, use something everyday and more related)

Q-Why do people want progression and placement to be manageable?
A- So they can build their rosters.

Q-How do they build their rosters in a specific direction?
A-By placing high enough to win the only covers that can guarantee progress.

Q- How do you place high enough to win those?
A- Have rosters strong enough to clear fast enough to get those points.



Now there are about 18 2's
41 3 stars
and 40 4 stars

The odds of any given person having those champed are ludicrously low and don't present a challenge or an evenly matched competition.

It's a game of haves and have not's.

I can grind as much as I like but if someone has all the essentials champed (lets use essential for a reward here)

The guy with a champed red hulk can clear faster than I can with my 1/4/0 (if his scaling was like mine, i'd literally have no shot what so ever, which is likely why so many people complained about soft capped characters with full covers). There's no level of prep i can do to change that. No special clear times, simply hoping for a bracket without him or that he falls asleep from grinding the same awful nodes are my only hope.

That's in addition to the topic at hand, which is clear times being strict, but directly related to roster strength and speed of clears of other players.

IamTheDanger

To the OP, I feel your pain. I mistimed a clear in Thick as Thieves and instead of clearing all nodes down to 1 point, I missed one node completely. Lucky for me it was an early sub so the points weren't that high. The end result was that now I'm struggling to stay in the t10. I'll need to do perfect clears and play optimally for the final sub or I'm out of t10.

Something for situations like these would be great. Playing hard just to miss out at the end by a few points because of one mistake really sucks. But players have been requesting placement rewards be removed from PvE for years, so I won't be holding my breath.

Daiches

"Phumade wrote:

No one expects a pvp focused roster/player who has extensive networking relationships with other alliances to have the same level of success in pve.

In the same fashion, pve rewards disciplined scheduling, node timing, and roster maintenance over and above having a super unbalanced roster.

Actually there are a bunch of us hybrid players that both score t5 in pvp and PVE. The annoying part in PVE however is that whenever a good 4star AoE is boosted, we have a distinct disadvantage in clear times vs capped 4star rosters. It's much easier to fire JG twice, assisted by SW and IM40, to clear a hard node, than it is to plow through 56k Moonstone, 60k Juggs, 40k Ares. Her 8k AoE does nothing to help us..

But as we know from their own mouths, they only test for midrange rosters anyway.

Phumade

GurlBYE wrote:

No special clear times, simply hoping for a bracket without him or that he falls asleep from grinding the same awful nodes are my only hope.

LOL, Then change the terms of the competition. I have played pve competitively for well over 18months since I had an epic battle with Scoville for 1st place in the Professor X debut event. In that time frame, I specifically left S2 because I didn't have the roster or tactics to take on the true elite pve players like Chuy, or DKFFIV. Once I got my head handed to me by Miss Behave's 5* roster in Venom Bomb (Miles or Gwen's event) and that convinced me to retool my roster to compete at the top end of the game. Once I saw where my Iso shortfall was, I took my lumps shut down my 4* development until all my 3* were champed and proceeded accordingly. I specifically built up a proven track record of performance so that I could have consistent access to Top 10 pve alliances, and those commander's knew I could deliver the scores they needed.

I tell you with utter sincerity that I've only done a buy club twice in my game career. (for my birthday and anniversary, and neither experience made a difference with respect to my 5* roster). In fact I have exactly $230 dollars invested in my account (2 buy clubs, 3 vip purchases)

My point here is that the actual event is about executing on all the things you have previously done to set yourself up for success.

Every T5 placement I achieve in either pve or pvp isn't about what I did in the event, rather its about all the decisions I made in the previous 900 days.

GurlBYE

Phumade wrote:

GurlBYE wrote:

No special clear times, simply hoping for a bracket without him or that he falls asleep from grinding the same awful nodes are my only hope.

LOL, Then change the terms of the competition. I have played pve competitively for well over 18months since I had an epic battle with Scoville for 1st place in the Professor X debut event. In that time frame, I specifically left S2 because I didn't have the roster or tactics to take on the true elite pve players like Chuy, or DKFFIV. Once I got my head handed to me by Miss Behave's 5* roster in Venom Bomb (Miles or Gwen's event) and that convinced me to retool my roster to compete at the top end of the game. Once I saw where my Iso shortfall was, I took my lumps shut down my 4* development until all my 3* were champed and proceeded accordingly. I specifically built up a proven track record of performance so that I could have consistent access to Top 10 pve alliances, and those commander's knew I could deliver the scores they needed.

I tell you with utter sincerity that I've only done a buy club twice in my game career. (for my birthday and anniversary, and neither experience made a difference with respect to my 5* roster). In fact I have exactly $230 dollars invested in my account (2 buy clubs, 3 vip purchases)

My point here is that the actual event is about executing on all the things you have previously done to set yourself up for success.

Every T5 placement I achieve in either pve or pvp isn't about what I did in the event, rather its about all the decisions I made in the previous 900 days.

At this point your talking about you and thats fine.

telling someone, "well man it sucks that the events times are so tight, guess you'll do better in the next 400 days" doesn't say much.
The fact that your placement in that one event is more about your decisions of the last 900 days, is literally NO different then saying "it's based on my roster strength"

I haven't played for 900 days. And we will never have played for the same amount of days unless you stop playing,

Does that give enough evidence as to why this isn't sustainable?

unless your progress ever ceases, there will be no catching up or even playing field. top 5 won't magically open up to a new player once they champ all their 3's. Especially if they don't have all the 4's.

But I feel like I see where this is going, and I've made my point (the series of Q and A's)

carrion_pigeons

You, uh, didn't lose anything.

Top placements have razor thin margins for a reason: it isn't supposed to be easy to do it consistently.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of the distribution model for new characters. But come on! Could you be any more entitled about it? This is what you signed on for when you decided to be a competitor.

Phumade

GurlBYE wrote:

Does that give enough evidence as to why this isn't sustainable?

unless your progress ever ceases, there will be no catching up or even playing field. top 5 won't magically open up to a new player once they champ all their 3's. Especially if they don't have all the 4's.

But I feel like I see where this is going, and I've made my point (the series of Q and A's)

LOL, and you don't think I feel the same stress when measured against the King who shall not be named? There will always be stronger rosters than mine, and players with more sophisticated tactics. I don't let that fact stop me from devising a different strategy or tactic that lets me compete more effectively.

StarScream

GurlBYE wrote:

StarScream wrote:

Participation trophies all around!

You do realize that most people who are doing the "best" in this game just threw money at it right?

So?

ClydeFrog76

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

It's almost like if you watch a car race and someone takes a corner too wide and drops 10 places and has to try to recover but can't.

It might seem unfair, but you can't be the best without competing perfectly.

Dat analogy.