PVP query

Addix

So I'm just dipping my toes into PVP.

Got 3 seed teams on Behold Thanos. One of the matches which came up after that looked doable. Then I looked into the roster. The match shows thano3 and 2 champed 2*, but the roster has several champed 3*, a few good 4* with some covers, a couple of 5*.

I'm wondering - is the low level match meant to lure people in so they can hit back? Is that a thing?

Alfje17

Addix wrote:

So I'm just dipping my toes into PVP.

Got 3 seed teams on Behold Thanos. One of the matches which came up after that looked doable. Then I looked into the roster. The match shows thano3 and 2 champed 2*, but the roster has several champed 3*, a few good 4* with some covers, a couple of 5*.

I'm wondering - is the low level match meant to lure people in so they can hit back? Is that a thing?

Yep, that's a thing and most certainly a trap: you fight your last match with a rubbish team, it will then be defeated many times by rather weak teams and so you can retaliate with your A-team against them.
Rather despicable tactic if you ask me, but I've seen it a few times.

Skrofa

Personally I did not use my strong guys as a team for thanos. Not for luring people in but because I don't want them to get hurt. I hate thanos. My team takes more damage from thanos than from the opponents. So... Yah...
Could be the other thing too though

CharlieCroker

I never use my A team for the seed, normally just run OML, loaner and IF. For this event I'll be sacrificing someone less valuable than IF.

Unfortunately after I clear the seeds I'll have to begin using something close to my A team due to MMR.

stowaway

I was on a break from the game when they got rid of cupcakes. But whatever they did, wasn't it about making sure you couldn't deliberately leave a weak team on defense?

Phumade

Addix wrote:

So I'm just dipping my toes into PVP.

Got 3 seed teams on Behold Thanos. One of the matches which came up after that looked doable. Then I looked into the roster. The match shows thano3 and 2 champed 2*, but the roster has several champed 3*, a few good 4* with some covers, a couple of 5*.

I'm wondering - is the low level match meant to lure people in so they can hit back? Is that a thing?

LOL
1 x is an accident
2 x is an experiment
3 x is a purposeful tactic.

Its commonly called a trap cake and there are lots of reasons why it gets deployed independent of whether or not its trying to lure targets at your roster level.

Specifically,
1. Its to lock in a seed level team for when your at 600 and your looking for a fast reset team after a grill.
2. Its to manipulate the MMR to avoid other dual 5* champs. I'll let the developers speak to the exact issue of MMR, but the system can still be managed. I.e. If 3*/4* rosters can get to 700-800 before feeling pressure, then carefully managed play can also get a 5* roster to 600-700 using their similar level characters.
3. Ultimately, the 3* tier is probably the most developed with the widest array of tools. 3* in the hands of experienced players can easily kill teams 50-100 levels higher, it all depends on how the player synergized, tu, and actual board strategy. This is probably one of the funest parts of the game knowing that you can decimate a blade/daken combo with medusa one match, then run a px or invisibility team against a roster with no War Machine or way to handle spamed invis tiles.
4. I wanna play casual matches on my schedule, and not wait until its time to begin a long shield hop march. Playing low level easy matches against other comparable teams before play becomes serious.

5. The strategic reason why this tactic was first popularized and "developed" in the LINE rooms was to use this a training mechanism against the zombie horde and to force other players to start looking at the roster and alliance screen. It was reasoned that once the strongest rosters started trap caking and baby seal clubbing it would be to teach random players to not assume that their targets would hit back. In fact it was specifically intended to remind over eager players that much stronger rosters had taken notice. Ultimately as people got into the habit of lucking into the opponents roster and alliance, it becomes a much easier conversation to explain how check rooms work, and how the check rooms are creating a quasi checkroom system by already "encouraging" players to look at rosters and alliances and ask themselves. "is this a match I actually want to start?"

6. Events last 2 and 1/2 days. It dawned on alot of players that high level play or running your A-team from the get go becomes a long draining exhaustive process. People realized that changing "playstyle" was a much effective with respect to keeping the game fun than just changing from A1 team to A2 team etc.. I.e. over 2 1/2 days, people realized you could play your casual teams on day 1, 3/4* teams day 2, closer teams on last day.

The reasons go on and on. As a Gold farming tactic its died out, intercepts are a much better iso tool. They aren't really targeting you personally unless you start doing things to make people remember your IGN.

The good part is you recognized that the match was potentially dangerous. Thats the first step in becoming a high level player. It isn't the 5* that makes people dangerous as opponents, its how well your opponents understand the system. The roster just allows them to enable their strategies.

One last reminder, There are tiers below you as well and it would behoove you to understand how MMR works for you to see if YOU can develop a tactic that insulates you.

MarkersMake

Phumade wrote:

5. The strategic reason why this tactic was first popularized and "developed" in the LINE rooms was to use this a training mechanism against the zombie horde and to force other players to start looking at the roster and alliance screen. It was reasoned that once the strongest rosters started trap caking and baby seal clubbing it would be to teach random players to not assume that their targets would hit back. In fact it was specifically intended to remind over eager players that much stronger rosters had taken notice. Ultimately as people got into the habit of lucking into the opponents roster and alliance, it becomes a much easier conversation to explain how check rooms work, and how the check rooms are creating a quasi checkroom system by already "encouraging" players to look at rosters and alliances and ask themselves. "is this a match I actually want to start?"

Taken notice of what, I wonder?

I've never understood this reasoning.

Don't get me wrong - it's entirely reasonable to expect someone who regularly hits 1k+ to check names and rosters while climbing - he knows who's who at the high level. But for some random schmuck who career high is 500 points, and who never reads these forums, there is no lesson learned (other than that some people are tinykitties randomly and for no apparent reason).


"Don't hit my weak team that I only put there to bait you into hitting my weak team."... In a pvp environment... Where weaker rosters don't have hp to burn on shields, and therefore have to use "see a target, hit a target" if they want to make up any ground before they get beaten back down by their own peers (let alone by some high-level wonk on some sort of weird "revenge" mission). Even if they do observe cupcake etiquette and wait 5-7 minutes before hitting it, they still get a beating. The only thing to learn is that some bakers are not as altruistic as they might claim - that these really are private bakeries, and that D3 was entirely justified in taking action.

Phumade

MarkersMake wrote:

I've never understood this reasoning.

Don't get me wrong - it's entirely reasonable to expect someone who regularly hits 1k+ to check names and rosters while climbing - he knows who's who at the high level. But for some random schmuck who career high is 500 points, and who never reads these forums, there is no lesson learned (other than that some people are tinykitties randomly and for no apparent reason).


"Don't hit my weak team that I only put there to bait you into hitting my weak team."... In a pvp environment... Where weaker rosters don't have hp to burn on shields, and therefore have to use "see a target, hit a target" if they want to make up any ground before they get beaten back down by their own peers (let alone by some high-level wonk on some sort of weird "revenge" mission). Even if they do observe cupcake etiquette and wait 5-7 minutes before hitting it, they still get a beating. The only thing to learn is that some bakers are not as altruistic as they might claim - that these really are private bakeries, and that D3 was entirely justified in taking action.

I think the fact that I've seen 2 different threads independently started asking about their circumstances is evidence that some education is occurring. Of course your right in the sense that the justifications came 2nd after the tactic. In fact, I distinctly remember after the 1st experiments thinking, why I am getting so many defensive wins at 500 instead of wins at 1000.

The tactic has existed from before the dawn of alliances. Many people would play sim by climbing to 2k then dropping and reclimbing. The term trap cake was really an attempt to describe the psychology of game theory and how random players approach the game.

Of course we actually want you to hit the trap cake. The direct benefits of iso/cover/points are present to merit the use of the tactic. The indirect justification of saying beat this team and expect a 5* retaliation came after many many seasons of postulates and experiments. Your right in noting that we don't have the ability to actually poll the playerbase (not just the forums) on play style. So most progress in developing a new strategy i.e. why is 3*spidey,IW/OML so overpowered? comes from experiment then postulate, then retest.

Your wrong to think that people care about revenge etc... in fact its quite opposite. your much more likely to get skipped if the other person actually knows your name. and this type of game psycology approach is already being applied to bracket selection and time of play questions.

As an example this was my SCL8 bracket for spiderman. Normally I can post 1300+ but I saw at the 14 hr mark, no other rosters in the top 20 nor my top 30 float position had the roster or experience to really compete at the 1400+ level and I decided why go into a expensive multi hop shield strategy and potentially incite a point race with the only other 5* roster in the bracket when I could just float to 1200 and lockup T5. I know this sounds dishearting to people who struggle to make 700, but in all honesty, just mentally add 500 points to your score, replace the names your used to playing against with names from Olympus, X1, Crewsaders, battlecats and we are all really talking about the same play environment. 5* tier just involves bigger numbers, and more competitive opponents. The psychology of play is the same at 1200 or 700.

1. 1256
2. 1013
3. 1008
4. 968
5. 961
6 952
7. 941
8. 933
9. 929
10. 928

This bracket was the results of applying some game theory to bracket selection, and then testing to see what the brackets before and after this one finished.

Take away the emotion out of how you play and apply some hard logic to how, when and why you take on a match. Any change implemented by the developer creates inefficiencies in other areas of the game that can then be exploited by new tactics or styles of play. This is the eternal struggle between the sword maker and shield maker. A trusim in games and in real life.

Phumade

Many people might be surprised at the approach. But consider this question.

Direct coordination is actually very hard. Line rooms help, but you cannot anticipate or directly coordinate with every player in your shard.

So a Statistical approach was applied to say. X percentage plays this predictable fashion, y does this , z does that. And within "playstyles" could strategies be developed that lets a smart player avoid situations that would result in long retal wars that drained resources and time.

Within that context there are a wide variety of tools that can be developed to describe how players behave and respond.

Bowgentle

While all of Phumade's points are valid, chances are that when you become aware of stuff like that, you're already in a T50 alliance and/or in a big check room.

In fact if you have the roster to go to 1200 anytime you please, you're definitely in a check room - or KOS

So don't worry if all this goes over your head, it only applies to maybe 500 players in the whole game.

Addix

Thanks.

A few things went right past me though

Here's one:

Phumade wrote:

Specifically,
1. Its to lock in a seed level team for when your at 600 and your looking for a fast reset team after a grill.

And this:

Phumade wrote:

There are tiers below you as well and it would behoove you to understand how MMR works for you to see if YOU can develop a tactic that insulates you

So skip matches to see what comes up next and look through rosters and see whether (and when) more suitable matches come up, maybe? I do look at the alliance as well cos I got hit by a couple of people from the same alliance and thought they might have coordinated....

I still don't get how MMR could work for me though.

MarkersMake wrote:

Don't get me wrong - it's entirely reasonable to expect someone who regularly hits 1k+ to check names and rosters while climbing - he knows who's who at the high level. But for some random schmuck who career high is 500 points, and who never reads these forums, there is no lesson learned (other than that some people are tinykitties randomly and for no apparent reason).


"Don't hit my weak team that I only put there to bait you into hitting my weak team."... In a pvp environment... Where weaker rosters don't have hp to burn on shields, and therefore have to use "see a target, hit a target" if they want to make up any ground before they get beaten back down by their own peers (let alone by some high-level wonk on some sort of weird "revenge" mission). Even if they do observe cupcake etiquette and wait 5-7 minutes before hitting it, they still get a beating.

I was wondering whether you meant that I shouldn't think about strategy at this point, just get what I can and let people hit back? Wouldn't learn anything that way......and might always stay with just my toes in, possibly?

Bowgentle wrote:

While all of Phumade's points are valid, chances are that when you become aware of stuff like that, you're already in a T50 alliance and/or in a big check room.

In fact if you have the roster to go to 1200 anytime you please, you're definitely in a check room - or KOS

I wish, I wish, I wish!!!

MarkersMake

Addix wrote:

I was wondering whether you meant that I shouldn't think about strategy at this point, just get what I can and let people hit back? Wouldn't learn anything that way......and might always stay with just my toes in, possibly?

Bowgentle wrote:

While all of Phumade's points are valid, chances are that when you become aware of stuff like that, you're already in a T50 alliance and/or in a big check room.

In fact if you have the roster to go to 1200 anytime you please, you're definitely in a check room - or KOS

I wish, I wish, I wish!!!

Bowgentle pretty much nailed it there.

So yeah, swing away at whoever gives you points that you can beat right now.

Unless you hit SpiderKev.

Phumade

Addix wrote:

Thanks.

A few things went right past me though

Here's one:

Phumade wrote:

Specifically,
1. Its to lock in a seed level team for when your at 600 and your looking for a fast reset team after a grill.

Its true its true I'm in a check room for when I do transition into a shield hop pattern. I can make 1200 anytime I want after the 1st 12 hours, but I certainly cannot defend and hold 1200 pts with out shields and or a massive amount of skip defference LOL

once your in a check room, you see that alot of back ground work happens to build points. Some rosters are ideal for taking the lead to help build and generate points for the room. Converting a regular node into a red retaliation node preserves that node from being overwritten by another attack. There are many different ways to do this coversion. In the true heyday of CC baking. Bakers would specifically load out a "trapcake" to allow other bakers to flood them with more baking materials (1*/2* opp) for later in the event. In any case, its always good practice to try an preserve a seal team (something you can beat in under 2 min) for when you need to do a fast shield reset and or bake for an alliance teammate.

And this:

Phumade wrote:

There are tiers below you as well and it would behoove you to understand how MMR works for you to see if YOU can develop a tactic that insulates you

After many season of play I can tell you that there are boat loads of pvp playes with sub 20 lvl rosters. so nomatter how bad you think your roster is, there are other players who have worse. Organizing around game theory concepts is a recognition that at ever tier of play, their are inefficiencies that can be manipulated. Contrary to popular belief D3 has a reasonably good system of bifurcating the playerbase. and if you don't explore how the matching Making occurs you won't see probably 50-75% of the playerbase in your shard. Ironically, softcapping is what inspired the question of "Can I approximate softcapping through character substitution instead of artificial level caps and then apply that tactic into PVP

So skip matches to see what comes up next and look through rosters and see whether (and when) more suitable matches come up, maybe? I do look at the alliance as well cos I got hit by a couple of people from the same alliance and thought they might have coordinated....

Continue your experiments. The mistake is that your thinking from the perspective of how the system presents matches to YOU! Have you considered the perspective of how the game presents YOU as a target to others? Really think that statement, most player behaviors is developed along the lines of I hunt, and stalk others. But can you be the venus flytrap of MPQ?

I still don't get how MMR could work for me though.

MarkersMake wrote:

Don't get me wrong - it's entirely reasonable to expect someone who regularly hits 1k+ to check names and rosters while climbing - he knows who's who at the high level. But for some random schmuck who career high is 500 points, and who never reads these forums, there is no lesson learned (other than that some people are tinykitties randomly and for no apparent reason).


"Don't hit my weak team that I only put there to bait you into hitting my weak team."... In a pvp environment... Where weaker rosters don't have hp to burn on shields, and therefore have to use "see a target, hit a target" if they want to make up any ground before they get beaten back down by their own peers (let alone by some high-level wonk on some sort of weird "revenge" mission). Even if they do observe cupcake etiquette and wait 5-7 minutes before hitting it, they still get a beating.

I was wondering whether you meant that I shouldn't think about strategy at this point, just get what I can and let people hit back? Wouldn't learn anything that way......and might always stay with just my toes in, possibly?

Bowgentle wrote:

While all of Phumade's points are valid, chances are that when you become aware of stuff like that, you're already in a T50 alliance and/or in a big check room.

In fact if you have the roster to go to 1200 anytime you please, you're definitely in a check room - or KOS

I wish, I wish, I wish!!!

Having big roster makes you big target. Many more challenges from other players than when I was a 1* or 2* player. Strategy evolves as your roster grows. Don't make the mistake of others and just assume that what happens at the 2* level is the same at the 5* level. These are very experienced players have alot of different tools to address situations that occur.

Smudge

Interesting discussion on the metagaming of PvP, but I think what Addix is seeing is far less sinister than trap caking. Note that I'm not on Line nor care too much for the intricacies of PvP - I play to attempt for 900 on specific 4*s and otherwise barely touch PvP.

I think Skrofa is most likely correct.

3* Thanos is a health pack liability. People are probably clearing the seeds with garbage teams to minimize the self-damage/health pack usage. It's what I would do. You're virtually assured to eat 2 blasts of Thanos's black unless you didn't add the cover, so why not use weaklings to soak it up, then switch to a stronger team once you're done?

The roster Addix described doesn't merit trap caking, anyway. "Several champed 3*, a few good 4* with some covers, and a couple of 5*" as described is not the strength of roster built on luring people into hitting them for retaliating.

Way too much reading into this, imo.

Kevmcg

As a player with 2 champed 5 stars, at the beginning of any pvp event, some like to experiment to see what the new character can do. Sometimes, to keep the game interesting, we play little meta games like who can hit 200, 300, 400, 500 exactly first. It is also the best time to use other characters on your roster. Virtual points don't matter much until the final 24 hours of the event. It is better to play a lot of matches and get the 2 xp and occasional 2 star cover for your farm. PVP is all about the goal you are trying to hit and the plan to get there while optimizing resources (hp, time, effort).

aa25

Kevmcg wrote:

As a player with 2 champed 5 stars, at the beginning of any pvp event, some like to experiment to see what the new character can do. Sometimes, to keep the game interesting, we play little meta games like who can hit 200, 300, 400, 500 exactly first. It is also the best time to use other characters on your roster. Virtual points don't matter much until the final 24 hours of the event. It is better to play a lot of matches and get the 2 xp and occasional 2 star cover for your farm. PVP is all about the goal you are trying to hit and the plan to get there while optimizing resources (hp, time, effort).

This. I sometimes run some of my favorite 3* teams that I have nowhere else to run. (I'm moving over to 4* land). PvE ?: Nope. I need to start the clock asap and close the sub as fast as possible. DDQ ?: Nope. To me the fun part is being able to try to fight with difference teams and DDQ does not offer me that. Sim ?: I did the same there too.

Phumade

Smudge wrote:

The roster Addix described doesn't merit trap caking, anyway. "Several champed 3*, a few good 4* with some covers, and a couple of 5*" as described is not the strength of roster built on luring people into hitting them for retaliating.

Way too much reading into this, imo.

As a philosophical question, why you assume that a 3* can't trapcake against a 1*, in an effort to hide from 4*?

every roster can out put a level 15/15/ 145 trap cake out in the opening round of pvp.

The better way to make your point is to say.

That roster could only trapcake to 400. but a 1200 day player that has 40 3* champs seperated by 3 level increments can smoothly escalate a retaliation in 5 level increments and 7 matches later, you've finally retailing against (champed feature , + 2 450, + 5*.) A wide 5* roster can easily trapcake to 575 and the 10pt cp. Disguise their team and hide from other 5*/4* climbers. As an example, We have all seen rosters that could bash an club their way to 600 in the 1st 12 hours. But what doesn't really get discussed is how hard that player has to defend those points against other 5* climbers. i.e. I get to 600 in day 1, and I gotta defend points against the king who shall not be named and the new big baller on the mountain. This leads into the conversation of point protection and conversion. I'll leave this topic by saying. If I know my points are going to get eaten by other 5* players. Then it is to my benefit to trade my points for a retal node that can't be overwritten and can even grow as the red node name continues to climb. This is the concept of converting high risk points to low risk points.

The specific argument I would raise is that the roster Addix fought probably isn't deploying a formal trapcake as devised by 5* players. Rather he's probably trying to setup a soft float situation where he can smoothly retaliate and escalate points i.e. rising tide play.

As an observer I would argue that their is a certain break point in the point system, where matchmaking completely changes, but below that threshold, the player has the control over how the MMR presents opponents to the playerbase.