Those that wanted the end of cakes...

Brigby

In the interest of being as informed as possible, so I can accurately bring this topic up with the developers, would someone mind explaining in detail the following:

- What are Cupcakes? - What is Grilling/Baking? - Why do you think the fix didn't work? - What do you think would have been a better fix?

Thanks in advance!

Vhailorx

Prepare to go down the rabbit hole brigby!

Baking was a cooperative tactic employed by several large alliances in pvp (versus) play.

Defensive teams were set using the last team with which a player won a match. Clever players started to exploit this mechanic as follows:

(1) player A saves a very weak seed opponent (i.e. a node full of level 1 or level 15 opponents) while climbing to 1k.

(2) player a then attacks the weak seed team using her own very weak team (preferrably a team of loaner + 2x 1* characters).

(3) just as she wins this weak match player A announces on line that she has baked a cupcake. This allows Players B and C to queue her very weak defensive team.

(4) Player A then shields (either immediately, or after fighting another team with her regualr A-team) and announces on line that she has shielded.

(5) Players B and C then attack Player A's cupcake.

There were a lot more subtleties to it than that, but that is the basic tactic. The net result was that players could win high-point matches very quickly without taking points from the defenders; so it inflated scores.

Hendross

Brigby wrote:

In the interest of being as informed as possible, so I can accurately bring this topic up with the developers, would someone mind explaining in detail the following:

- What are Cupcakes? - What is Grilling/Baking? - Why do you think the fix didn't work? - What do you think would have been a better fix?

Thanks in advance!

The following applies to PvP only.

Cupcakes are teams consisting of easily beatable opponents. These are "baked" by high-end scorers before shielding so they can provide easily beatable, high point targets. The debate is; although the cakes are queueable by anyone, their available is announced using out-of-game communication. Cakes are available to seen across brackets once your score is high enough (~900). A cake was generally, 2 @ level 45 or lower + loaner. Baking usually required 1 or more high powered team-up to win. Some bakers enjoyed this challenge, but what they enjoy the most is handing out points... this does NOT benefit the bakers.

Steaks are teams consisting of "easily" beatable opponents. These are "grilled" ... yada yada yada. A grill consists of loaner + champ 3* + champ 5*. Steaks are significantly slower to beat and significantly more difficult, I have been the victim of many cascades of death.

The "fix" working is very subjective, I'll give you my bias opinion. The fix was to prevent people like me, developed 4 star rosters, from achieving max progress (formerly 25cp) and slowing transition progress. This was subsidized by lowering 10cp @ 575, but without cakes, I can not shield hop fast enough above 900 to reliable make 1200. However, 5* rosters are still making nearly 4,000pts per event, so the "haves" are not affected. The have-nots do not get the benefit of them seeding the points pool. This has widened the divide between have and have-not.

I'm not going to pretend to know what a better fix would be; the bakers were merely working within the confines of a broken system. I believe the whales, among other influences, wanted to stop people from punching above their weight class, getting the same rewards with lesser rosters. Personally I believe the problems lie with MMR, points won vs points loss, shields and throttling progress.

mpqr7

- What are Cupcakes?

Advanced players played with easy teams at high scores, so that lower players could defeat them and get higher scores. A cc team would for example be two lv 1 one-stars and the loaner 3*.

- What is Grilling/Baking?

Now that ccs are no longer allowed, advanced players leave more challenging ccs that fit in the system. A typical grill will be a lv 450 five-star, plus the loaner 3* and a regular 3*.

- Why do you think the fix didn't work?

Now that ccs are gone, lower-level players can no longer get higher scores. But during the time of ccs, lots of people were playing at all times, so it was easy for many mid-level players to hit max progression. Now, only the very top-level players can get max progression and beyond. Mid-level players can do it, but only with numerous carefully timed and stressful shield hopping, instead of being able to do it pretty much whenever they want to. Some people don't mind, whereas others find it's no longer fun after 900. Regardless, you'll see that now a much smaller amount of people get to 1200+, whereas most stop at 900.

- What do you think would have been a better fix?

Some better fixes would include:

* Don't lose so many points for defensive losses, at least until you get past 1200 points. Not a small adjustment of losing 75 points to losing 72 points.. it should be a big change, such as only using 20 points. Or for instance if someone defeats you but they have a way better team than you do (for example, you are lv 400 five-stars, and they are lv 460 five-stars), then you don't lose many points.

* Let people do at least 2 battles (or 10 minutes, whichever is shorter) after unshielding, before they show up, so that they can fight in peace! This will remove the need for complicated Line coordination. After they shield, make them visible for 10 minutes, to make up for the 10 minutes when they were invisible when unshielding.

* Give good prizes between 900 and 1200 points. This will encourage more people to aim for 1200, knowing that they'll get some additional prizes. Right now, you don't get anything more for hitting 1160 or just stopping at 900. So if you do numerous hops after 900 points but don't actually hit 1200, then it becomes extremely frustrating, and that's when the game feels most unfair. All of that work hopping gets you nothing.

Vhailorx

Shortly before you took over for cthulhu, the system for selecting defensive teams was changed. In the current system. If a player wins a match with a much weaker team than their previous defensive team, then the weak team will NOT overwrite the pkayers existing defensive team.

So if you win a match with 4*s, and then win a match with 1*s and 2*s, your defensive teams will still be your 4* team.

This made traditional baking difficult or impossible for most players.

"Grilling" is effectively the same tactic as baking. Bit instead of "baking" very weak "cupcakes" made up of 1* and 2* characters, players now "grill" "steaks" that have 1x 5* characrer at 450 or so, and a 3*.

Steaks are relatively easy for 5* players to defeat, but are still challenging for 4* players and largely unbeatable for 3* pkayers. Grilling is currently employed in exactly the same fashion as baking to very similar (though more resticted) effect.

There has been a long and rather vitriolic disagreement within the player community about the morality and desirability of baking/grilling.

stochasticism

Brigby wrote:

In the interest of being as informed as possible, so I can accurately bring this topic up with the developers, would someone mind explaining in detail the following:

- What are Cupcakes? - What is Grilling/Baking? - Why do you think the fix didn't work? - What do you think would have been a better fix?

Thanks in advance!

It used to be that the last team you used was your defensive team so people would save seed teams on their climb and then put out a team that would have Loaner/1*/1* or something else that is equally easy that could be squashed by most rosters in under a minute. This was called a cupcake and producing one was called baking. Once you broke MMR around 800-1.3k+ depending on your roster you would be able to queue these and climb to whatever score you wanted (depending on the slice) on the back of these diabetes inducing treats. People of all roster levels could Q these teams and beat them and even if you weren't Qing them the people you were hitting were worth more due to trickle down.

This was frowned upon after a year+ and it was declared that you can't have a defensive team set if it is significantly weaker than what you used before in an event. So, people experimented and found what the weakest team was they could set. If you have multiple 5* champed it is basically that 5*/loaner(or maybe not)/boosted 4*, a single champed 5* then your champed 5*/loaner/3* (or maybe something lower) and if you don't have champed 5* people will set Ice40 as their team usually. These teams are called steaks and producing them is called grilling. Now, its still true that most people can queue these once they break MMR. The difference is that the roster needed to beat grills with champed 5* is a lot different than the roster that can beat a cupcake. You basically need champed featured plus two champed 4* (or something like Ice40) to beat them. This means that everyone underneath this threshold of roster can't beat grills but used to be able to beat cupcakes. It basically created a caste system, those who can beat grills can still achieve any score they want. Those that cant struggle to get to even 900, or even 575 in some cases.

The above is why the fix didn't work. The stated reason for the fix was to reduce score inflation in PvP. Well, that didn't happen The best rosters in s3 or s4 can still score 4k+ if conditions are right. What happened is the fix took a plausible progression path towards bettering a players roster away from players in the 3* and 4* transition. 575 is a bare minimum towards bettering your roster, 900 better and 1200 is optimal. Those players can probably hit 575 but getting to 900 or higher in the post-cupcake era either costs 1kHP in shields for them or isn't possible because they get hammered when they try to get to those scores.

I'm not going to rehash what better fixes might have been. That has been done ad nauseum but there are plenty of great suggestions out there.

Hope this helps.

Fightmastermpq

Brigby wrote:

In the interest of being as informed as possible, so I can accurately bring this topic up with the developers, would someone mind explaining in detail the following:

- What are Cupcakes? - What is Grilling/Baking? - Why do you think the fix didn't work? - What do you think would have been a better fix?

Thanks in advance!

You've gotten some good answers already, but I just wanted to highlight some of the game mechanics that resulted in the "need" for cupcakes from a post I made in August.

I guess my point is that cupcakes are "normal play" because they are a byproduct of all the current game mechanics:

- Points/Progression/Competition: Progression rewards, player ranks, and alliance ranks make high scores desirable, so people want to score high.
- ELO mechanic/shields: Because you lose more points to losses from people that are much lower than you, the higher you climb the more incentive you have to protect those points....with shields.
- Coordination/truces: Since the desire to score high is universal, and points can be injected into the slice through shields, higher scores can be had if players agree to band together in groups and only attack group members when shielded to boost scores.
- Speed/shield hopping: Since you can't be friendly with everyone and there are competitive players out there fighting for top placement rank (see first bullet) it becomes crucial to minimize the amount of time you remain unshielded with a high score, and minimize the amount of points non-friendly players can take from you and so you shield hop.
- Cupcakes: Since speed is so important the best way to maximize your shield hops is to be able to fight several teams very quickly. Since you are coordinating with a group you can all bake cupcakes for each other to all get larger hops and boost all scores.

There is nothing abnormal or exploitive about it, it's just the optimization of the current mechanics.

The other thing worth mentioning is that it seems like a lot of newer players think that cupcakes are a tool used solely for weaker players to reach undeserving rewards. If you stop and think about the mechanics as I have outlined them that isn't really the case. 5* players don't need cupcakes to hit progression rewards, but they still use them to boost scores because speed is so crucial in hopping at all tiers of play.

TL;DR - Speed and cooperation are important in competitive play, and cupcakes were (and now grills are) the optimization of those mechanics.

Brigby

Ahh I see. Gotcha. Thanks for all the information everyone. I'll reference this thread and pass it along to the developers.

aa25

Another background that, in my opinion, is related to this 'cupcake' thing. The rewards structure in PvP was also changed fairly recently. I don't remember the full table, but 4* cover was at 1000, 3* cover was at 800, and 25 cp at 1300 without 10 cp at 575. (Now 4* at 900, and 3* at 800, 15 cp at 1200, and 10 cp at 575). The problem is no one can reach that high without a high value target to help. (As a reference, I was a 3* player back then (25 champed, I think, before I moved to 4*) hitting 650 is quite a challenge, 800 is a tremendous job if not an impossible job.) I picked a target, I won, I got 40 pts, but I lost 150 pts in the progress over and over. So high point target and easy match is the only way to reach those rewards.

Certainly in a certain aspect, PvP is a competition of roster strength, but what roster strength do I need to reach 800 for a 3* cover or 1000 for a 4* cover ? Honestly, I don't think this problem has been fully solved yet. I am now a 4* player (moved up through hard grinding in PvE), once I hit 700-800 I don't see any 3* teams anymore. I interpret this as there is no 3* teams that have 700-800 pts for me to queue which doesn't make sense. Why would you need a 4* roster to get 3* cover ? Certainly, I can hit 900 for the 4* cover, but 1200 ? I have no chance, but I can live with that until I decide I want to move to 5* land in a far far future.

Hope this help

Oops, got my memory mixed up. The 25 cp was at 1300 not 1200. (I corrected my original to prevent any further confusion.)

dsds

Brigby wrote:

Ahh I see. Gotcha. Thanks for all the information everyone. I'll reference this thread and pass it along to the developers.

Please remember that the forums make a very small minority of players in the game. Baking cupcakes were great and would definitely benefit my 4* champed teams. However it was incredibly unfair for people who did not have outside communications such as line.

For the whole time cupcakes were available, I have hit a total of 2 cupcakes and I am a regular pvp player normally hitting 725 pts and occasionally hitting 1000 points. The developers have said that for pvp, the rewards you could get was a roster check. Not everyone was meant to make full progression rewards in pvp. Cupcakes allowed people to go above their reward level.

Cupcakes were not available all the time. It was only available at select times when bakers were baking and as you can see from how it is done, it looks like it is all bunched up in a certain time period. It's not easy to save a seed node to start baking. When you are attacked 3 times during your climb, that seed node is gone. So you need someone who has a roster that prevents him/her from being attacked to save the seed node when they are high enough in points to start baking. If they baked at low points, they would get hit so many times due to mmr matching.

I would much rather them not bring cupcakes back and just fix pvp so that the scoring system isn't so hard on players. I think the main problem is the way points are calculated and how the ai can defend for the player multiple battles at the same time, while the player can only fight one battle at a time. This resulted in a huge disparity between points won and points loss that became very frustating to the player. Fixing the problem instead of bringing back the band aid solution (cupcakes) would be a much more fair solution. Many considered cupcakes cheating because it was an advantage that only a select few knew about.

Don't get me wrong, cupcakes were available to everyone and anyone could join line. According to the bakers, they did not exclude anyone. However knowing about the cupcakes is a different story as you would need to either visit the forums a lot or be in an alliance that know about them. A very very small percentage of the player base even knew about the cupcakes. Also line (which is a chat outside of the game) was heavily used to coordinate cupcakes.

Piro_plock

dsds wrote:

Also line (which is a chat outside of the game) was heavily used to coordinate cupcakes.

Well, the main reason why people use LINE, Facebook groups or Discord isn't to exclude people... It's because the in-game chat sucks.

dsds

Piro_plock wrote:

dsds wrote:

Also line (which is a chat outside of the game) was heavily used to coordinate cupcakes.

Well, the main reason why people use LINE, Facebook groups or Discord isn't to exclude people... It's because the in-game chat sucks.

I never said that line was exclusive. I never said cupcakes were exclusive. If you could find it, you can join obviously. As long as it is a chat outside of game, very few people knew about it so very few took advantage of it. And yes I agree the in game chat sucks and you can only chat with alliance members. So it's only logical that coordination of cupcakes is outside of the game.

I am just stating facts and trying to keep the conversation balanced, giving the other side of the argument.

Vhailorx

It is probably worthwhile to distinguish fact from opinion for this discussion. Both types of information are useful to brigby, but they are not at all the same and should not be confused.

Descriptions of how baking/grilling worked/works are fact. Arguments about why baking/grilling was/is good, bad, fair, or unfair are opinion.

In my posts above i have tried to stick to fact. I
Hope that none of personal bias filtered through.

[This is now opinion]

Fwiw, i have no problem with baking. It is basically just an optimal tactic in response to the conditions of pvp play.

I hate the post fix world because it produced the worst of both worlds. The tactic is still available to small group of players, but has been officialy branded as "unintended play" by the devs. If something is bad, take it out of the game, donct leave it in place for 10% of players and implicitly criticize everyone else for using it.

I also think that many players have made the mistake, when arguing this issue, of conflating the cupcake fix with the move of 10cp from 1300 to 575. These events happened at the same time. But they are not actually linked. It is entirely possible to conceive of a world with baking as of old and 10 co at 575. I very much approve of lowering a portion of the cp prize to 575!

[The following is mostly NOT opinion. Straight facts and some glorious wordplay!]

Finally. FYI brigby: shortly before the cupcake fix was announced, there was a suspicious (that's my word for it) bug event wherein defensive teams started behaving oddly with no prior warning. This big occured shortly after some devs announced (on discord maybe, or Line), that demi was lookong to end cupcakes soon. And the bug operated in a very similar fashion to the eventuak cupcake fix. Then shortly after the bug was fixed, demi announced and implemented the cupcake fix. Coincidental timing or not, the whole episode left a pretty bitter taste in a lot of player's mouths and has probably contributed to the general level of flame surrounding this whole topic. (Get it? Flame surrounding the grilling/baking! I am a pun genius!)

dsds

Vhailorx wrote:

It is probably worthwhile to distinguish fact from opinion for this discussion. Both types of information are useful to brigby, but they are not at all the same and should not be confused.

Descriptions of how baking/grilling worked/works are fact. Arguments about why baking/grilling was/is good, bad, fair, or unfair are opinion.

In my posts above i have tried to stick to fact. I
Hope that none of personal bias filtered through.

Fwiw, i have no problem with baking. It is basically just an optimal tactic in response to the conditions of pvp play.

I hate the post fix world because it produced the worst of both worlds. The tactic is still available to small group of players, but has been officialy branded as "unintended play" by the devs. If something is bad, take it out of the game, donct leave it in place for 10% of players and implicitly criticize everyone else for using it.

I also think that many players have made the mistake, when arguing this issue, of conflating the cupcake fix with the move of 10cp from 1300 to 575. These events happened at the same time. But they are not actually linked. It is entirely possible to conceive of a world with baking as of old and 10 co at 575. I very much approve of lowering a portion of the cp prize to 575!

Finally. FYI brigby: shortly before the cupcaje fix was announced, there was a suspicious bug event wherein defensive teams started behaving oddly with no prior warning. Rhis big occured shortly after some devs announced (on discord maybe, or Line), that demi was lookong to end cupcakes soon. The shortly after the bug was fixed, demi announced and implemented the cupcake fix. Coincidental timing or not, the whole episode left a pretty bitter taste in a lot of people's mouths and has probably contributed to the general level of flame surrounding this whole topic. (Get it? Flame surrounding the grilling/baking! I am a pun genius!)

I am sorry, your post is a bit bias. I will admit that it is very hard to separate fact from opinion. My posts are bias too so take it with a grain of salt and verify the information yourself if you want. The amount of people using cakes I would estimate to be less than 5%. The amount of people grilling, I am not sure because I am not at that level but I would say maybe less than 1%.

There was a lot of flame on the forums about it, but the forums do not even comprise a significant portion of the player base. Most players are at the 3* level. The forums consists mostly of 4* and 5* rosters. If you want to read about the opinion of the entire player base, I think itunes or google play reviews would be a good place to get a more objective opinion. In the google play reviews, there is very few mention of cupcakes if at all.

Daiches

dsds wrote:

Brigby wrote:

Ahh I see. Gotcha. Thanks for all the information everyone. I'll reference this thread and pass it along to the developers.

Please remember that the forums make a very small minority of players in the game. Baking cupcakes were great and would definitely benefit my 4* champed teams. However it was incredibly unfair for people who did not have outside communications such as line.

For the whole time cupcakes were available, I have hit a total of 2 cupcakes and I am a regular pvp player normally hitting 725 pts and occasionally hitting 1000 points. The developers have said that for pvp, the rewards you could get was a roster check. Not everyone was meant to make full progression rewards in pvp. Cupcakes allowed people to go above their reward level.

Cupcakes were not available all the time. It was only available at select times when bakers were baking and as you can see from how it is done, it looks like it is all bunched up in a certain time period. It's not easy to save a seed node to start baking. When you are attacked 3 times during your climb, that seed node is gone. So you need someone who has a roster that prevents him/her from being attacked to save the seed node when they are high enough in points to start baking. If they baked at low points, they would get hit so many times due to mmr matching.

I would much rather them not bring cupcakes back and just fix pvp so that the scoring system isn't so hard on players. I think the main problem is the way points are calculated and how the ai can defend for the player multiple battles at the same time, while the player can only fight one battle at a time. This resulted in a huge disparity between points won and points loss that became very frustating to the player. Fixing the problem instead of bringing back the band aid solution (cupcakes) would be a much more fair solution. Many considered cupcakes cheating because it was an advantage that only a select few knew about.

Don't get me wrong, cupcakes were available to everyone and anyone could join line. According to the bakers, they did not exclude anyone. However knowing about the cupcakes is a different story as you would need to either visit the forums a lot or be in an alliance that know about them. A very very small percentage of the player base even knew about the cupcakes. Also line (which is a chat outside of the game) was heavily used to coordinate cupcakes.

Every single time you post about cc, you omit the fact that even without you being able to Q cc (due to the fact that you almost never hit the 700 point threshold to be able to see the old style bakes), you still benefitted from the overall points in the slice being higher due to other people Qing cc and climbing much higher. Your normal targets were worth a lot more with than without CC's.

Vhailorx

Dsds:

Which of my posts is biased? I have made 3 in answer to brigby. The first 2 describe baking, grilling, and the cc fix. I hope that they are factual and unbiased.

The last is in part a response to you. It was meant to express my personal opinion, and is therefore obviously biased. I have edited it to make that explicit.

BatteryHorse

mpqr7 wrote:

* Don't lose so many points for defensive losses, at least until you get past 1200 points. Not a small adjustment of losing 75 points to losing 72 points.. it should be a big change, such as only using 20 points. Or for instance if someone defeats you but they have a way better team than you do (for example, you are lv 400 five-stars, and they are lv 460 five-stars), then you don't lose many points.

* Let people do at least 2 battles (or 10 minutes, whichever is shorter) after unshielding, before they show up, so that they can fight in peace! This will remove the need for complicated Line coordination. After they shield, make them visible for 10 minutes, to make up for the 10 minutes when they were invisible when unshielding.

* Give good prizes between 900 and 1200 points. This will encourage more people to aim for 1200, knowing that they'll get some additional prizes. Right now, you don't get anything more for hitting 1160 or just stopping at 900. So if you do numerous hops after 900 points but don't actually hit 1200, then it becomes extremely frustrating, and that's when the game feels most unfair. All of that work hopping gets you nothing.

Just my opinion, but any or all of these changes would likely lead to people playing PvP so much more. How many players race to a level they think they can achieve, and then shield and hide until the end of the event? Or quickly play a match or two and then shield to prevent retaliation. PvP specifically disincentivizes you from playing more because you're so exposed when not shielded. The best way to win, currently, is to play as little as possible and hide the rest of the time.

Personally I race to 575 and chill, hoping to be left alone for the most part, and then I try to race to 900 when no one is looking and hide behind a shield.

dsds

Daiches wrote:

dsds wrote:

Brigby wrote:

Ahh I see. Gotcha. Thanks for all the information everyone. I'll reference this thread and pass it along to the developers.

Please remember that the forums make a very small minority of players in the game. Baking cupcakes were great and would definitely benefit my 4* champed teams. However it was incredibly unfair for people who did not have outside communications such as line.

For the whole time cupcakes were available, I have hit a total of 2 cupcakes and I am a regular pvp player normally hitting 725 pts and occasionally hitting 1000 points. The developers have said that for pvp, the rewards you could get was a roster check. Not everyone was meant to make full progression rewards in pvp. Cupcakes allowed people to go above their reward level.

Cupcakes were not available all the time. It was only available at select times when bakers were baking and as you can see from how it is done, it looks like it is all bunched up in a certain time period. It's not easy to save a seed node to start baking. When you are attacked 3 times during your climb, that seed node is gone. So you need someone who has a roster that prevents him/her from being attacked to save the seed node when they are high enough in points to start baking. If they baked at low points, they would get hit so many times due to mmr matching.

I would much rather them not bring cupcakes back and just fix pvp so that the scoring system isn't so hard on players. I think the main problem is the way points are calculated and how the ai can defend for the player multiple battles at the same time, while the player can only fight one battle at a time. This resulted in a huge disparity between points won and points loss that became very frustating to the player. Fixing the problem instead of bringing back the band aid solution (cupcakes) would be a much more fair solution. Many considered cupcakes cheating because it was an advantage that only a select few knew about.

Don't get me wrong, cupcakes were available to everyone and anyone could join line. According to the bakers, they did not exclude anyone. However knowing about the cupcakes is a different story as you would need to either visit the forums a lot or be in an alliance that know about them. A very very small percentage of the player base even knew about the cupcakes. Also line (which is a chat outside of the game) was heavily used to coordinate cupcakes.

Every single time you post about cc, you omit the fact that even without you being able to Q cc (due to the fact that you almost never hit the 700 point threshold to be able to see the old style bakes), you still benefitted from the overall points in the slice being higher due to other people Qing cc and climbing much higher. Your normal targets were worth a lot more with than without CC's.

I actually don't mind the low point fights. I am in need of iso so I don't mind fighting more. I can easily make 725 just like before. Not a problem to me. I didn't say cupcakes didn't help me. I actually did say it would help me and that they were great especially now that I can hit 900 without dipping into taco tokens.

But at the same time they were also unfair. Some people clearly benefited more than others. Someone who had above 900pts would get way more benefit as they would see cupcakes and would directly benefit from them as opposed to someone indirectly benefiting.

Here's the thing I don't get... why champion that idea of cupcakes to benefit a few people more instead of champion an idea of fixing pvp so everyone can benefit? Was it not a bandaid solution? Why support a broken system and come up with some wacky way to fix it by the players (cupcakes)? Here's the chance to make the game better for everyone not just the 5% of the player base that benefitted from the cupcakes?

Stax the Foyer

Brigby wrote:

Ahh I see. Gotcha. Thanks for all the information everyone. I'll reference this thread and pass it along to the developers.

Thanks Brigby. We're not able to give you the most useful responses to the last two questions, because we don't know exactly what the fix was trying to achieve. As you can see from this thread, there's a wide variety of opinions regarding what the developers saw as the problem with cupcakes.

This has been discussed enough in LINE and elsewhere that, whatever the specific problem being addressed was, there's a lot of feedback and some really great ideas for how else it could have been addressed. If you can find that out for us, we can get you a wheelbarrow full of design options.

For example, if it was simply the visibility of high scores, one option would have been to apply a fudge factor to scores over a certain level (let's say 1700), so that the displayed score is a function of the actual effective score. That way people can still put huge gaps between themselves and the rest of the playerbase, it just doesn't look as bad to casual players who check the top of the leaderboard.

If it was the accessibility of top progression awards to the developing rosters, then the 10 CP at a lower level wasn't near enough of a change. The 3* cover should have been moved much further down the progression ladder, for one. Outside of the very rare 3* new release event, where almost everyone can use the cover, it's often out of reach for the people who actually need it.

We can give you lots of feedback like this, but it'll be a lot more useful to both the developers and us if we know more about what the fix was trying to do.

WelcomeDeath

Brigby wrote:

In the interest of being as informed as possible, so I can accurately bring this topic up with the developers, would someone mind explaining in detail the following:

- What are Cupcakes? - What is Grilling/Baking? - Why do you think the fix didn't work? - What do you think would have been a better fix?

Thanks in advance!

Just a warning, I plan to be thorough, so this will be long. A brief history of competetive play in mpq.

So...coordination has been going on a very long time in mpq. I am told (I wasn't a player yet) by very seasoned vets that it's been going on single the creation of shields. Since coordination was a thing, the devs have taken steps to curtail scores. The first, and most common, coordination simply involves climbing as high as possible with friends and then shielding and hitting each other, in turn, to boost scores. However, for a time, people were losing their way to progression. Defensive wins used to be worth more (a lot more), so it was possible for a group to climb to a level and have most of the group queue and lose to another player and get to progression. He would in turn "dump" (lose to) his friends and they to each other to get the next one up, so on and so forth. This was solved with the scoring patch sometime in april 2015 (may be off just a bit on that) that reduced the value of defensive wins and set up the current system.

At this point, people went back to simple coordination. Now, at the time, the game was 2*, 3* and a handful of 4*. Boosts were a thing, but they were better for the 3* tier by far, so it was possible to beat a maxed 4* team with a maxed 3* team (Boosts for 4* either weren't a thing or were very small at this point, I know at some point they were added but only went to 330 and didnt scale much past the 270 max). Cupcakes were a thing, but weren't used as much as they were later, mostly used "as a joke" according to a very long term player and chronic forum poster who was around then.

Slowly, but surely, cupcakes became more prevalent. Now, what is a cupcake? The way defensive teams used to be set, it was whatever team you won your last battle with. So it was possible to put out a 2* or even 1* team on defense, quickly reset your team, and shield up. Your friends (and some lucky random players ) would find it and hit you after you shielded for easy points and quick hops.

Sometime around September 2015, the game broke. 5* were released. Now, they broke competetive pvp because, if your friends were lucky enough, they could roster and field a team you couldn't beat or beat consistently, even with maxed characters the tier below. However, these were few and far between, and coordinators could use cupcakes, anyway, so nobody really noticed. Random (non-coordinating players, not on Line) players could still push to 1k or so with 3*, and hop off of A teams or even cakes if they found them. The game pushed on.

Then, between December 2015 and January 2016, the game made 2 major changes: Command Points for purchases and Champions. Command Points meant people on Line could go to buy clubs and get 7 legendary tokens for $100. This was the real birth of the 5* tier, as it became slightly more affordable to cover and max a 5*. This unbalanced the game even further, because some couldn't afford it or just had bad luck on pulls. Champions also unbalanced the game by simultaneously nerfing 3* buffs while making 4* buffs soar to ludicrous levels. Beating a level 350 4* team with your 240 3* wasn't really possible, certainly not consistently. This would have had huge impacts on scoring, but people could still use cupcakes, so there was some complaining, but it was soon forgotten. The game moved on.

Those that were lucky enough to be on the ground floor for 5* and get them covered early (like myself, to some extent) are still in good shape. For those starting later...the token pool went from 5% for oml and phoenix on BOTH sides of the pool (why they're the most covered and, hence, the most commonly used) to the sub 2% on classics we see now OR 5% for new ones....but only for 90 days. Still, most players that coordinated kept on in the 3* and 4* tier because they could still make cp to get there...eventually.

Then, defensive teams were changed, and the whole facade came crashing down overnight. 5* players can still put out easier teams (everyone can), but it still has to include at least one of their highest characters. Beating a 5* "grill" as they are called isn't nearly the same as beating a cupcake. Many players in the 4* tier and most of the 3* coordinators disappeared almost instantly. However, this wasn't the only issue. Previously, players of the 3* tier could get to 900+ off 3*. 4* could get there off of 4*, sometimes higher. The other major change that took place was adding 10cp at 575 and altering progression in general. Seems like a good deal, because you're getting 40% of the old cp at a much lower score. However, this has caused many, many, many players in lower tiers to simply stop at 575. If youre a 3* player and nobody in your tier is going any higher, all of your targets become buffed 4*. If the 4* tier stops trying for 1.2k and stop at 900 or even 575 if the 4* isn't desirable, it means that they become visible to higher tier rosters at lower levels. If all tiers push for 900, nobody is visible to the next tier til after that point. Since that isn't happening, 3* guys get picked on by 4*, 4* guys get picked on by 5*, points go down for everybody EXCEPT the 5* tier. Don't believe it? Look at shield sim. People push the same there and its still possible to get to 2000 points there in several tiers. The difference in Sim is the break point (where offensive wins are the same value as defensive losses) is set at 2000 points. There's also been little change to progression there as far as a "gimme" prize or a participation award.

Now, there's not a shot in hell that cupcakes are brought back. It's been referred to by the devs as "unintended gameplay". But, in the current state, you have to HAVE 4* to get the 4* cover (or even the 3* sometimes). To have to HAVE a 5* to get the 15cp to increase pulls for acquiring a 5*. That's not ideal at all. If players quit, theres nobody new joining the pool. If the pool totally dries out, the game dies. Now, how do we fix this?

Two things. First, adjust the break point for pvp to at least 1.2k. If points won > points lost to that point, more points will build up to that point. Still won't be easy, but it will be possible. Second, make the progression make sense. Getting half a 4* very early leaves little motivation to go on. Either remove it altogether or replace it with a second 3* cover for progression. The 10 cp? Move it to 1050 or 1100 or somewhere in the deserted wasteland between 900 and 1200. This will cause more 3* players to push for 900, which will build points in that tier, which will make it possible for more to do so. It will also make it more possible for 4* players to get to 1.2k for their progression. 5* players are going to win brackets regardless, because they can just trample the lower tiers if they get too high, but at least there's progress. This will also encorage people to buy shields, rather than pushing to wherever their tier is at and quitting.

While you're at it, revamp the damn clearance level awards. 500 iso is no incentive to move up a tier if your shield rank is 55 already. The top 300 (at least) should be the top 50 of the previous tier. The top 50 should be top 5 previous, etc, etc. Make it worthwhile for vets to move up, maybe more will. Then maybe people of appropriate tiers will be in appropriate clearance levels.